St. Isaac of Nineveh and the Messalians 63 3. The Messalians do not hold the reading of the Office to be important.
4. The Messalians disregard the outwards forms of prayer.
5. The Messalians do not value the sacraments 6. The Messalians do not read the Bible.
7. The Messalians do not value the same Fathers as Isaac.
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Babai does, however, agree with the earlier anti-Messalians regarding the attitude against work, and this is also the feature that Caner finds most important. The Messalians do not work but support themselves by begging. What is Isaac’s atti-tude towards manual labour? The question is not that easy to answer. Isaac accepts that some ascetics do manual work, but he does not recommend it.
If someone cannot stand solitude without labour, he must out of necessity do work, but only as something helpful, without eagerness, as something secondary, not as a principal rule. This is said for the weak. Evagrios calls working with the hands a hindrance to the remembrance of God.34
According to Isaac, the reason that some ascetics feel the need to work is not that they would not be able to support themselves otherwise, but that they cannot bear to live life in solitude without having anything else to do but to pray. However, the ideal is to be able to cope without such work. Isaac feels that the special calling of the solitary ascetic does not involve work, because it distracts from the main task, the prayer.35 Begging, however, is nowhere recommended by Isaac. This would be an even worse option for him, because the solitary should avoid all contact with other humans, especially laypeople. Although Isaac does not talk about where he actually gets his food, it is fairly clear that he is dependent on the ascetic commu-nity for whatever food he needs.
So, while Isaac does not forbid work altogether, his is an attitude that bares some resemblance to the opinions associated with the Messalians. While Isaac does live in contact with a monastic community, we clearly see in him certain ideals that come from the earlier anchoritic asceticism that was prevalent in Mesopotamia. It is probable that Isaac shares some of these ideals with the groups branded Mes-salian, and that these ideals are based on a shared monastic tradition in Mesopota-mia.
Another area where Isaac’s teaching seems to venture close to the Messalian profile is the attitude towards the leaders of the church and the sacraments. While Isaac’s opinion regarding the sacraments is difficult to pinpoint, in part for techni-cal reasons,36 they cannot be said to play a big role in his thinking. However, since
34 PR 57.
35 PR 153. See also PR 89; PR 485; 449.
36 The problem is how we value the sources. Throughout the First Part and Second Part Isaac men-tions the Eucharist only a handful times. Isaac, like all the ascetics in the East Syrian Church was expected to celebrate the Eucharist with the community in the Church on Sunday, and the few men-tions we find reflects this. Isaac shows a reverential attitude towards the “mystery”, but menmen-tions it mostly in passing (PR 172 and PR 251). In the collection of prayers found in the fifth chapter of the Second Part we find one prayer where Isaac asks God to “Stir up within me the vision of Your Mys-teries so that I may become aware of what was placed in me at holy baptism”. SP V, 14. In two other prayers the Eucharist is mentioned, and here we get a more detailed look at Isaac’s actual view of the sacrament. In SP V, 25 he prays that “Your Body and Your Blood which have been mingled with my body [may] remain within me as a pledge that I will not be deprived of the constant sight of You in
St. Isaac of Nineveh and the Messalians 65 he criticizes the Messalians for not valuing the sacraments, he at least keeps them in higher regard than what he perceives is the case with the Messalians. The ques-tion that is difficult to answer is obviously if he keeps them in as high regard as his critics.
Interesting is Isaac’s attitude towards authority. It is a feature of Isaac’s Weltan-schauung that he finds the exercising of power and the fact that some rule the others deeply morally problematic.37 This is also reflected in his views on monastic au-thority. In his criticism of the Messalians he gives a kind of minimalist understand-ing of what submittunderstand-ing to the church entails: to keep the rule set down by the Church in regard to the number of services the solitary has to read, but not neces-sarily regarding their content. Here the solitary should decide what is best in a par-ticular situation. There is however, a very striking text from Isaac that deals with monastic authority explicitly.
If there is a solitary capable of this grace and who has received this gift from God, and one of the abbots or heads of the coenobites hinders the solitary from practicing this gift, … this one has to answer to God and stand before the trial of Christ.38
Isaac is speaking of the gift of pure prayer. Even if Isaac is talking of “spiritual matters” here, these are very bold words that must have been considered danger-ous by those in power. If we further keep in mind that the criticism against Isaac implicit in the homily analyzed above seemed to focus on Isaac’s view of “con-tinuous” prayer, it is not too farfetched an idea to think that Isaac’s strong convic-tion that spiritual experiences during prayer are more important than rules and monastic authority could be considered dangerous by some, and therefore be branded Messalian.
that realm which has no end.” This is exactly the sacramental theology associated with Theodore of Mopsuestia and probably with the East Syrian Church of Isaac’s time.
In the Third Part, still only published in Italian (Isacco di Ninive, Discorsi ascetici. Terza collezione.
Edizioni Qiqajon, Commuita di Bose (2004)), however, we found a fairly long discourse devoted to the Eucharist (TP XI). The actual content of this discourse is not really in conflict with the other notes on the Eucharist that have been discussed above, but I am still unsure if this text can really be regarded as genuine. It seems to come from a different context, and the writer seems to be much closer to the Church than Isaac is. In this text there is talk of those that stand outside the community of the Church, the heretics. TP XI, 9. This kind of language is not typical of Isaac. Finally there is a short postscript to the text: “Here ends the discourse about the Holy Mysteries of our Saviour, the work of the blessed mar Isaac, solitary and orthodox, who was bishop in the city of Nineveh.” TP XI, 34. Many explanations to this postscript are possible. Chialà, the translator, suggests that it may be the work of a copyist or an addition by a disciple of Isaac that has written down his dictation.
Since it is the only one of its kind in the Third Part it suggests at least that this text has originally been transmitted separately. It is therefore not unreasonable to question if all the texts of the Third Part actually go back to Isaac. The fact that this text does seem to stray a bit from Isaac’s usual style and content suggests that this text may have been associated with Isaac only at a later point, perhaps in an attempt to prove his orthodoxy when this was disputed.
37 For the discussion of this striking feature of Isaac’s thought I refer the reader to my forthcoming thesis.
38 DS II, 44.
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