The Dispute about Sophia

Lossky's first independent book, published in Paris in 1936 by the Brotherhood of St Photius, the émigré Orthodox brotherhood he belonged to. It was written during the controversy of 1935 and 1936 over the sophiology of Fr Sergei Bulgakov, whose teaching on Sophia, the Wisdom of God, had been condemned by the Moscow Patriarchate. Lossky wrote against that teaching from the standpoint of Orthodox dogma: while respecting Bulgakov's work, he judged his theology unacceptable, finding in it an impersonalism, a determinism tied to nature and to Sophia, and a confusion of person and nature. These themes, the distinction of person and nature above all, stayed at the centre of his later theology. The book was reprinted in Russian in Moscow in 1996, in a volume with his articles of various years. No English translation was found.