V. BORRASCH: Der Mönch Gottschalk v. Orbais, sein Leben u. seine Lehre. GOTTSCHALK or GODESCALCUS,' an involuntary monk and irregularly ordained priest, of noble Saxon parentage, strong convictions, and heroic courage, revived the Augustinian theory on one of the most difficult problems of speculative theology, but had to suffer bitter persecution for re-asserting what the great African divine had elaborated and vindicated four centuries before with more depth, wisdom and moderation. The Greek church ignored Augustin, and still more Gottschalk, and adheres to this day to the anthropology of the Nicene and ante-Nicene fathers, who laid as great stress on the freedom of the will as on divine grace. John of Damascus teaches an absolute foreknowledge, but not an absolute foreordination of God, because God cannot foreordain sin, which he wills not, and which, on the contrary, he condemns and punishes; and he does not force virtue upon the reluctant will. The Latin church retained a traditional reverence for Augustin, as her greatest divine, but never committed herself to his 1 There are several persons of that name; the three best known are, 1) the subject of this chapter; 2) the writer of sequences mentioned in this volume, p. 433; 3) the prince of the Slavonic and Wendish tribes on the borders of Northern Germany, who died a martyr June 7, 1066. The meaning of Gottschalk is God's servant. The German word Schalk, Knecht, has undergone the same change as the English word knave. Milman (IV. 184) calls our Gottschalk a "premature Luther" (who was also a Saxon), but gives no account of the controversy on "the dark subject of predestination." Schrörs (l. c. 96) likewise compares Gottschalk with Luther, but the difference is much greater than the resemblance. scheme of predestination. It always found individual advocates, as Fulgentius of Ruspe, and Isidore of Seville, who taught a two-fold predestination, one of the elect unto life eternal, and one of the reprobate unto death eternal. Beda and Alcuin were Augustinians of a milder type. But the prevailing sentiment cautiously steered midway between Augustinianism and SemiPelagianism, giving the chief weight to the preceding and enabling grace of God, yet claiming some merit for man's consenting and co-operating will. This compromise may be called SemiAugustinianism, as distinct from Semi-Pelagianism. It was adopted by the Synod of Orange (Arausio) in 529, which condemned the Semi-Pelagian error (without naming its adherents) and approved Augustin's views of sin and grace, but not his view of predestination, which was left open. It was transmitted to the middle ages through Pope Gregory the Great, who, next to Augustin, exerted most influence on the theology of our period; and this moderated and weakened Augustinianism triumphed in the Gottschalk controversy. The relation of the Roman church to Augustin in regard to predestination is similar to that which the Lutheran church holds to Luther. The Reformer held the most extreme view on divine predestination, and in his book on the Slavery of the Human Will, against Erasmus, he went further than Augustin before him and Calvin after him; yet notwithstanding his 1 See vol. III. 866 sqq. Neander says (Church Hist. III. 472): "The Augustinian doctrine of grace had finally gained a complete victory even over Semi-Pelagianism; but on the doctrine of predestination nothing had as yet been publicly determined." Gieseler (II. 84): "Strict Augustinianism had never been generally adopted even in the West." 2 In the language of Gregory I.: "Bonum, quod agimus, et Dei est, et nostrum: Dei per prævenientem gratiam, nostrum per obsequentem liberam voluntatem. Si enim Dei non est, unde ei gratias in eternum agimus! Rursum si nostrum non est, unde nobis retribui præmia speramus?" Moral., Lib. XXXI. in Cap. 41 Job, in Migne's ed. of Gregory's Opera, II. 699. Melanchthon, too, at first was so strongly impressed with the divine sovereignty, that he traced the adultery of David and the treason of Judas to the eternal decree of God; but he afterwards changed his view in favor of synergism, which Luther never did. commanding genius and authority, his view was virtually disowned, and gave way to the compromise of the Formula of Concord, which teaches both an absolute election of believers, and a sincere call of all sinners to repentance. The Calvinistic Confessions, with more logical consistency, teach an absolute predestination as a necessary sequence of Divine omnipotence and omniscience, but confine it, like Augustin, to the limits of the infralapsarian scheme, with an express exclusion of God from the authorship of sin. Supralapsarianism, however, also had its advocates as a theological opinion. In the Roman church, the Augustinian system was revived by the Jansenists, but only to be condemned. § 120. Gottschalk and Rabanus Maurus. Gottschalk, the son of Count Berno (or Bern), was sent in his childhood by his parents to the famous Hessian convent of Fulda as a pious offering (oblatus). When he had attained mature age, he denied the validity of his involuntary tonsure, wished to leave the convent, and brought his case before a Synod of Mainz in 829. The synod decided in his favor, but the new abbot, Rabanus Maurus, appealed to the emperor, and wrote a book, De Oblatione Puerorum, in defence of the obligatory character of the parental consecration of a child to monastic life. He succeeded, but allowed Gottschalk to exchange Fulda for Orbais in the diocese of Soissons in the province of Rheims. From this time dates his ill feeling towards the reluctant monk, whom he called a vagabond, and it cannot be denied that Rabanus appears unfavorably in the whole controversy. At Orbais Gottschalk devoted himself to the study of Augustin and Fulgentius of Ruspe (d. 533), with such ardent enthusiasm that he was called Fulgentius.' He selected especially the 1 By Walafrid Strabo, his fellow-student at Fulda, who had a high opinion of his learning and piety, and wrote a poem entitled “Gotescalcho monacho qui et Fulgentius;" in Opera ed. Migne, Tom. II. ("Patr. Lat.," Tom. 114, col. 1115-1117). Neander (III. 474, note) supposes that Gottschalk probably borrowed from Fulgentius the term prædestinatio duplex. passages in favor of the doctrine of predestination, and recited them to his fellow-monks for hours, gaining many to his views. But his friend, Servatus Lupus, warned him against unprofitable speculations on abstruse topics, instead of searching the Scriptures for more practical things. He corresponded with several scholars, and made a pilgrimage to Rome. On his return in 847 or 848, he spent some time with the hospitable Count Eberhard of Friuli, a son-in-law of the Emperor Louis the Pious, met there Bishop Noting of Verona, and communicated to him his views on predestination. Noting informed Rabanus Maurus, who had in the mean time become archbishop of Mainz, and urged him to refute this new heresy. Rabanus Maurus wrote a letter to Noting on predestination, intended against Gottschalk, though without naming him.' He put the worst construction upon his view of a double predestination, and rejected it for seven reasons, chiefly, because it involves a charge of injustice against God; it contradicts the Scriptures, which promise eternal reward to virtue; it declares that Christ shed his blood in vain for those that are lost; and it leads some to carnal security, others to despair. His own doctrine is moderately Augustinian. He maintains that the whole race, including unbaptized children, lies under just condemnation in consequence of Adam's sin; that out of this mass of corruption God from pure mercy elects some to eternal life, and leaves others, in view of their moral conduct, to their just punishment. God would have all men to be saved, yet he actually saves only a part; why he makes such a difference, we do not know and must refer to his hidden counsel. Foreknowledge and foreordination are distinct, and the latter is conditioned by the former. Here is the point where Rabanus departs from 1 Epist. V. ad Notingum, De Prædestinatione, first published, together with a letter Ad Eberhardum comitem, by Sirmond, Paris, 1647; also in RABANI MAURI Opera, Tom. VI., ed. Migne ("Patr. Lat.," Tom. 112, col. 1530-1553). Hefele (IV. 134) complains that this edition has many inaccuracies and typographical errors. : Augustin and agrees with the Semi-Pelagians. He also distinguishes between præsciti and prædestinati. The impenitent sinners were only foreknown, not foreordained. He admitted that "the punishment is foreordained for the sinner," but denied that "the sinner is foreordained for punishment." He supported his view with passages from Jerome, Prosper, Gennadius, and Augustin.2 Gottschalk saw in this tract the doctrine of the Semi-Pelagian Gennadius and Cassianus rather than of "the most catholic doctor" Augustin. He appeared before a Synod at Mainz, which was opened Oct. 1, 848, in the presence of the German king, and boldly professed his belief in a two-fold predestination, to life and to death, God having from eternity predestinated his elect by free grace to eternal life, and quite similarly all reprobates, by a just judgment for their evil deserts, to eternal death. The offensive part in this confession lies in the words two-fold (gemina) 1 Hefele (IV. 136) declares this to be inconsistent, because both sentences amount to the same thing and give a good orthodox sense. "In Wahrheit ist ja auch der Sünder prädestinirt ad mortem oder pœnam, aber seine Prædestination ist keine absolute, wie die des electus, sondern sie ist bedingt durch die prævisa demerita." 2 Chiefly from the Hypomnesticon (Commonitorium, Memorandum), usually called Hypognosticon (Subnotationes), a pseudo-Augustinian work against the Pelagians, which was freely quoted at that time as Augustinian by Scotus Erigena and Hincmar; while Remigius proved the spuriousness. It is printed in the tenth vol. of the Benedict. ed. of Augustin, and in Migne's reprint, X. 1611-1664. See Feuerlein: Disquis. hist. de libris Hypognosticon, an ab Hincmaro, in Augustana Confessione et alibi recte tribuantur divo Augustino. Altdorf, 1735. 3 The fragment of this confession is preserved by Hincmar, De Prædest., c. 5 (Migne, 125, col. 89 sq.): “Ego Gothescalcus credo et confiteor, profiteor et testificor ex Deo Patre, per Deum Filium, in Deo Spiritu Sancto, et affirmo atque approbo coram Deo et sanctis ejus, quod gemina est prædestinatio, sive electorum ad requiem, sive reproborum ad mortem [so far quoted verbatim from Isidore of Seville, Sent. II. 6]: quia sicut Deus incommutabilis ante mundi constitutionem omnes electos suos incommutabiliter per gratuitam gratiam suam prædestinavit ad vitam æternam, similiter omnino omnes reprobos, quia in die judicii damnabuntur propter ipsorum mala merita, idem ipse incommutabilis Deus per justum judicium suum incommutabiliter prædestinavit ad mortem merito sempiternam." |