Kantian Antinomies and Palamite Synergies: the Inner-workings of Bulgakov’s Philosophical Theology

Abstract

Bulgakov’s special attention to Kant’s doctrine of antinomies served him as a proper philosophical approach to the essence/ energy distinction as understood by St Gregory Palamas. This approach, already suggested by Florensky, implies the establishing of the transcendental conditions within which the synergetic dynamics between the uncreated and the created receives – Bulgakov believed – a high degree of intelligibility, especially when set in the context of his conception of an Orthodox Christian sophiology.