Metropolitan Kallistos (bornTimothy Richard Ware, 11 September 1934 – 24 August 2022) was an English bishop and theologian of theEastern Orthodox Church. From 1982, he held thetitular bishopric ofDiokleia in Phrygia (Greek:Διόκλεια Φρυγίας), later made a titularmetropolitan bishopric in 2007, under theEcumenical 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]
Born Timothy Richard Ware on 11 September 1934 to anAnglican family inBath,Somerset, England,[2] he was educated atWestminster School in London (to which he had won a King's Scholarship) andMagdalen 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 converted to theEastern Orthodox Church. He described his first contacts with Orthodoxy and the growing attraction of the Eastern 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 theRussian Orthodox Church Abroad.[3] Thoroughly conversant in modernGreek, Ware became an Eastern Orthodoxmonk at theMonastery of Saint John the Theologian inPatmos, Greece. He also frequented other major centres of Orthodoxy, such asJerusalem andMount Athos.[4]
In August 2022, Ware's caregivers reported he was in critical condition and "approaching the end of his life".[8] He died at home inOxford in the early hours of 24 August 2022 at age 87.[2][9]
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 ofThe 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 withG. E. H. Palmer andPhilip Sherrard, he translated thePhilokalia; and with Mother Mary, he produced theLenten Triodion andFestal 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] In 2025, St. Vladimir's Seminary Press released the second of two volumes of Ware's collected works,In the Image of the Father. Volume 1,The Inner Kingdom, had been published by SVS Press in 2000. In 2025 SVS Press also released Ware's posthumous memoirs,Reminiscences and Recollections, based on a series of private interviews Ware gave between 2011 and 2016 with Dimitri Conomos.
Eustratios Argenti: A Study of the Greek Church under Turkish Rule (Clarendon, 1964,ASINB0006BMI94; reprint with a new Introduction, Wipf and Stock, 2013ISBN978-1-62564-082-6).
The Festal Menaion (translated with Mother Mary) (Faber & Faber, 1977ISBN978-1-878997-00-5).
(Editor with Colin Davey),Anglican–Orthodox Dialogue: The Moscow Statement Agreed by the Anglican–Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Commission 1976 (London: SPCK, 1977ISBN978-0-281-02992-1).
Communion and Intercommunion: A Study of Communion and Intercommunion Based on the Theology and Practice of the Orthodox Church (Light & Life, 1980; rev.ed. 2002ISBN0-937032-20-4).
The Power of the Name – The Jesus Prayer in Orthodox Spirituality (SLG Press, 1982ISBN978-0-551-01690-3).
In the Image of the Father: Collected Works, Vol. 2 (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2025ISBN9780881417746)
Reminiscences and Recollections, edited by Dimitri Conomos, Graham Speake, and Walker Thompson (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2025ISBN978-0-88141-763-0)
"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 inThe 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).
^Neff, Interview by David (6 July 2011)."Q & A: Bishop Kallistos Ware".ChristianityToday.com.Archived from the original on 20 October 2020. Retrieved13 May 2020.
How to Build the Local Church,Archived 13 March 2016 at theWayback 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
