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connected not with revolt or usurpation, but with misunderstanding, naivete
and ignorance. Our progenitors did not know how to recognise or to terminate
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the poisonous conversation with the serpent’. Original sin and the resultant
moral evil of the world is contrasted with the pure spiritual evil of the demons
in the following terms: ‘[pure spiritual evil] is personal, although the fallen
spirits do gather together to form their special kingdom and their army.
[human evil] on the other hand, is not only personal, but also natural and
generic. Every man that connects into the world enters into a contaminated
medium and assimilates this medium in his own way’. 73
Bulgakov understands evil as a state or condition rather than a
substance. In the eyes of God it is ‘nothing’, despite its seemingly staggering
power in our world. The ability to turn from God is seen as part of the
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privilege of freedom, granted by the Creator. In contrast to Berdyaev, however,
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Bulgakov sees freedom as ‘by definition uncaused by anything beyond it’. This
freedom allows the possibility of the Creator becoming Redeemer in the future
and therefore is in itself wholly positive.
In Men’s assessment of Bulgakov’s theology, in his lectures on Russian
Religious philosophy, he draws attention to the close relation between the
Creator and the created in Bulgakov’s thought. Men tells us that ‘creation is
not a miraculous act, when from non-existence appears existence, but rather
from ideas that exist in God, from heavenly Sofia/Wisdom. The spiritual
principle of the world receives its birth from the Wisdom of God’. This is
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connected with Bulgakov’s meta-historical understanding of the Fall ‘before’
creation. Solovyov, Berdyaev and Bulgakov, who all ‘are partial to the idea that
nature in the form that it exists now is the result of a pretemporal Fall of a
world-Adam’ are holding a view that he considers theologically inadequate,
because it does not correspond with the Genesis accounts where the
natural/material world always precedes Adam. 77
Nonetheless, Bulgakov’s ideas of an ontological distinction between the
human spirit and animal nature and an extensive demonology find parallels in
Men’s writings on the problem of evil. Men does not appear to comment on

72 Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb, p162
73 Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb, p164
74 Nichols, Aidan. Wisdom fom Above: A Primer in the Theology of Father Sergei Bulgakov, p51-52.
[Gracewing, Leominster, 2005]
75 Nichols, p54
76 Men, Lectures on Russian Religious Philosophy
77 Men, Magicism and Monotheism, Appendix 8 part 4

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