Antioch & Syriacondemned
Who he was
- A Syrian theologian, commonly reckoned among Gnostics. Born at Edessa.
- He was the most outstanding representative of the early Christian community in Edessa, Syria. A friend of court, and particularly of King Abgar IX of Edessa, he was a philosopher able to write in Greek and Syriac, and a poet of considerable powers.
- St. Epiphanius tells us: Bardaisan, the founder of the sect of the Bardaisanites…He had the bad luck to fall in with the Valentinians, and from their wickedness he derived his noxious weed; he too introduced many principles and emanations, denied the resurrection of the dead, and so formed the doctrines of his sect. But he accepts the law and the prophets, the Old and New Testament, and some apocryphal works likewise 1.
- Prior to his conversion he had been interested in astrology, and this remained with him when passing over to the new faith. He could not shake off the ancient glamor of the stars, or abjure the Semitic love of clothing thoughts in mythological forms, and this contributed to his reputation for unorthodoxy and even heresy.
- The remains of his theology disclose no trace of the deeper thoughts which moved the Gnostic leaders. That he held a doctrinal possible intermediate between them and the Church is consistent with the circumstances of his life, but is not supported by any internal evidence.
- The 56 Hymns of St. Ephraem the Syrian against Heresies are intended to refute the doctrines of Marcion, Bardaisan, and Mani.
What he wrote
- From St. Ephraem we learn that he was a musician and composed hymns.
- His main claim to fame is his having been the first to compose hymns or verse canticles to ensure the spread of his doctrine among people.
- He composed 150, of which only a few scraps remain, collected in the citations of St. Ephraem (373), an implacable opponent of Bardaisan and his disciples who simply used the method initiated with such success by his adversary.
- Scarcely anything survives of his writings; a dialogue concerning Fate, extant in Syriac under the title “Book of the Laws of the Countries,” was dictated to his disciple Phillip.
- This dialogue is between Bardaisan and a Marcionite named Avida.
- He composed dialogues against the Marcionites and other leaders of various opinions.
- He wrote that there is in man a triple division of the spirit, soul, and body.
- The spirit comes from God and is the principle of freedom, the soul from celestial spheres crossed by the spirit in its descent. It is submitted to destiny, which is ruled by the stars. The body is composed of the four elements.
- He tried to reconcile Christian doctrine with the astrological conceptions of his cultural milieu.
- He composed a work on astronomy of which a single fragment remains, cited by George, bishop of the Arabs.