Babai the Great
Saint Babai the Great | |
---|---|
Abbot of Abraham's Monastery | |
Born | c. 551 Beth Ainata in Nisibis |
Venerated in | Church of the East |
Controversy | Christology |
Babai the Great (ܒܵܒܲܝ ܪܲܒܵܐ bābay rabbā,
Biography
Babai the Great (not to be confused with
Abraham the Great had started a monastic reform movement which Babai and other disciples carried through. Since Bar Sauma and the Synod of Beth Lapat, monks and nuns had been encouraged to marry. When Babai returned to Mt. Izla in 604, he expelled monks that lived with women on the fringes of the monastery, and enforced strict discipline, emphasizing a deep life of prayer and solitude. The result was a mass exodus, not only of the married monks.[3]
But the
When the Catholicos Gregorius died a few years later in 608, the bishops made the usual request to the king to allow them to elect a new Catholicos, but
From 610 to 628 the last and most devastating wars between
During the decades of this vacancy, the
Therefore, Babai, even though not yet a bishop, acted as patriarch in all ecclesiastical matters, though he could not ordain or consecrate. He was appointed 'visitor of the monasteries' of the North and administered the church in collaboration with Archdeacon Mar Aba. In particular, this new position allowed Babai to investigate the orthodoxy of the monasteries and monks of northern Mesopotamia, and to enforce discipline throughout the monasteries of northern Mesopotamia, even against occasional resistance.Babai the Great and Mar Aba administered the Church of the East for 17 years. Attempts were made during that time to ask the king to change his mind and allow an election, but influences in the court, such as
The king defended this policy until his death in 628. The situation, and vacancy, endured until Khosrau II was murdered in 628. After this, Babai was promptly, and unanimously, elected Catholicos, but he declined. Soon afterward, he died in the cell of his monastery on Mt. Izla,[6] being 75 or 77 years old.
Babai's teaching
Besides bringing discipline to the monasteries and administering the church, Babai is mainly known for his orthodox teaching.
Babai's writing
To defend and clarify the East Syriac tradition and theology against Henana's Origenism and the advancing
From what has been preserved it appears that his main authority was Theodore of Mopsuestia,[9] though in general he used few citations from the Fathers. There is no evidence that he could read Greek, and Babai must have relied on translations.
He mainly fought against the ideas of the Monophysites and of the Origenist Henana. They were the inner enemies. He also wrote against the
The Book of Union is Babai's most systematic surviving Christological treatise, divided into seven memre that cover more than 200 folios. The 'Tractatus Vaticanus' is another manuscript that deals with the, "impossibility of the hypostatic union and natural union, the possibility of the parsopic union, and the significance of the expression hypostatic union among the fathers of the antiquity".
An important source on the position of Babai the Great against Origen and his follower Henana of Adiabene is his commentary on Evagrius Ponticus. It also shows his opposition to Messalianism. An 8th-century manuscript has been preserved that contains Evagrius' text together with Babai's commentary on it. This commentary is an abridged version of a larger one which Babai had written earlier and which is lost.
The writings of Evagrius were important to the current mystical revival among Greek and Syrian monks. For the monks of Mt. Izla, Evagrius was the pillar of mystical theology. The Greek text was condemned already in 553 for its Origenist heresies.
But unlike the Greek, the 'Common Syriac Version', a translation of the Gnostic chapters of Evagrius by the Monophysite Philoxenus, was void of the specific Origenist-Evagrian Christology. For example, it omits the 'nous-Christos' Christology where the God-logos and the flesh are united in the nous, Jesus Christ, the subject of incarnation. Babai tried to eliminate the Origenist ideas even further and presented Evagrius as opposed to Origen and his follower Henana by pointing out apparent contradictions between them.
"The Devil is telling the people that some of Evagrius' statements are similar to heresies. Some even tried to translate directly from the Greek to show the heresy of Evagrius. They translated according to their foolishness, but can be refuted by other writings of Evagrius. The cursed Origen and his disciple, the fool Apollinaris, they teach completely different from Evagrius on the renewal of the soul after death".
To show this further, Babai tells the vita of Evagrius and enumerates his sources: Basilius, Gregorius, and Nectarius.
Babai's Christology
The main theological authorities of Babai were
And most important, instead of breaking with Theodore because of some extreme interpretations of his teachings, like others did, Babai clarified his position to the point that differences with western Christology became superficial and mostly an issue of terminology. His Christology is far less dualistic than the one Nestorius seems to have presented.
Babai in the 'Book of Union' teaches two qnome ('nature, essence', the
To Babai, Christ is both God and man. But he could not tolerate any form of Theopaschism (the belief that God suffered), be it the divinity itself, the Trinity, or one of the hypostases of the Trinity. According to Babai, Cyril of Alexandria stood at the root of simple Theopaschism as professed by the Miaphysites, and the Emperor Justinian I at the root of composite Theopaschism. The Church of the East could accept expressions like 'Christ died', 'the Son died', but not 'the Word died', even not 'the Word died in the flesh'.
In the sixth century AD, Mar Babai wrote the Teshbokhta or (Hymn of Praise) explaining the theology of the Church of the East He writes:
- One is Christ the Son of God,
- Worshiped by all in two natures;
- In His Godhead begotten of the Father,
- Without beginning before all time;
- In His humanity born of Mary,
- In the fullness of time, in a body united;
- Neither His Godhead is of the nature of the mother,
- Nor His humanity of the nature of the Father;
- The natures are preserved in their Qnumas (substance),
- In one person of one Sonship.
- And as the Godhead is three substances in one nature,
- Likewise the Sonship of the Son is in two natures, one person.
- So the Holy Church has taught.[12]
References
- ^ Walters, James E.; et al. (et al.) (2016-08-17). Michelson, David A.; Gibson, Nathan P. (eds.). "Babai the Great". Qadishe: A Guide to the Syriac Saints. The Syriac Biographical Dictionary vol. 1. Retrieved 2021-02-12.
For the vowels of the name, this webpage cites: bar Brikha, ʿAbdishoʿ (1924). Ktābā d-metqre margānitā d-ʿal šrārā da-kresṭyānutā (2nd ed.). Mosul: Mṭabbaʿtā ātoraytā d-ʿēdtā ʿattiqtā d-madnḥā. p. 71. - ^ Brock 1996, p. 23–35.
- ^ ISBN 9780415455169
- ISBN 9780815333197
- ^ Wigram, p. 247
- ^ a b Wood 2013, p. 159.
- ^ Wigram, p. 255
- ^ Winkler 2023, p. 29-49.
- ISBN 9781444392609
- ^ Winkler 2012, p. 148-165.
- ISBN 9780226653730
- ^ Nestorian.org
Sources
- Babai Magnus, Liber de Unione, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, tomi 79/80, syri 34/35, Louvain 1915. (The first figures correspond to the Syriac edition, the second to a Latin translation).
- .
- ISBN 9780815330714.
- ISBN 9780881410563.
- Toepel, Alexander (2014). "Zur Bedeutung der Begriffe Hypostase und Prosopon bei Babai dem Großen". Georgian Christian Thought and Its Cultural Context. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2014. pp. 151–171. ISBN 9789004264274.
- Wigram, W. A. (1910). An introduction to the history of the Assyrian Church, or, The Church of the Sassanid Persian Empire, 100–640 A.D. Gorgias Press. ISBN 1-59333-103-7.
- Wood, Philip (2013). The Chronicle of Seert: Christian Historical Imagination in Late Antique Iraq. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199670673.
- ISBN 9783170191143.
- Winkler, Dietmar W. (2023). "Some Remarks on the Christology of Babai the Great (+ 628) in its Historical Context". The Harp. Journal of Syriac, Oriental and Ecumenical Studies. 39: 29–49.