Category: Theology

Did Sergei Bulgakov Read Søren Kierkegaard?

This morning I was looking up a passage from Bulgakov’s 1917 foray into theology, The Unfading Light, when I happened upon the following passage:

Moreover, religion, which some wish to reduce entirely to ethics, in its integrity is higher than ethics and hence free from it: ethics exists for the human being in certain bounds such as law, but the human being must be able to rise above even ethics. Let them ponder the sense of those stories of the Bible when God, for the purposes of religious economy, or for testing faith, permitted or even ordered acts that wittingly contradict morality: the sacrifice of an only son, the bloody extermination of whole nations, deceit, and theft.

What Bulgakov says here about ethics, and mention of the sacrifice of Isaac, should raise the eyebrows of anyone who has read Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. Did Bulgakov get this from Kierkegaard? Or did he stumble into the teleological suspension of the ethical by accident? This is more than a point of curiosity for me. Those of us who try to figure out what dead people were thinking benefit greatly from knowing who they were reading. Unfortunately, Orthodox theologians in the past did not always cite their western sources, and even more unfortunately, most of what Bulgakov did footnote, Eerdman’s publishing decided wasn’t worth printing. But don’t get me started on that.

I really would like this question answered. So “Like” this post and share it with all your Russian friends.

Follow me at @DrDavidJDunn.

Real Life: The Great New Board Game Nobody’s Talking About

I just had a great idea for a new board game. It would be called “Real Life.” It would be kind of like Monopoly, except instead of starting from the same place with the same resources, players would draw Birth cards that would determine the circumstances of their birth. Then a set of Parent cards would determine players’ first 18 moves. After that, they get to use whatever educational and financial resources they have so far accumulated to make decisions about the spaces they land on. The last player left alive wins.

Naturally, to keep it real, the vast majority of the Birth cards would involve lack of food, clean water, medical care, and adequate education. So unlike Monopoly, Real Life would be a very short game.

If this is your idea of justice, you’re a terrible person.

UPDATE: After writing this post, I discovered that this game actually exists. Next time, I will Google first. There goes my retirement plan.

Germany Day 5.1

Well, Mom’s out of the tournament. Right now she is off somewhere beating herself up, which makes me sad. I am not sad that she lost. I am sad that she does not seem to realize how badass she is.

Everyone I spoke to about Mom says she is a better fencer than she gives herself credit for. I don’t know a thing about saber fencing. But I could see how she was getting in her own way sometimes. It’s what I do. Even in rounds she won, she would be disappointed for not doing better.

It’s imposter syndrome. When something goes wrong, you replay your mistakes over and over again in your head. When something goes right, you attribute it to luck. You credit all the bad things to yourself and all the good things to something else.

Mom has a great coach and is a strong fencer. She just needs to give herself more credit. It will help her relax. That is what I heard her coach explaining. She gets frenetic and makes mistakes. The more badass she realizes she is, the more badass she will be, which is kind of a scary thought, actually. I am not sure the universe could handle all that badassery.

Germany Day 5.0

(Written 10/14/2016) My plan today was/is to take it a little bit easier. The Team USA dinner was last night, and I am feeling it.

It was great to see my mom “in her element,” so to speak. People knew her. She knew people. They talked about fencing and other things. I ate some kind of fish called “Dorscht,” which tasted fresh, and chicken, which tasted like fish. I also had some very good scwarzbier and some less good weissbier. One had notes of coffee and chocolate. The other had notes of cough syrup and licorice. Continue reading “Germany Day 5.0”