Java – Recursive with functional Java computation factorials

I tried to calculate the factorial in a functional way.

Here’s what I do:

 private static Function<BigInteger, BigInteger> factorial = x -> BigInteger.ONE.equals(x)
        ? BigInteger.ONE
        : x.multiply(Main.factorial.apply(x.subtract(BigInteger.ONE)));

I got StackOverflowError! while trying to get 11111

But when I calculate the factorial using this method:

private static BigInteger factorial(BigInteger request) {
    if (BigInteger.ONE.equals(request)) return BigInteger.ONE;
    else return request.multiply(factorial(request.subtract(BigInteger.ONE)));
}

I can get results without StackOverflowError.

Does the functional style work poorly? Why?