06 — His Theology

Ware never wrote a dogmatics, and his theology has to be assembled from a short book, a large body of essays, and the introductions to what he translated. Its recurring themes are apophaticism and the essence–energies distinction, deification as “christification,” the human person as an icon of the Trinity, the body and the creation, and the prayer of the heart. Its one sustained original argument is an eschatological one, and it is the most contested thing he wrote before his last decade.

Tradition: Orthodox (Britain; Ecumenical Patriarchate)

What This Section Covers

• Theosis, Personhood, and the Human Person — the recurring themes, quoted from The Orthodox Way and the essays, with an explicit statement of what is the Church’s teaching and what is Ware’s own.
• Dare We Hope for the Salvation of All? — the 1998 essay on universal salvation: its argument, its handling of the 553 anathemas, its three arguments for and four against, and exactly where its hope stops.

The Shape of the Corpus

• The Orthodox Way (Oxford: A. R. Mowbray, 1979; rev. ed. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1995) — seven movements: a Prologue (“Signposts on the Way”), then God as Mystery, as Trinity, as Creator, as Man, as Spirit, as Prayer, and an Epilogue, “God as Eternity.”
• The Inner Kingdom, Collected Works vol. 1 (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2000) — the essays, including “The Spiritual Guide in Orthodox Christianity” and “Dare We Hope for the Salvation of All?” (193–215).
• The Power of the Name: The Jesus Prayer in Orthodox Spirituality (Oxford: SLG Press, 1974; rev. ed. 1986).
• How Are We Saved? The Understanding of Salvation in the Orthodox Tradition (Minneapolis: Light and Life, 1996).
• Journal essays in Eastern Churches Review and Sobornost, above all “The Human Person as an Icon of the Trinity,” Sobornost 8:2 (1986), 6–23; “God Hidden and Revealed,” ECR 7 (1975); “The Debate about Palamism,” ECR 9 (1977).

The §4.1 Line in This Section

Per METHODOLOGY §4.1, the distinction is stated in both files and is worth stating here. The apophatic way, the essence–energies distinction, theosis, the image-and-likeness anthropology, and the theology of the Jesus Prayer are the teaching of the Church and of the Fathers; Ware transmits them and does not invent them, and this collection presents them as the Church’s, not as his. What belongs to Ware personally is the manner of statement — and, in one case, a genuine argument of his own, the eschatological hope of “Dare We Hope for the Salvation of All?”, which he himself was careful to label a hope and not a doctrine. That essay is treated under §4.2, with the critical reception reported and not adjudicated.

See Also

• Section 08 — The Contested Questions — the late positions, treated separately
• Section 05 — The Translator — the texts from which the theology is drawn
• Theosis — the doctrine of deification
• Eschatology — the last things, where the repository already cites Ware
• The Jesus Prayer — the prayer of the heart

References

• Ware, Kallistos. The Orthodox Way. Oxford: A. R. Mowbray, 1979; repr. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986; rev. ed. 1995.
• Ware, Kallistos. The Inner Kingdom. Collected Works, vol. 1. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000.
• Ware, Kallistos. The Power of the Name: The Jesus Prayer in Orthodox Spirituality. Oxford: SLG Press, 1974; rev. ed. 1986.
• Ware, Kallistos. “The Human Person as an Icon of the Trinity.” Sobornost 8:2 (1986), 6–23.
• Louth, Andrew. Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present. London: SPCK, 2015.