Jacob’s Ladder: On Angels. Trans. Thomas Allan Smith (review)

Jacob’s Ladder: On Angels is a translation of the 1929 Russian work Lestvitsa Iakovlia: Ob angelakh, by Sergius Bulgakov. This book is the final work in Bulgakov’s first trilogy, which included a theological reflection on the Mother of God, The Burning Bush (1927), St. John the Baptist, The Friend of the Bridegroom (1928), and the angels. Jacob’s Ladder provides not only a theological reflection on angels, but the completion of Bulgakov’s theology of “wisdom of God in creation.” Mary and John reveal wisdom in the human world while angels reveal wisdom in the heavenly world (xiii). Situated within the context of Bulgakov’s theological career, Jacob’s Ladder, along with his first two books in this trilogy are prelude to his magnum opus, The Lamb of God, and his major trilogy that follows.

The scope of this book is impressive. Drawing from Scripture, the Orthodox liturgy, icons, Western and Eastern fathers, human experience, and his own miraculous encounter with an angelic presence, Jacob’s Ladder presents a systematic portrayal of the role, meaning, and purpose of angels. In ten chapters Bulgakov addresses a variety of issues that include gender, sex, virginity, bipartite human nature, angelophanies, demons, linguistics, epistemology, and miracles. These topics follow from the close relationship that exists between angels and humans. As the title suggests, this book primarily addresses the angels’ role in the economy of salvation, and to this end, Bulgakov’s discourse on angels is anthropologically centred.

Each chapter takes this relationship as its departure. Chapter 6 is exceptional because it provides a systematic, yet original treatment of major angelic appearances and revelations in the Old Testament. Bulgakov convincingly argues that God, who is Trinity, is revealed exclusively through angels in the Old Testament. He reads into the Old Testament’s angelophanies and theophanies the Incarnation. In fact, his exegesis of these biblical passages does not reflect the critical, biblical scholarship with which Bulgakov was familiar, but rather traditional christo-centric typological approaches to the Old Testament. All revelations before the Incarnation are prototypical and preliminary: only Jesus Christ reveals God personally (135).

Nevertheless, the thesis of Jacob’s Ladder can be summarized in two statements. First, there is an ontological correlation between the angelic and human life. At the heart of this claim is Bulgakov’s exegesis of two biblical verses: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen 1:1), and “And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred [and] forty [and] four cubits, [according to] the measure of a man, that is, of the angel” (Rev 21:17). Angels exist in what Bulgakov calls the Divine Sophia/Wisdom, or God’s revealed nature, and as such imprinted in each angel is the prototype or logoi of a created being. Whether direct or indirect service, angels exist solely for the service of humanity, and their service is reflected in their metaphysical constitution, for according to Bulgakov, angels do not have their own nature but are purely hypostatic spirits. Angels are instruments of Divine Sophia (33). Properly speaking, angels are not without content or nature, but rather their nature is the Divine Sophia; their nature is limited to the divine design imprinted on them by God. They are living proto-images of creation, who do not share the divine, revealed nature naturally, but rather by grace.

Ensuring that the creaturely manifestation of this prototype attains the height of their divine design—for humankind this is divinization—comprises the service of angels. More concretely, angels help creation that exists in its becoming stage to mature into its heavenly prototype. The goal of all creation is to attain the heavenly height that God has planned for it in the Divine Sophia. With the exception of the highest court of angels, every angel contains a prototype of created being and acts like a guardian for that creature and thus shares in this earthly ministry (66). Each angel serves an aspect of the...