Deification and Economics

Chapter 5 analyses Sergei Bulgakov’s The Philosophy of Economy (1912) in the context of the philosophy of F. W. J. Schelling and the theology of Maximus the Confessor. Bulgakov elaborates an original theory of human economic activity as the instrument by which the material world is divinized. The work is Bulgakov’s first attempt creatively to bring together categories from German metaphysical idealism with elements of Orthodox doctrine: here, the chapter argues, the doctrine of deification as participation in the divine. It is shown how Bulgakov’s deification narrative broadly conforms to the religious philosophy of late Schelling, including its elaboration of Sophia as the divine humanity in which all concrete humans participate. Maximus and the Greek patristic tradition is engaged to show how Bulgakov has assimilated important elements of deification doctrine, as well as how his attempted synthesis is ultimately expressed more in a Schellingian philosophical than an Orthodox theological idiom.