Metropolitan Macarius (Bulgakov)

Introduction to Orthodox Theology

19th c. · Dogmatic & Doctrinal · English translation, 2026

210,427 words · 18 hr read· Moderate

Source edition: Введение в православное богословие

Cover art: The Moscow Cathedrals and the River Moskva (in Spring) — Vasily Vereshchagin (Russian, 1842–1904) (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

In 1843 the St. Petersburg Theological Academy handed its dogmatic-theology chair to a monk barely out of his twenties, Macarius (Bulgakov). The lecture course he built became, by 1847, this book: a closely argued case that God exists, the soul is immortal, a divine revelation has genuinely been given across three ages of biblical history, and that revelation now rests in Holy Scripture, Holy Tradition, and the Orthodox Church that guards them both. Encyclopedic and saturated with citation from Plato to John of Damascus, it earned its author a doctorate the year it appeared, and is the deliberate foundation Macarius laid before the multi-volume dogmatic system that made him the standard theological authority of the Russian academies.