Why Did the World Not Burst Into Flame at the First Pentecost?

Sergius Bulgakov on the Transfiguration of the World

In meditating on the second half of Romans 8, particularly the way in which Paul portrays (personifies?) creation, I turned once again to The Bride of the Lamb by the great 20th century Russian Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov.

First a bit of historic trivia to explain why this Barth enthusiast is enthusiastically reading Bulgakov— the latter’s book on John the Baptist is one of my favorites.

In September 1930, the greatest Protestant theologian, Karl Barth, met with his Orthodox interlocutor, Sergius Bulgakov—met in the Kornhauskeller in the Swiss capital, Berne. Although an elegant restaurant today, the Kornhauskeller was a famous drinking hole in a vaulted cellar hall then, especially popular among students. This seemingly insignificant encounter nevertheless revealed common ground for ecumenical dialogue. As Bulgakov put it in a letter to Nikolai Berdiaev of June 7, 1933:

“Parallel spiritual lines, which do not meet in Euclidean space, will meet beyond Euclidean space, where ‘in the Father’s house are many dwellings.’”

Meanwhile, we know from Barth’s correspondence that the only lecture he found “fairly interesting and in its way plausible” at the Second East-Western Theological Conference in Berne was Bulgakov’s on “The Nature of the Russian Church.”

Barth described him as a storybook Russian “pope who spoke with remarkable passion and not without speculative momentum,” and Barth “received further peculiar insights about the divine Sophia and other Russian theologumena.”

In The Bride of the Lamb, Bulgakov asks surprising questions.

“How was the first Pentecost of the Holy Spirit possible?

How did the world withstand the descent of the Holy Spirit?

Why did the world not burst into flame from the fiery tongues of the Holy Spirit?

Why did the universal fire not start then, the fire that is to come at the end of the world?’