Sophiology is a controversial school of thought in Russian Orthodoxy which holds that Divine Wisdom is to be identified with God's essence, and that the Divine Wisdom is in some way expressed in the world as 'creaturely' wisdom. This notion has often been understood or misunderstood as introducing a feminine "fourth hypostasis" into the Trinity. The controversy has roots in the early modern period, but Sophiology as a theological doctrine was formulated during the 1890s to 1910s by Vladimir Solovyov, Pavel Florensky and Sergey Bulgakov. In 1935, parts of Fr. Sergius Bulgakov's doctrine of Sophia were condemned by the Patriarch of Moscow and other Russian Orthodoxhierarchs. Although Bulgakov was censured by the aforementioned hierarchs, a committee commissioned by Metropolitan Eulogius to critique Bulgakov's Sophiology found his system questionable, but not heretical, and issued no formal censure. For Bulgakov, Theotokos St. Mary was the world soul and the “Pneumatophoric hypostasis”, a Bulgakov neologism. Thomas Merton studied the Russian Sophiologists and praised Sophia in his poem titled "Hagia Sophia". The Roman Catholic Valentin Tomberg in his magnum opusMeditations on the Tarot incorporated many Sophiological insights into his Christian Hermeticism, pairing the Holy Trinity with the Trino-Sophia, which together he called “The Luminous Holy Trinity”. The book’s Afterword was written by Hans Urs von Balthasar and kept on the nightstand of Pope John Paul II. Johnson and Meehan noted parallels between the Russian "sophiological" controversy and the Gender of God debate in western feminist theology. Personified representations of Holy Wisdom or the "Wisdom of God" refer in Orthodox theology to the person of Jesus Christ, as illustrated in the Acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council : "Our Lord Jesus Christ, our true God, the self-existent Wisdom of God the Father, Who manifested Himself in the flesh, and by His great and divine dispensation freed us from the snares of idolatry, clothing Himself in our nature, restored it through the cooperation of the Spirit, Who shares His mind…" More recently it has been stated that "From the most ancient times and onwards many Orthodox countries have been consecrating churches to the Lord Jesus Christ as the Wisdom of God."
