Relics And Miracles

Esteemed translator Boris Jakim here presents for the first time in English two major theological essays by Sergius Bulgakov. In “On Holy Relics,” Bulgakov’s 1918 response to Bolshevik desecration of the relics of Russian saints, he develops a comprehensive theology of relics, connecting them with the Incarnation and showing their place in sacramental theology in general. In “On the Gospel Miracles” (1932), Bulgakov presents a Christological doctrine of the Gospel miracles, focusing on the question of how human activity relates to the works of Christ. Both works are suffused with Bulgakov’s faith in Christian resurrection – and with his signature “religious materialism,” where the corporeal is illuminated by the spiritual and the earthly is transfigured into the heavenly.