Bulgakov on St. Sophia:
“Those who have visited the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople and have fallen under the spell of what it reveals, will find themselves permanently enriched by a new apprehension of the world in God, that is, of the divine Sophia.

This heavenly dome, which portrays heaven bending to embrace the earth, gives expression in finite form to the infinite, to an all-embracing unity, to the stillness of eternity, in the form of a work of art which, though belonging to this world, is a miracle of harmony itself.

The grace, lightness, simplicity, and wonderful symmetry of the structure account for the fact that the weight of the dome and even of the very walls seems to dissolve completely. An ocean of light pours in from above and dominates the whole space below—

it enchants, convinces, as it seems to say: I am in the world and the world is in me. Here Plato is baptized into Christianity, for here, surely, we have the lofty realm to which souls ascend for the contemplation of ideas...

And finally, in contemplating culture which has succumbed to secularization and paganism, which has lost its inspiration and has no answer to give to the tragedy of history, which seems in fact to have lost all meaning—we realize that we can find a spring of living water

only by a renewal of our faith in the Sophianic, or theandric, meaning of the historical process.

As the dome of St. Sophia in Constantinople with prophetic symbolism portrays heaven bending to earth, so the Wisdom of God herself is spread like a canopy over our sinful though still hallowed world.”