Category Archives: + Kallistos Ware

An Open-Ended Future

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While the period of the seven Ecumenical Councils possesses a preeminent importance for Orthodoxy, we are not for one moment to imagine that the “age of the Fathers” came to a close in the eighth century. On the contrary, the Patristic era is open-ended. There is no reason, apart from human sin, why there should not be in the third millennium further Ecumenical Councils and new Fathers of the Church, equal in authority to those in the early Christian centuries; for the Holy Spirit continues present and active in the Church as much today as ever He was in the past.

Bishop Kallistos (Ware), Strange Yet Familiar: My Journey to the Orthodox Church

Sharing in Immortality

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‘A new heaven and a new earth’: man is not saved from his body but in it; not saved from the material world but with it. Because man is microcosm and mediator of the creation, his own salvation involves also the reconciliation and transfiguration of the whole animate and inanimate creation around him — its deliverance ‘from the bondage of corruption’ and entry ‘into the glorious liberty of the children of God’ (Rom. 8:21). In the ‘new earth’ of the Age to come there is surely a place not only for man but for the animals: in and through man, they too will share in immortality, and so will rocks, trees and plants, fire and water.

Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, p. 183

On Negative Theology

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The apophatic method, whether in our theological discourse or in our life of prayer, is seemingly negative in character, but in its final aim it is supremely positive. The laying aside of thoughts and images leads not to vacuity but to a plentitude surpassing all that the human mind can conceive or express. The way of negation resembles not so much the peeling of an onion as the carving of a statue. When we peel an onion, we remove one skin after another, until finally there is no more onion left: we end up with nothing at all. But the sculptor, when chipping away at a block of marble, negates to a positive effect. He does not reduce the block to a heap of random fragments but, through the apparently destructive action of breaking the stone in pieces, he ends up unveiling an intelligible shape.

Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, pp. 166-167

Finding God in All Persons

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Natural contemplation signifies finding God not only in all things but equally in all persons. When reverencing the holy ikons in church or at home, we are to reflect that each man and woman is a living ikon of God. ‘Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me’ (Matt. 25:40). In order to find God, we do not have to leave the world, to isolate ourselves from our fellow humans, and to plunge into some kind of mystical void. On the contrary, Christ is looking at us through the eyes of all those whom we meet. Once we recognize his universal presence, all our acts of practical service to others become acts of prayer.

Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, p. 161

Interpreting Scripture

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Since our reasoning brain is a gift from God, there is undoubtedly a legitimate place for scholarly research into Biblical origins. But, while we are not to reject this research wholesale, we cannot as Orthodox accept it in its entirety. Always we need to keep in view that the Bible is not just a collection of historical documents, but it is the book of the Church, containing God’s word. And so we do not read the Bible as isolated individuals, interpreting it solely by the light of our private understanding, or in terms of current theories about source, form or redaction criticism. We read it as members of the Church, in communion with all the other members throughout the ages. The final criterion for our interpretation is the mind of the Church. And this means keeping constantly in view how the meaning of Scripture is explained and applied in Holy Tradition: that is to say, how the Bible is understood by the Fathers and the saints, and how it is used in liturgical worship.

Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, pp. 147-148

Not Substitution; Companionship

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He [Christ] has done for us something we should be altogether incapable of doing without him. At the same time, we should not say that Christ has suffered ‘instead of us’, but rather that he has suffered on our behalf. The Son of God suffered ‘unto death’, not that we might be exempt from suffering, but that our suffering might be like his. Christ offers us, not a way around suffering, but a way through it; not substitution, but saving companionship.

Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, p. 109

Sharing to the Utmost

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The Incarnation [...] is an act of identifying and sharing. God saves us by identifying himself with us, by knowing our human experience from the inside. The Cross signifies, in the most stark and uncompromising manner, that this act of sharing is carried to the utmost limits. God incarnate enters into all our experience. Jesus Christ our companion shares  not only in the fullness of human life but also in the fullness of human death. ‘Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows’ (Isa. 53:4) — all our griefs, all our sorrows. ‘The unassumed is unhealed’: but Christ our healer has assumed into himself everything, even death.

Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, p. 104

Love and Freedom

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As a Trinity of love, God desired to share his life with created persons made in his image, who would be capable of responding to Him freely and willingly in a relationship of love. Where there is no freedom, there can be no love. Compulsion excludes love; as Paul Evdokimov used to say, God can do everything except compel us to love him. God, therefore — desiring to share his love — created, not robots who would obey him mechanically, but angels and human beings endowed with free choice. And thereby, to put the matter in an anthropomorphic way, God took a risk: for with this gift of freedom there was given also the possibility of sin. But he who takes no risks does not love.

Without freedom there would be no sin. But without freedom man would not be in God’s image; without freedom man would not be capable of entering into communion with God in a relationship of love.

Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, pp. 75-76

Not Against the Body

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St Paul, however, is careful to say: ‘I know that in my flesh dwells nothing good.’ Our ascetic warfare is against the flesh, not against the body as such. ‘Flesh’ is not the same as ‘body.’ The term flesh, as used in the passage just quoted, signifies whatever within us is sinful and opposed to God; thus it is not only the body but the soul in fallen man that has become fleshly and carnal. We are to hate the flesh, but we are not to hate the body, which is God’s handiwork and the temple of the Holy Spirit. Ascetic self-denial is thus a fight not against but for the body.

Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, p. 79