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71
For a general analysis of the role that Sophia plays in Bulgakov s thought, see Rowan
Williams, Sergii Bulgakov: Towards a Russian Political Theology (Edinburgh: T&T
Clark, 1999), and John Milbank, The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate
Concerning the Supernatural (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005). See also Milbank s
unpublished paper, Sophiology and Theurgy: The New Theological Horizon. I am
grateful to Professor Milbank for providing me with a copy of this.
72
Bulgakov, Philosophy of Economy, 144 5.
73
Ibid., 137.
74
It is not uncommon to associate Sophia with Christ, God s Logos, particularly as
presented in the prologue to John s Gospel. See e.g. Gilbert and Aletti, La Sagesse et Jésus-
Christ. I prefer not to confuse the figure of Sophia with that of Christ but to render them
BEING NOURISHED: FOOD MATTERS 103
deified via food and drink at the eucharistic sharing: Christ through the
church as a new unifying center; humanity becomes the body of Christ
so that Christ as a person can re-create human nature, thus becoming a
new Adam of whose flesh and blood humanity partakes. 75 In Bulgakov s
reading of Sophia s banquet, her gesture of hospitality and generosity points
to a metaphysical sharing of God s own being, which at the end
points to humanity s deification a new Adamness. This notion of par-
taking as a way of re-creating (and, even more, deifying) human nature
is therefore central in Bulgakov s metaphysical construction, and can
provide a more positive reading of creation in general, and food in par-
ticular. Human beings are part of Sophia, who partakes of the Logos,
who is a further participant in God s intra-Trinitarian relationship. What
allows this mediation or in-betweenness (humanity and divinity, persons
in the Trinity, and so forth) is, for Bulgakov, Sophia. The unity of being
is participation as such, a metaphysical banquet united by divine sharing
prepared by Sophia. Bulgakov points out that such a unity is not
mechanical, but a dynamic process over time and manifested in history,
in knowledge, and in economy. 76
The unity that Bulgakov describes does not devolve into an imper-
sonal monism, which, as the Irish philosopher William Desmond has
pointed out, would only resolve into a mere univocal predication of
autonomous being, devoid of difference from and dependence on God.77
But neither is this relation just sheer difference, mere equivocity without
communion. Instead, and akin to Desmond s account of complex unity
distinct. However, I do observe a certain continuity with Christ, who inherits some of
Sophia s gestures: Jesus is a wise master, attends banquets and speaks of eschatological
banquets, and offers himself as food and drink. The feminine dimension of Jesus as it was
later explored in some of the devotional and discursive practices of women in the Middle
Ages, for instance, could also be understood as the continuity of a theological tradition
that speaks on behalf of a feminine face of God. On this see Caroline Walker Bynum,
Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1984), and Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (Baltimore:
Penguin, 1984), chs. 57 63.
75
Bulgakov, Philosophy of Economy, 140.
76
Ibid.
77
As John Milbank points out in Sophiology and Theurgy, Desmond is aware of
Bulgakov s own writings, which favor the Platonic term metaxu to articulate Sophia s
mediation. It is also not a coincidence that this Platonic term is presented in the Symposium,
where Plato deals with issues of eros/agape within the context of a post-banquet discus-
sion. See William Desmond, Being and the Between (New York: State University of New
York Press, 1995). See also Plato, The Symposium; my discussion is based on the Spanish
version, El Banquete, trans. Luis Gil (Madrid: Tecnos, 1998).
104 BEING NOURISHED: FOOD MATTERS
of being, Bulgakov envisions Sophia as the in-between of communion:
Sophia as the one who brings about communion. Nevertheless, and as
John Milbank comments on Desmond s analysis, this sense of commu-
nion surpasses a dialectical version, which is a self-mediation that usu-
ally ends up favoring either univocity or equivocity. Rather, and in
Milbank s own words,
Sophia names a metaxu which does not lie between two poles
but only stands simultaneously at both poles at once. As such it
does not subsist before the two poles, but it co-arises with them
such that they can only exist according to a mediated communi-
cation which remains purely occult, a matter of utterly inscrutable
affinity.78
Sophia s metaxu (middle, in Greek) is the mediated communication of
Being. The metaxological is an understanding of Being as relationality
without a final human-mediated dialectical resolution, for it is an open-
ing up to the excess of being s plenitude that is never exhaustively
mediated by us. 79 It includes individuality, self-discernment, and deter-
mination, yet it is not ultimately rooted in the subject for the subject
and singularity are not self-creations but rather in a gift-exchange.
Thus, individuality and singularity are not self-mediated, for they are
opened by the ineffable otherness that is not indifferent to the same, but
communicates and creates a space of mutual affinity. From a sophio-
logical perspective, individuality and difference allow all economic
exchange by virtue of this other-reception of Sophia s superabundance
and hospitality: the oneness of humanity is not empty but consists of
coordinated and united multiplicity, for individuality as a particular ray
in the pleroma of Sophia in no way contradicts the notion of the whole,
which allows its part to develop. 80 Sophia is the divine Wisdom that
guides and brings about awareness of the primordial union or affinity
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