Kallistos Ware (born Timothy Richard Ware, 11 September 1934 – 24 August 2022) was an English bishop and theologian of the
Eastern Orthodox Church. From 1982, he held the
titular bishopric of
Diokleia in Phrygia (
Greek: Διόκλεια Φρυγίας), later made a titular
metropolitan bishopric in 2007, under the
Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. He was one of the best-known modern Eastern Orthodox hierarchs and theologians. From 1966 to 2001, he was Spalding Lecturer of Eastern Orthodox Studies at the University of Oxford.[1]
Early life and ordination
Born Timothy Richard Ware on 11 September 1934 to an
Anglican family in
Bath,
Somerset, England,[2] he was educated at
Westminster School in London (to which he had won a King's Scholarship) and
Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took a double first in classics as well as reading theology.[3]
On 14 April 1958, at the age of 24, he embraced the
Eastern Orthodox Christian faith. He described his first contacts with Orthodoxy and the growing attraction of the Orthodox Church in an autobiographical text entitled "My Journey to the Orthodox Church". While still a layman, he spent six months in Canada at a monastery of the
Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.[3] Thoroughly conversant in modern
Greek, Ware became an Eastern Orthodox
monk at the
Monastery of Saint John the Theologian in
Patmos, Greece. He also frequented other major centres of Orthodoxy, such as
Jerusalem and
Mount Athos.[4]
In August 2022, his caregivers reported he was in critical condition and "approaching the end of his life".[8] He died at home in
Oxford in the early hours of 24 August 2022 at age 87.[2][9]
Publications
Ware was a prolific author and lecturer. He authored or edited over a dozen books, numerous articles in a wide range of periodicals, and essays in books on many subjects, as well as providing prefaces, forewords, or introductions to many other books. He is perhaps best known as the author of The Orthodox Church, published when he was a layman in 1963 and subsequently revised several times.[10] In 1979, he produced a companion volume, The Orthodox Way. He collaborated in the translation and publication of major Orthodox ascetic and liturgical texts. Together with
G. E. H. Palmer and
Philip Sherrard, he translated the Philokalia (four volumes of five published as of 2018[update]); and with Mother Mary, he produced the Lenten Triodion and Festal Menaion.
St Vladimir's Seminary Press published a Festschrift in his honour in 2003: Abba, The Tradition of Orthodoxy in the West, Festschrift for Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia, eds. John Behr, Andrew Louth, Dimitri Conomos (New York: SVS Press, 2003).[5]
Eustratios Argenti: A Study of the Greek Church under Turkish Rule (Clarendon, 1964,
ASINB0006BMI94; reprint with a new Introduction, Wipf and Stock, 2013
ISBN978-1-62564-082-6).
The Festal Menaion (translated with Mother Mary) (Faber & Faber, 1977
ISBN978-1-878997-00-5).
(Editor with Colin Davey), Anglican–Orthodox Dialogue: The Moscow Statement Agreed by the Anglican–Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Commission 1976 (London: SPCK, 1977
ISBN978-0-281-02992-1).
Communion and Intercommunion: A Study of Communion and Intercommunion Based on the Theology and Practice of the Orthodox Church (Light & Life, 1980; rev.ed. 2002
ISBN0-937032-20-4).
The Power of the Name – The Jesus Prayer in Orthodox Spirituality (SLG Press, 1982
ISBN978-0-551-01690-3).
Orthodox Theology in the Twenty-First Century (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2012
ISBN978-2-8254-1571-9).
Selected articles
"Review of Panagiotis N. Trembelas, Dogmatique de l'Église orthodoxe," Eastern Churches Review 3, 4 (1971), 477–480.
"God Hidden and Revealed: The Apophatic Way and the Essence-Energies Distinction", Eastern Churches Review 7 (1975).
"The Debate about Palamism", Eastern Churches Review 9 (1977).
"Wolves and Monks: Life on the Holy Mountain Today", Sobornost 5, 2 (1983).
"Athos after Ten Years: The Good News and the Bad", Sobornost 15, 1 (1993).
"Through Creation to the Creator", Third Marco Pallis Memorial Lecture, Ecotheology, 2 (London: Friends of the centre, 1996) <www.incommunion.org/2004/12/11/through-creation-to-the-creator> (12.03.2011).
"Dare We Hope for the Salvation of All?" Theology Digest, 45.4 (1998). Reprinted in The Inner Kingdom (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2001).
"Man, Woman and the Priesthood of Christ", in Thomas Hopko, ed., Women and the Priesthood (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, revised edition, 1999).
"God Immanent yet Transcendent: The Divine Energies according to Saint Gregory Palamas" in Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke, eds., In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God's Presence in a Scientific World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004) (
ISBN978-0-8028-0978-0).
"Sobornost and Eucharistic Ecclesiology: Aleksei Khomiakov and His Successors", International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 11, 2-3 (2011).
"Orthodox Theology Today: Trends and Tasks", International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 12, 2 (2012).
Selected lectures
"The Present and Future of Orthodox Theology" (New York, St. Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary, 8 September 2011)[14]
"Churches of the Christian East" (Fairfax, VA, Orientale Lumen Foundation)
"Mystical Theology of the Eastern Fathers" (Fairfax, VA, Orientale Lumen Foundation)
References
^Neff, Interview by David (6 July 2011).
"Q & A: Bishop Kallistos Ware". ChristianityToday.com.
Archived from the original on 20 October 2020. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
How to Build the Local ChurchArchived 13 March 2016 at the
Wayback Machine, a talk given at a conference of the Archdiocese of Orthodox parishes of Russian tradition in Western Europe, Institut St-Serge, Paris, October 2005