preface to volume I: patristics

Professor Emeritus of Church History and Former Dean

St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary

Yonkers, New York

Journeying With Bishop Kallistos

“Christianity signifies a direct partici-pation through grace in the life of God. ... I’d like to set before you a map—a map of the spiritual journey, of the way in which we can approach the Divine mystery.” (p. 5).

When setting off on such a journey, it is advisable to be in the company of a guide who is knowledgeable and experienced. The guide should be familiar with the way.  But the journey will be less fatiguing if we are in the company of a guide who also is amiable, well organized, and gifted with a childlike sense of wonder. Such a guide would be Bishop Kallistos Ware. 

Whether in his books and lectures or in conversation, he turns a journey into an adventure. He maps our way. He recommends provisions to take along. He joins us as we negotiate rough stretches of the terrain. He anticipates the heights and depths of our travel experience and guides us through the vast expanses of the human heart.  As he notes, we moderns today think of the heart as a kind of pump, whereas writers of the Bible and other ancient texts present it as a mysterious space of unfathomable depth, where we meet ourselves, where we make moral decisions, where a battle between good and evil impulses may sometimes rage, but where we may also experience the grace of the Holy Spirit (p. 192-93).  

This adventure has a spatial aspect. Bishop Kallistos’s lectures on “The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church Fathers” take us around the Eastern Mediterranean world, with excursions into the Middle East and northward into the Balkans and beyond.  We spend relatively little time in the major cities, where theological controversies once played out and ecumenical councils assembled—the standard subjects covered in typical seminary courses in church history and patristics. We spend considerably more time in monasteries and hermitages in the company of mystics who explore the paradoxical character of religious experience, the otherness and the nearness of God, the antinomies of darkness and light.

In addition to its spatial aspect, our adventure has a quasi-temporal aspect. Our principal interlocutors are mystical theologians of fourth through the fifteenth century and beyond, but with them we explore Scripture, especially passages from the Old Testament that we might otherwise overlook. We meet other mystics from more recent times and from other cultures. We also glimpse realms of the imagination, of poetry, of fantasy. Anglophone readers will recall lines from T. S. Eliot, William Blake, George Herbert, and other literary greats. Devotees of fantasy literature will appreciate references to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Those still young at heart will remember reading (or having read to them) Antoine de St.-Exupéry’s Little Prince. Those like me, whose first acquaintance with The Way of the Pilgrim and the Philokalia was prompted by reading J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, will benefit from Bishop Kallistos’s engaging account of the history of the Philokalia—a “spiritual time bomb,” whose “time of greatest influence was not in the 18th-century world of the Ottoman Empire” but “in the last fifty years, since the Second World War” (p.161).

Perhaps it is fortunate that I met Bishop Kallistos only many decades after my first encounter with the Philokalia. During my years in college and graduate school I had read his books and many of his articles, and in my own work I often referred to his study of Eustratios Argenti and the 18th-century controversy over “heretic baptism.” I also shared his interest in the ambiguous state of Anglican-Orthodox relations as revealed in the correspondence between Aleksei Khomiakov and William Palmer in the 19th century.

Over the years Bishop Kallistos also had read some of my articles on the reception of “converts” in the Orthodox Church and my criticism of some aspects of the eucharistic ecclesiology once regnant in Orthodox theological circles. But he and I met in person only in 2010, at a consultation held at Windsor on Orthodox ecclesiology. His paper was on “Sobornost’ and Eucharistic Ecclesiology: Aleksei Khomiakov and His Successors.” Mine was on “The Church in Modern Orthodox Thought: Towards a Baptismal Ecclesiology.” (Both were published with the other consultation papers in the International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 11:2-3, pp. 216-235 and pp. 137-151 respectively.) We quickly recognized how closely our ecclesiological concerns were connected. We both appreciated the insights of 20th-century eucharistic ecclesiology, but we also recognized its limitations, above all its susceptibility to triumphalism and exclusivism. What, we asked, is the ecclesiological significance of baptism? 

That question still has not been satisfactorily addressed by theologians, whether Orthodox or Catholic or Other, but I hope that publication of Bishop Kallistos’s Oxford lectures and other shorter works will stimulate further discussion—and not just among theologians and other religious professionals. His message is meant for anyone seeking adventure on the way of life.