Babai the Great

Babai the Great (c.551-628) was an early church father, who set some of the foundational pillars of the Assyrian Church of the East.http://books.google.com/books?id=gC93bLKtMqMC&pg=PA220&dq=babai+the+assyrian
He was the unofficial head of his church, revived the Assyrian monastic movement, and formulated its Christology in a systematic way.
== Biography ==
Babai the Great, not to be confused with Babai the first autonomous leader of the Eastern Assyrian Church, was born in Beth Ainata in Beth Zabdai. Born to a wealthy family, he received a primary education
in the Persian (Pahlavi) books. He continued his studies
at the Christian School of Nisibis under the directorship of Abraham of Beth Rabban.
Somewhere around 571 when the Origenist Henana of Adiabene became the new headmaster and 
Abraham the Great of Kashkar founded a new monastery on Mt. Izla above Nisibis, 
he taught for a while at the Xenodocheio of Nisibis.
After that he joined the newly founded monastery of 
Abraham on Mt. Izla.
When Abraham died in 588 Babai left and founded a new
monastery and school in his home country Beth Zabdai.
In 604 Babai became the third head of Abraham's monastery on Mt. Izla.
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 were encouraged to marry.
When Babai returned to Mt. Izla in 604, he expelled monks that lived with women and 
enforced strict discipline, emphasizing a deep life of prayer and solitude.
The result was a mass exodus, not only of the married monks.
But the Assyrian Church was with Babai.
In 604 the Assyrian Catholicos Sabrisho died and a new 
Catholicos had to be elected.
The synod rejected the candidate of the King Chosroes II and elected Gregory
instead.
When this Catholicos Gregory died in 608/9 the royal physician Gabriel of 
Shiggar suggested to make Henana of Adiabene or one of his students Catholicos.
All the church was in horror.
But until his death in 628 the king did not allow 
the Assyrian Church to choose a new Catholicos of their own.
To circumvent the royal proscription, Babai the Great 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 Nestorian Church for 17 years 
until Chosroes II was murdered in 628.
After this Babai was promptly elected Catholicos. But he declined. Soon afterward he 
died in the cell of his monastery, 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.
From 610—628 the last and most devastating wars between Byzantium and Persia
took place.
First Persia conquered parts of Byzantium, which were populated mostly by 
Monophysite and Chalcedonian Christians.
To be popular in the newly gained provinces, King Chosroes II did not want to favor 
the Assyrian Nestorians any more.
During the successful Byzantine counterattack 622—628,
Chalcedonians and especially Monophysites were in the advance in Persia and
several sees and villages were lost by the Assyrian church.
=== Babai's writing ===
To defend and clarify the Nestorian tradition against Henana's Origenism and the 
advancing Monophysites, Babai the Great produced some 83 or 84 volumes of writing.
He developed a systematic Christology, the only one in Nestorian 
Mesopotamia (Chediath:1982).
Of his extensive exegetical works on all of Scripture nothing survived.
What we do have are two hagiographies, his principal work on the foundations 
of ascetic life 'On the Life of Excellency', and commentaries on mystical themes.
From what has been preserved we learn that his main authority was Theodore 
of Mopsuestia, 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 Mani, Marcion, Bar Daisan, the Messalians and the general 
loss of discipline since Beth Lapat.
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.
No mention of Origen.
=== Babai's christology ===
The main theological authorities of Babai were 
Theodore of Mopsuestia and Diodorus of Tarsus.
He also relied on John Chrysostomos, the Cappadocian fathers and on 
Ephrem the Syrian, which were also accepted in the west.
In his exegetical methods he synthesized between the rational Theodore and 
mystical writers like Evagrius.
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 built in great part on sound exegesis and an interesting
anthropology and is far less dualistic than the one Nestorius seems to have
presented.
Babai in the 'Book of Union' teaches two qnome (hypostasis—not the Chalcedonian use of this term, essence), 
which are unmingled but everlastingly united in one 
parsopa (person, character, identity, also "hypostasis" in Chalcedonian usage.).
It is essential to use the Syrian terms here and not any translations, because
the same words mean different things to different people, and the words must be accepted 
in the particular sense of each.
In Greek Christology, hypostasis is used specifically to refer to what would correspond to Babai's parsopa, and ousion would correspond to qnome. In the period in which Babai and others formulated their respective Christological models, words such as "hypostasis" and "ousion" had less specifically fixed definitions. Thus, it was possible for two individuals to honestly use a single term to mean two distinctly different things.
Clearly, 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 Monophysites, 
and the Emperor Justinian I at the root of composite Theopaschism.
The Nestorian church 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 Assyrian Church.
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.http://www.nestorian.org/index.html
== References ==
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).
Category:628 deaths
Category:Assyrian Church of the East
Category:Syriac writers
Category:Year of birth uncertain
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ru:Мар Бабай Великий