THE HERETICAL TEACHING OF BISHOP KALLISTOS WARE

THE  HERETICAL TEACHING OF 

BISHOP KALLISTOS WARE

IN HIS BOOK THE ORTHODOX CHURCH

       I knew Bishop Kallistos Ware, when, as a very young man, he came to our youth meetings held at the Greek Archdiocese in NYC,
which was in the nineteen-fifties, we knew him then as Timothy Ware.  This article is about the re-publication of his book, “The Orthodox Church.”  Timothy Ware converted to Orthodoxy, and rose to the bishopric, and is now famous. Sadly, he has publicly surrendered the most fundamental beliefs of Orthodoxy and embraced falsehood. He is a gifted and effective speaker, which is what prompts me to write this exposure. Although a Bishop, Kallistos surrendered basic Orthodox beliefs. His high rank elevated him to chief shepherd, but now with his false teachings he is leading many sheep astray,  taking them into dangerous waters where many may perish. (RJM)

THE ORTHODOX CHURCH  Penguin Books UK

Quotes from his book are italicized. Remarks are mine.

“ Orthodoxy has been grievously impoverished by the separation.” P 61

  (RJM) There has never been an “impoverishing by the separation,”  except that of the Papacy which chose power and authority, over the humility and meekness of Jesus Christ,  and they are impoverished by the separation.  But it is impossible for Orthodoxy to be impoverished by the separation because she always remains the body of Christ, the one holy, the treasure house of divine truth and love, constantly producing saints and sanctifying her people. Filled with Holy Spirit, Orthodoxy is always enriched, and will remain so because she avoids the terrible pitfalls of  heresy and especially that of subjection to the Pope,  who claims to be the one and only source of salvation, and the infallible representative of Christ, but he is not the good shepherd. 

    Having Christ as her Head and the Holy Spirit as her Guide, we say that the Church cannot be impoverished by the separation, because she is always united to Christ,   and in her bosom she preserves the eternal treasure and will always remain the glorious One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church! People abandon her but she remains faithful. Shame on you Bishop Kallistos, shame on you, for saying:  “Orthodoxy has been extremely impoverished!” This statement shows that, although you are a bishop, you have no idea about what holy Orthodoxy really is!  Even a catechumen knows that Orthodoxy is the true Church, but you are a bishop, who should be preaching these things, and encouraging the faithful, as a shepherd you should be a fountain of truth. The Church is the Body of Christ who is its Head; It is the Orthodox Church which Christ founded, He being the chief cornerstone; while Peter and each of us are stones in the edifice.  Orthodoxy is the hope of the whole world! It is the abode of the Holy Spirit who sanctifies the world. Orthodoxy will never fail, for Christ is our Head!  

    By your spurious teaching, you are restructuring the idea of the church, reducing it to the state of heretical churches, but you will never accomplish this because the Lord is with us.  Because we are the Church, we always sing joyfully: We have seen the true light! We have received the Heavenly Spirit! We have found the true faith, worshiping the Undivided Trinity!  We will never know poverty for there is no greater wealth than Christ and His Church, for He dwells in us and we dwell in him, and He sent us the Comforter and Spirit of Truth, as our infallible Guide.

     We have the heavenly powers guarding us; we have the Body and Blood of Christ, which no one else has.  Orthodoxy alone is the only source of sanctification on the face of the earth, for it the abode of the Holy Spirit. Because we Orthodox are the wealthiest people on the face of the earth, our greatest desire is to share this wealth with others.  All of them are welcome, if they are willing to renounce their heresies and errors and come into the Church through the door of catechism leading to Baptism.

“The Greek East and the Latin West still need one another.” P61

      RJM  Orthodoxy, having everything, needs nothing! The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church despises union, which is always poisonous and would bring on disaster, for union with something foreign would destroy our holiness. Christ would no longer be in our midst!  For everything the Pope seeks becomes his own, being that he is the all-dominating one, who fancies himself as the only real bishop in the entire world.With union, we would soon forget Christ and remember only the Pope.

“For both parties the Great Schism has proved a great tragedy.”  P 61

    RJM   This statement is untrue, for Orthodoxy cannot go into schism but always remains true to herself as being the one holy Church of Christ. Christ loves His Body, Orthodoxy and Orthodoxy honors her divine Head, and for this reason He defends us at all times, for the Head loves His body and nourishes and protects it.  For this reason Orthodoxy can never suffer tragedy, even though many deny her and betray her, for she is well aware that her Head and Master suffered the same way, which was not a tragedy. There are countless Orthodox Christians who will sacrificed their lives for the Church, for they who love the Church also love Christ its head.

    History shows that the Papacy began as a schism and a quest for power, and ended in apostasy, for  “they went out from us because they were not of us, for if they had been of us they would not have gone out from us; therefore they are not of us.” (John 2:19). They established another church  and usurped  the authority of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and appropriated to themselves our name, Catholic. 

     RJM The one who protects Orthodoxy from the Papacy, and  keeps us safe is the heavenly King and Comforter, the Spirit of Truth who is everywhere present and fills all things. It is the Holy Spirit who, at many different times and places, raises up defenders of the Faith to oppose the Papacy. It is the Holy Spirit that enlightened the mind and heart of the glorious  St. Mark of Ephesus, who defeated the Papists putting them to shame, as he thwarted their attempts to swallow up Orthodoxy. This great champion of the Faith, sternly warns us to avoid unionist bishops who seek to join us with the Pope of  Rome. Today, modern unionists disdain St. Mark of Ephesus and even insult this martyr of Orthodoxy. And they give their reason, saying: Mark prevented us from restoring unity with the Catholics!

     RJM There are more heretical things adopted by Bishop Kallistos, instead of speaking against his false teaching, he compliments the (now deceased) Patriarch Parthenios of Alexandria as “intellectually one of the more adventurous of Orthodox Church leaders” Look at the next paragraph to see who he is talking about. (P133) Here is what Patriarch Parthenios said in an interview:

      “The prophet Mohammed is an apostle. He is a man of God, who worked for the Kingdom of God and created Islam, a religion to which belong one billion people. . Our God is the Father of all men, even of the Moslems and Buddhists. I believe that God loves the Moslems and the Buddhists...When I speak against Islam or Buddhism, then I am not found in agreement with God . . . My God is the God of other men also. He is not only God for the Orthodox. This is my position.”

PATRIARCH PARTHENIOS OF ALEXANDRIA 

(Orthodoxos Typos, Issue Number 854, Athens, Greece; 

statement made in May, 1982)

      RJM You know what he said, and you know the blasphemies he uttered, but you did not say a  single word against them, and you are a Bishop! These are the public words of the apostate whom Bishop Kallistos compliments as intellectually one of the more adventurous of Orthodox Church leaders. What the Patriarch says needs no remarks being self evident that he left Orthodoxy, but it shows us that rank means nothing. Better the pure faith of a repentant sinner! Concerning Patriarch Parthenios, he should know: There is no other name given on earth or in heaven than Jesus Christ.

    He says that Tradition ought to be exploratory, courageous, and full of imaginative creativity (P 198)

     RJM This directly contradicts Holy Scripture, for tradition should never be exploratory. We have instruction from St. Paul to “hold firmly the tradition you have received, orally or in writing.” The word in Greek means “that which was passed to us.” Our duty is to pass it on as we received it, not to be adventurous with it,

“Monophysites and Lutherans, Nestorians and Roman Catholics, Calvinists, Anglicans and Orthodox; all alike worship One God in Three Persons and confess Christ as incarnate Son of God.” P 210

     RJM Here he denounces the sacred Creed which he recites repeatedly.  All those he listed above are heretics who fight against the true Church. Nestorians refuse to call the Virgin “Theotokos”, claiming that she did not give birth to God in the flesh, but only a man, Kallistos  now calls them “The Church of the East”. They do not worship and confess Christ.

“Yet just as in the Trinity the Father enjoys preeminence as source and fountainhead of the deity, so within the Church the Pope is first among equals.

     RJM To even compare the Trinity to the Papacy is a profound insult. This is a falsehood, for the Pope is without equal for he possesses absolute power and infallibility; he alone has the keys to heaven;  and according to Papal dogma, every one of his bishops are subject to him alone. He alone creates cardinals from which Popes come. Certainly he cannot be first among equal for there are nothing equal to the Pope. To compare the Pope to the Father in heaven is blasphemy. 


TRIPLE TIARA
OF THE POPES
Supreme Shepherd
Supreme Teacher
Supreme Priest
Note: These three offices  and titles belong to Jesus Christ alone!

Infallibility is untrue. Immaculate Conception of the Virgin is a untrue. Limbo was a falsehood. Purgatory is a falsehood. Venial sins are a falsehood. Supreme authority of the Pope is a falsehood. The Pope has usurped the authority of both Christ and the Holy Spirit and does not teach truth, but this Bishop, whom we should weep for, has lost his mind, and perceives the Papacy as being a true Church, and in recognizing its sacraments, he establishes the presence of the Holy Spirit, furthering his two church theory.

   The Immaculate Conception is a theologoumenon. “If an Orthodox today felt impelled to believe in the Immaculate Conception, he could not be termed a heretic for so doing.” P 260

    RJM   The man does not know what he is saying. It is not a theologoumenon or theological opinion, for it is a dogma and in their Creed and was dogmatized in 1854.  Kallistos Ware presents himself as a Bishop and theologian, and enjoys worldwide recognition, and is in much demand on the speaker circuit, but he has abandoned truth and preaches his opinions. “Having an opinion” is what heresy means, and we do not hold opinions contrary to holy tradition. The dogma that the Theotokos was born without sin was never taught by the Church, therefore is a heresy.  Orthodoxy teaches that sin is transmitted through parents to their children. Joachim and Anna gave birth to their child, Mary, who was not without original sin, which is only the inclination to sin and not sin. She never acted on this inclination because she was self-disciplined and lived a strict ascetic life with constant prayer, vigil, and fasting, beginning at the age of three to puberty. She worked prayerfully for her high calling and for her salvation, and she acquired every virtue. The Papacy, with their false dogma, would rob her of her ascetic life wherein she acquired virtues, by  her constant prayer and fasting.  Their false declaration that she was conceived and born without sin, would render her sinless, but not of her own efforts. False praise is never complimentary and is unacceptable to the All-pure One.

Baptism can be performed, “by any man or woman, provided they are Christian”. P 278

      RJM The name “Christian” does not qualify a Christian to baptize, nor can everyone baptize even in the Church. The Bishop does not believe that there are any heretics, and uses the word Christian without Orthodox, thus meaning all of them. He forfeits truth, for Orthodox believe “in one baptism for the remission of sins”, which can be performed only in the Orthodox Church by an Orthodox Priest, with the prescribed prayers, and triune immersion in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. To claim that anyone can perform a true baptism is another false invention. An Orthodox layman can baptize only in an emergency and threat of death. The papacy does not immerse at all, having no priesthood or bishops.

     Finally he scuttles a very important belief in the one Church, without the one Church there would no Christ or the true Faith of Orthodoxy, but he claims that there are two churches, even though he confesses when in Church: “I believe in one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church . . . ”  He claims the Pope and Papacy to be a church, saying that we are much the same. In doing this, his salvation is in great danger. The Pope is not the vicar of Christ, if we say he is then all of us must bow down and accept him.

Here are his words.

  “We both believe in God as Trinity, In Jesus Christ incarnate; we both accept the Eucharist as the Body and Blood of the Savior, we have common devotion to the Mother of God and the Saints, and we both pray for the faithful departed.” P314

   If we “believe in the same God, the same Christ, the same Eucharist, have common devotion to the Mother of God and the Saints, and both pray for the dead” then, according to him, we are two like churches. The Bishop is not a good shepherd, but has become an ally and helper of the wolves who attack the sheep. He establishes two churches, with the phrase: “we both believe,”  He fails to understand that the Latins assault the grace of God, by dogmatizing that the divine grace is not God but  a creature! They reject the words of Christ: “Behold, I am with you to the close of the age.” For the Pope fancies himself as the vicar of Christ, saying that Christ is absent and he takes His place, and he even appropriated the infallibility which belongs to God alone. There is not even a similarity between the Orthodox Church and the Papacy to those who have eyes to see.

“Fortunately in our day there are great hopes of a full reconciliation between these two families of Christians – the Oriental and the Eastern Orthodox.”  P4

     RJM Reconciliation? We are the Church of Christ and have nothing that requires reconciliation. The only thing needed is for the Papacy to renounce its many heresies and with humility and meekness, and return to the Church from which it apostatized. There is no such thing as families of Christians, there are those in the Church and those outside.  The family of Orthodoxy is well known. God is our Father who is in heaven and the holy Orthodox Church is our Mother. We are all sons and daughters by adoption and brothers of Christ.  Everyone who desires salvation must come to Orthodoxy and join our family.

“One cannot simply say that all non-Orthodox are outside the Church, and leave it like that; one cannot treat other Christians as if they stood on the same level as unbelievers.”  P309.

     RJM  How is it possible, Bishop Kallistos, for those outside the Church to be in the Church? They are not with us by choice, for they are all free to make their own decisions. Many among them took an interest in their salvation and have become Orthodox, some are in the clergy. Many are now looking and will enter the Church, for when they look they will find as Christ teaches.  Of course they are outside the Church and need to be brought in, but it will not be by your method of preaching, for you do not show them the beauty, the glory, and exclusivity of holy Orthodoxy. 

      RJM The heretics, for whom we always pray, are in a  worse than unbelievers according to Christ, who says: “I know your works that you are neither cold nor hot; I would that you were either cold or hot, but because you are lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth” (Rev.4:15-16).  To be hot means to be zealous and vigorous and active and filled with love for the true Christ and His true Church. To be lukewarm means the opposite. Heretics are lukewarm, not ice cold for they do believe something.  But, most of them relax and remain in their disbelief, never seeking the true Christ and the true Church. Pagans and unbelievers are cold, and therefore have a better chance to become hot, because they are not lukewarm, as the Lord makes clear.

     Dearest Bishop Kallistos, You received  many gifts and are a dynamic speaker. I beg you to abandon the dangerous path you are now on and return to Orthodoxy and eternal life, for the opinions in your book, are not filled with grace and truth. You entered the Church, leaving your heresy behind, now glorify Christ and His true Church and save yourself!