08 — The Contested Questions

Three things in Ware’s record have been seriously contested by other Orthodox: the changes he made to The Orthodox Church between its 1963 and 1993 editions; his revision of his own essay on women and the priesthood, and the more open position he took in 1999–2000; and his 2018 foreword to The Wheel on the pastoral treatment of homosexual persons. This section reports all three under METHODOLOGY §4.2 — both sides, named critics, primary texts quoted at length, and no adjudication.

Tradition: Orthodox (Britain; Ecumenical Patriarchate)

What This Section Covers

• The Revisions Between Editions — the documented differences between the 1963 and 1993 texts of The Orthodox Church, and Hieromonk Patapios’s seventy-page collation.
• Women, Priesthood and Same-Sex Relationships — the two versions of “Man, Woman and the Priesthood of Christ” (1978 and 1999), the 2000 formulation that the question is “essentially open,” the 2018 Wheel foreword, and the substantial criticism both drew.

How This Section Is Written

Four rules govern the two files, and they are stated here so that the reader can hold the files to them.

1. The Church’s teaching is not revised by this collection. Per METHODOLOGY §4.1, the doctrinal and moral teaching of the Orthodox Church is confessed, not adjudicated by a reference guide. Nothing in this section is offered as an alteration or softening of that teaching. Where Ware’s own text affirms the Church’s teaching — and on both of the contested moral questions it does so explicitly — that affirmation is quoted, because the polemical summaries on both sides tend to omit it.

2. Ware’s positions are reported as his. A modern theologian’s opinions are his own theological work. They are set out accurately and in his own words wherever possible, attributed to him, and never presented as the mind of the Church.

3. Critics are named and quoted. Where Ware drew published criticism, the critics are identified by name, publication and date, and their arguments are stated in a form they would recognize. Where the criticism came from outside the canonical Orthodox Churches — as with the Old Calendarist critique of The Orthodox Church — that fact is stated, without being used to dismiss the substance.

4. Where the record is contested or unverifiable, it is marked. Several load-bearing items in this section could not be checked against the printed text — above all the exact wording of the 1999 revision of the priesthood essay. These carry [Disputed: ...] notes rather than confident paraphrase.

Why the Section Exists

Ware is the most-cited modern authority in this repository (see The Most-Cited Modern Authority). A guide that presented him only in his uncontested aspect — the translator, the explainer, the pastor — would misrepresent the source on which several hundred of the repository’s files partly rest. A reader who takes Ware as an authority should know exactly where other Orthodox have declined to follow him, and why.

It exists for a second reason too. On the two moral questions, the secondary literature is unusually unreliable in both directions: sympathetic accounts have Ware endorsing positions he explicitly declines to endorse, and hostile accounts have him abandoning teachings he explicitly affirms. In this situation the only honest procedure is to go to his own printed words and quote them at length, which is what the second file does.

A Note on Proportion

Ware published for sixty years. The contested items amount to one essay revised once, one foreword of five pages, and a set of revisions to one book. Against that stands the whole of the translation work, the two catechetical classics, and thirty-five years of teaching. The section is here because the disputes are real and are still being conducted; it is not here because they are the center of gravity of the life.

See Also

• Section 02 — The Books — the book whose revisions are at issue
• Section 06 — His Theology — the contested theological question treated there, universal hope, and its own §4.2 note
• Section 07 — Bishop and Pastor — the ecumenical work, contested on adjacent grounds
• Section 09 — Legacy and Assessment — the provisional weighing
• Women in Orthodoxy and Deaconess History — the repository’s doctrinal treatment
• St. Maria of Paris — the repository’s model for a contested modern reception

References

• Patapios, Hieromonk. “A Traditionalist Critique of The Orthodox Church.” Orthodox Tradition XVI, no. 1, 39–72.
• Ware, Kallistos. “Man, Woman and the Priesthood of Christ.” In Peter Moore, ed., Man, Woman, and Priesthood. London: SPCK, 1978, 68–90; revised version in Thomas Hopko, ed., Women and the Priesthood, new ed. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1999.
• Behr-Sigel, Elisabeth, and Bishop Kallistos Ware. The Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church. Geneva: WCC Publications, 2000.
• Ware, Kallistos, Metropolitan of Diokleia. “Foreword.” The Wheel 13/14 (Spring/Summer 2018), 6–10.