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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comHistory of the Christian Church: Vol. 4, Ch. 11, § 114-121
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114. Concilium Quinisextum. a.d. 692
Mansi., XI. 930-1006. Hefele, III. 328-348. Gieseler,I. 541 sq.
Wm. Beveridge (Bishop of St. Asaph, 1704-1708): Synodicon, sive Pandectae canonum. Oxon. 1672-82. Tom. I. 152-283. Beveridge gives the comments of Theod. Balsamon, Joh. Zonaras, etc., on the Apostolical Canons.
Assemani (R.C.): Bibliotheca juris orientalis. Rom 1766, Tom. V. 55-348, and Tom. I. 120 and 408 sqq. An extensive discussion of this Synod and its canons.
The pope of Old Rome had achieved a great dogmatic triumph in the sixth ecumenical council, but the Greek church had the satisfaction of branding at least one pope as a heretic, and soon found an opportunity to remind her rival of the limits of her authority.
The fifth and sixth ecumenical councils passed doctrinal decrees, but no disciplinary canons. This defect was supplied by a new council at Constantinople in 692, called the Concilium Quinisextum, also the Second Trullan Council, from the banqueting hall with a domed roof in the imperial palace where it was held.
It was convened by the Emperor Justinian II. surnamed Rinotmetos, one of the most heartless tyrants that ever disgraced a Christian throne. He ruled from 685-695, was deposed by a revolution and sent to exile with a mutilated nose, but regained the throne in 705 and was assassinated in 711.
The supplementary council was purely oriental in its composition and spirit. It adopted 102 canons, most of them old, but not yet legally or ecumenically sanctioned. They cover the whole range of clerical and ecclesiastical life and discipline, and are valid to this day in the Eastern church. They include eighty-five apostolic canons so called (thirty-five more than were acknowledged by the Roman church), the canons of the first four ecumenical councils, and of several minor councils, as Ancyra, Neo-Caesarea, Gangra, Antioch, Laodicea, etc.; also the canons of Dionysius the Great of Alexandria, Peter of Alexandria, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzum, Amphilochius of Iconium, Timothy of Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria, Gennadius of Constantinople, and an anti-Roman canon of Cyprian of Carthage. The decretals of the Roman bishops are ignored.
The canons were signed first, by the emperor; the second place was left blank for the pope, but was never filled; then follow the names of Paul of Constantinople, Peter of Alexandria, Anastasius of Jerusalem, George of Antioch (strangely after that of the patriarch of Jerusalem), and others, in all 211 bishops and episcopal representatives, all Greeks and Orientals, of whom 43 had been present at the sixth ecumenical council.
The emperor sent the acts of the Trullan Council to Sergius of Rome, and requested him to sign them. The pope refused because they contained some chapters contrary to ecclesiastical usage in Rome. The emperor dispatched the chief officer of his body guard with orders to bring the pope to Constantinople. But the armies of the exarch of Ravenna and of the Pentapolis rushed to the protection of the pope, who quieted the soldiers; the imperial officer had to hide himself in the pope’s bed, and then left Rome in disgrace. Soon afterwards Justinian II. was dethroned and sent into exile. When he regained the crown with the aid of a barbarian army (705), he sent two metropolitans to Pope John VII. with the request to call a council of the Roman church, which should sanction as many of the canons as were acceptable. The pope, a timid man, simply returned the copy. Subsequent negotiations led to no decisive result.
The seventh ecumenical Council (787) readopted the 102 canons, and erroneously ascribed them to the sixth ecumenical Council.
The Roman church never committed herself to these canons except as far as they agreed with ancient Latin usage. Some of them were inspired by an anti-Roman tendency. The first canon repeats the anathema on Pope Honorius. The thirty-sixth canon, in accordance with the second and fourth ecumenical Councils, puts the patriarch of Constantinople on an equality of rights with the bishop of Rome, and concedes to the latter only a primacy of honor, not a supremacy of jurisdiction. Clerical marriage of the lower orders is sanctioned in canons 3 and 13, and it is clearly hinted that the Roman church, by her law of clerical celibacy, dishonors wedlock, which was instituted by God and sanctioned by the presence of Christ at Cana. But second marriage is forbidden to the clergy, also marriage with a widow (canon 3), and marriage after ordination (canon 6). Bishops are required to discontinue their marriage relation (canon 12). Justinian had previously forbidden the marriage of bishops by a civil law. Fasting on the Sabbath in Lent is forbidden (canon 55) in express opposition to the custom in Rome. The second canon fixes the number of valid apostolical canons at eighty-five against fifty of the Latin church. The decree of the Council of Jerusalem against eating blood and things strangled (Act_15:1-41) is declared to be of perpetual force, while in the West it was considered merely as a temporary provision for the apostolic age, and for congregations composed of Jewish and Gentile converts. The symbolical representation of Christ under the figure of the lamb in allusion to the words of John the Baptist is forbidden as belonging to the Old Testament, and the representation in human form is commanded (canon 82).
These differences laid the foundation for the great schism between the East. and the West. The supplementary council of 692 anticipated the action of Photius, and clothed it with a quasi-ecumenical authority.
115. Reaction of Monotheletism. The Maronites
The great ecumenical councils, notably that of Chalcedon gave rise to schismatic sects which have perpetuated themselves for a long time, some of them to the present day.
For a brief period Monotheletism was restored by Bardanes or Philippicus, who wrested the throne from Justinian II. and ruled from 711 to 713. He annulled the creed of the sixth ecumenical Council, caused the names of Sergius and Honorius to be reinserted in the diptycha among the orthodox patriarchs, and their images to be again set up in public places. He deposed the patriarch of Constantinople and elected in his place a Monotheletic deacon, John. He convened a council at Constantinople, which set aside the decree of the sixth council and adopted a Monotheletic creed in its place. The clergy who refused to sign it, were deposed. But in Italy he had no force to introduce it, and an attempt to do so provoked an insurrection.
The Emperor Anastasius II. dethroned the usurper, and made an end to this Monotheletic episode. The patriarch John accommodated himself to the new situation, and wrote an abject letter to the Pope Constantine, in which he even addressed him as the head of the church, and begged his pardon for his former advocacy of heresy.
Since that time Dyotheletism was no more disturbed in the orthodox church.
But outside of the orthodox church and the jurisdiction of the Byzantine rulers, Monotheletism propagated itself among the inhabitants of Mount Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon under the lead of abbot John Marun ('cc'e1'f1'f9Ì'ed), their first patriarch (d. 701). The maronites, as they were called after him, maintained their independence of the Greek empire and the Saracens, and adhered to the Monotheletic doctrine till the time of the crusades, when they united themselves with the Roman church (1182), retaining, however, the celebration of the communion under both kinds, the Syrian liturgy, the marriage of the lower clergy, their own fast-days, and their own saints.
116. The Adoptionist Controversy. Literature
I. Sources
The sources are printed in Harduin, Vol. IV., Mansi, XIII., and in Alcuin’s Opera, ed. Frobenius (1777), reprinted by Migne (in his “Patrol. Lat.,†vols. 100 and 101), with historical and dogmatical dissertations.
(1.) The writings of the Adoptionists: a letter of Elipandus Ad Fide lem, Abbatem, a.d. 785, and one to Alcuin. Two letters of the Spanish bishops - one to Charlemagne, the other to the Gallican bishops. Felicis Libellus contra Alcuinum; the Confessio Fidei Felicis; fragments of a posthumous book of Felix addressed Ad Ludovicum Pium, Imperat.
(2.) The orthodox view is represented in Beatus et Etherius: Adv. Elipandum libri II. Alcuin: Seven Books against Felix, Four Books against Elipandus, and several letters, which are best edited by Jaff'e9 in Biblioth. rer. Germ. VI. Paulinus (Bishop of Aquileja): Contra Felicem Urgellitanum libri tres. In Migne’s “Patrol. Lat.,†vol. 99, col. 343-468. Agobard of Lyons: Adv. Dogma Felicis Episc. Urgellensis, addressed to Louis the Pious, in Migne’s “Patrol. Lat.,†vol. 104, col. 29-70. A letter of Charlemagne (792) to Elipandus and the bishops of Spain. The acts of the Synods of Narbonne (788), Ratisbon (792), Francfort (794), and Aix-la-Chapelle (799).
II. Works
(1.) By Rom. Cath. Madrisi (Congreg. Orat.): Dissertationes de Felicis et Elipandi haeresi, in his ed. of the Opera Paulini Aquil., reprinted in Migne’s “Patrol. Lat.,†vol. 99 ( col. 545-598). Against Basnage. Enhueber (Prior in Regensburg): Dissert. dogm. Hist. contra Christ. Walchium, in Alcuin’s Opera, ed. Frobenius, reprinted by Migne (vol. 101, col. 337-438). Against Walch’s Hist. Adopt., to prove the Nestorianism of the Adoptionists. Frobenius: Diss. Hist. de haer. Elip. et Felicis, in Migne’s ed., vol. 101, col. 303-336. Werner: Gesch. der Apol. und polem. Lit. II. 433 sqq. Gams: Kirchengesch. Spaniens (Regensb., 1874), Bd. II. 2. (Very prolix.) Hefele: Conciliengesch., Bd. III. 642-693 (revised ed. of 1877). Hergenr'f6ther: Kirchengesch., 2nd ed., 1879, Bd. I. 558 sqq. Bach: Dogmengesch. des Mittelalters (Wien, 1873), I. 103-155.
(2.) By Protestants. Jac. Basnage: Observationes historicae circa Felicianam haeresin, in his Thesaurus monum. Tom. II. 284 sqq. Chr. G. F. Walch: Historia Adoptianorum, G'f6ttingen, 1755; and his Ketzergeschichte, vol. IX. 667 sqq. (1780). A minute and accurate account. See also the Lit. quoted by Walch.
Neander, Kirchengeschichte, vol. III., pp. 313-339, Engl. transl. III. 156-168. Gieseler, vol. II., P. I., p. 111 sqq.; Eng. transl. II. 75-78. Baur: Die christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit und Menschwerdung Gottes, T'fcbingen, 1842, vol. II., pp. 129-159. Dorner: Entwicklungs-Geschichte der Lehre von der Person Christi, second ed., Berlin, 1853, vol. II., pp. 306-330. Helfferich: Der Westgothische Arianismus und die spanische Ketzergeschichte, Berlin, 1880. Niedner: Lehrbuch der christl. K. G., Berlin, 1866, pp. 424-427. J. C. Robertson: History of the Christian Church from 590 to 1122 (Lond., 1856), p. 154 sqq. Milman: Lat. Christ. II. 498-500; Baudissin: Eulogius und Alvar, Leipz., 1872. Schaff, in Smith and Wace, I. (1877), pp. 44-47. W. M'f6ller, in Herzog2 I. 151-159.
117. History of Adoptionism
The Adoptionist controversy is a revival of the Nestorian controversy in a modified form, and turns on the question whether Christ, as to his human nature, was the Son of God in essence, or only by adoption. Those who took the latter view were called Adoptionists. They taught that Christ as to his divinity is the true Son of God, the Only-Begotten of the Father; but as man he is his adopted Son, the First-Born of Mary. They accepted the Chalcedonian Christology of one person and two natures, but by distinguishing a natural Son of God and an adopted Son of God, they seemed to teach two persons or a double Christ, and thus to run into the Nestorian heresy.
The orthodox opponents held that Christ was the one undivided and indivisible Son of God; that the Virgin Mary gave birth to the eternal Son of God, and is for this reason called “the mother of God;†that sonship is founded on the person, not on the nature; and that Adoptionism leads to two Christs and to four persons in the Trinity.
Both parties displayed a degree of patristic learning which one would hardly expect in this period of the middle ages.
The history of this movement is confined to the West (Spain and Gaul); while all the older Christological controversies originated and were mainly carried on and settled in the East. It arose in the Saracen dominion of Spain, where the Catholics had to defend the eternal and essential Sonship of Christ against the objections both of the Arians and the Mohammedans.
The Council of Toledo, held in 675, declared in the preface to the Confession of Faith, that Christ is the Son of God by nature, not by adoption. But about a century afterwards Elipandus, the aged Archbishop of Toledo, and primate of that part of Spain which was under Mohammedan rule, endeavored to modify the orthodox doctrine by drawing a distinction between a natural and an adopted sonship of Christ, and by ascribing the former to his divine, the latter to his human nature. He wished to save the full humanity of Christ, without, however, denying his eternal divinity. Some historians assert that he was influenced by a desire to avoid the Mohammedan objection to the divinity of Christ; but the conflict of the two religions was too strong to admit of any compromise. He may have read Nestorian writings. At all events, he came to similar conclusions.
Having little confidence in his own opinions, Elipandus consulted Felix, bishop of Urgel in Catalonia, in that part of Spain which, since 778, was incorporated with the dominion of Charlemagne. Felix was more learned and clear-headed than Elipandus, and esteemed, even by his antagonist Alcuin, for his ability and piety. Neander regards him as the originator of Adoptionism; at all events, he reduced it to a formulated statement.
Confirmed by his friend, Elipandus taught the new doctrine with all the zeal of a young convert, although he was already eighty years of age; and, taking advantage of his influential position, he attacked the orthodox opponents with overbearing violence. Etherius, Bishop of Osma or Othma (formerly his pupil), and Beatus, a presbyter, and after Alcuin abbot at Libana in Asturia, took the lead in the defence of the old and the exposure of the new Christology. Elipandus charged them with confounding the natures of Christ, like wine and water, and with scandalous immorality, and pronounced the anathema on them.
Pope Hadrian, being informed of these troubles, issued a letter in 785 to the orthodox bishops of Spain, warning them against the new doctrine as rank Nestorianism. But the letter had no effect; the papal authority plays a subordinate role in this whole controversy. The Saracen government, indifferent to the theological disputes of its Christian subjects, did not interfere.
But when the Adoptionist heresy, through the influence of Felix, spread in the French portion of Spain, and even beyond the Pyrenees into Septimania, creating a considerable commotion among the clergy, the Emperor Charlemagne called a synod to Regensburg (Ratisbon) in Bavaria, in 792, and invited the Bishop of Urgel to appear, that his case might be properly investigated. The Synod condemned Adoptionism as a renewal of the Nestorian heresy.
Felix publicly and solemnly recanted before the Synod, and also before Pope Hadrian, to whom he was sent. But on his return to Spain he was so much reproached for his weakness, that, regardless of his solemn oath, he yielded to the entreaties of his friends, and re-affirmed his former opinions.
Charlemagne, who did not wish to alienate the Spanish portion of his kingdom, and to drive it into the protection of the neighboring Saracens, directed Alcuin, who in the mean time had come to France from England, to send a mild warning and refutation of Adoptionism to Felix. When this proved fruitless, and when the Spanish bishops, under the lead of Elipandus, appealed to the justice of the emperor, and demanded the restoration of Felix to his bishopric, he called a new council at Frankfort on the Main in 794, which was attended by about three hundred (?) bishops, and may be called “universal,†as far as the West is concerned. As neither Felix nor any of the Adoptionist bishops appeared in person, the council, under the lead of Alcuin, confirmed the decree of condemnation passed at Ratisbon.
Subsequently Felix wrote an apology, which was answered and refuted by Alcuin. Elipandus reproached Alcuin for having twenty thousand slaves (probably belonging to the convent of Tours), and for being proud of wealth. Charles sent Archbishop Leidrad of Lyons and other bishops to the Spanish portion of his kingdom, who succeeded, in two visits, in converting the heretics (according to Alcuin, twenty thousand).
About that time a council at Rome, under Leo III., pronounced, on very imperfect information, a fresh anathema, erroneously charging that the Adoptionists denied to the Saviour any other than a nuncupative Godhead.
Felix himself appeared, 799, at a Synod in Aix-la-Chapelle, and after a debate of six days with Alcuin, he recanted his Adoptionism a second time. He confessed to be convinced by some passages, not of the Scriptures, but of the fathers (especially Cyril of Alexandria, Leo I., and Gregory I.), which he had not known before, condemned Nestorius, and exhorted his clergy and people to follow the true faith. He spent the rest of his life under the supervision of the Archbishop of Lyons, and died in 818. He left, however, a paper in which the doctrine of Adoptionism is clearly stated in the form of question and answer; and Agobard, the successor of Leidrad, felt it his duty to refute it.
Elipandus, under the protection of the government of the Moors, continued openly true to his heretical conviction. But Adoptionism lost its vitality with its champions, and passed away during the ninth century. Slight traces of it are found occasionally during the middle ages. Duns Scotus (1300) and Durandus a S. Porciano (1320) admit the term Filius adoptivus in a qualified sense. The defeat of Adoptionism was a check upon the dyophysitic and dyotheletic feature in the Chalcedon Christology, and put off indefinitely the development of the human side in Christ’s Person. In more recent times the Jesuit Vasquez, and the Lutheran divines G. Calixtus and Walch, have defended the Adoptionists as essentially orthodox.
118. Doctrine of Adoptionism
The doctrine of Adoptionism is closely allied in spirit to the Nestorian Christology; but it concerns not so much the constitution of Christ’s person, as simply the relation of his humanity to the Fatherhood of God. The Adoptionists were no doubt sincere in admitting at the outset the unity of Christ’s person, the communication of properties between the two natures, and the term Theotokos (though in a qualified sense) as applied to the Virgin Mary. Yet their view implies an abstract separation of the eternal Son of God and the man Jesus of Nazareth, and results in the assertion of two distinct Sons of God. It emphasized the dyophysitism and dyotheletism of the orthodox Christology, and ran them out into a personal dualism, inasmuch as sonship is an attribute of personality, not of nature. The Adoptionists spoke of an adoptatus homo instead of an adoptata natura humana, and called the adopted manhood an adopted Son. They appealed to Ambrose, Hilary, Jerome, Augustin, and Isidore of Seville, and the Mozarabic Liturgy, which was used in Spain. Sometimes the term adoptio is indeed applied to the Incarnation by earlier writers, and in the Spanish liturgy, but rather in the sense of assumptio or 'e1Ì“'ed'e1Ì'eb'e7'f8'e9'f2, i.e. the elevation of the human nature, through Christ, to union with the Godhead. They might, with better reason, have quoted Theodore of Mopsuestia as their predecessor; for his doctrine of the 'f5'e9Ì”'efÌ€'f2 'e8'e5'f4'efÌ€'f2 is pretty much the same as their Filius Dei adoptivus.
The fundamental point in Adoptionism is the distinction of a double Sonship in Christ - one by nature and one by grace, one by generation and one by adoption, one by essence and one by title, one which is metaphysical and another which is brought about by an act of the divine will and choice. The idea of sonship is made to depend on the nature, not on the person; and as Christ has two natures, there must be in him two corresponding Sonships. According to his divine nature, Christ is really and essentially (secundum naturam or genere) the Son of God, begotten from eternity; but according to his human nature, he is the Son of God only nominally (nuncupative) by adoption, or by divine grace. By nature he is the Only-Begotten Son of God; by adoption and grace he is the First-Begotten Son of God.
The Adoptionists quoted in their favor mainly Joh_14:28 Luk_1:80; Luk_18:19; Mar_13:32; Joh_1:14; Joh_10:35; Rom_8:29; 1Co_11:3; 1Jo_3:2; Deu_18:15; Psa_2:8; Psa_22:23, and other passages from the Old Testament, which they referred to the Filius primogenitus et adoptivus; while Psa_60:4 (ex utero ante Luciferum genui te); Psa_44:2; Isa_45:23; Pro_8:25, were understood to apply to the Filius unigenitus. None of these passages, which might as well be quoted in favor of Arianism, bear them out in the point of dispute. Christ is nowhere called the “adopted†Son of God. Felix inferred from the adoption of the children of God, that they must have an adoptive head. He made use of the illustration, that as a son cannot have literally two fathers, but may have one by birth and the other by adoption, so Christ, according to his humanity, cannot be the Son of David and the Son of God in one and the same sense; but he may be the one by nature and the other by adoption.
It is not clear whether he dated the adopted Sonship of Christ from his exaltation or from his baptism, or already from his birth. He speaks of a double birth of Christ, compares the baptism of Christ with the baptism or regeneration of believers, and connects both with the spiritualis generatio per adoptionem; but, on the other hand, he seems to trace the union of the human nature with the divine to the womb of the Virgin.
The Adoptionists, as already remarked, thought themselves in harmony with the Christology of Chalcedon, and professed faith in one divine person in two full and perfect natures; they only wished to bring out their views of a double Sonship, as a legitimate consequence of the doctrine of two natures.
The champions of orthodoxy, among whom Alcuin, the teacher and friend of Charlemagne, was the most learned and able, next to him Paulinus of Aquileja, and Agobard of Lyons, unanimously viewed Adoptionism as a revival or modification of the Nestorian heresy, which was condemned by the third Ecumenical Council (431).
Starting from the fact of a real incarnation, the orthodox party insisted that it was the eternal, only begotten Son of God, who assumed human nature from the womb of the Virgin, and united it with his divine person, remaining the proper Son of God, notwithstanding this change. They quoted in their favor such passages as Joh_3:16; Rom_8:32; Eph_5:2; Act_3:13-15.
The radical fault of this heresy is, that it shifts the whole idea of Sonship from the person to the nature. Christ is the Son of God as to his person, not as to nature. The two natures do not form two Sons, since they are inseparably united in the one Christ. The eternal Son of God did not in the act of incarnation assume a human personality, but human nature. There is therefore no room at all for an adoptive Sonship. The Bible nowhere calls Christ the adopted Son of God. Christ is, in his person, from eternity or by nature what Christians become by grace and regeneration.
In condemning Monotheletism, the Church emphasized the duality of natures in Christ; in condemning Adoptionism, she emphasized the unity of person. Thus she guarded the catholic Christology both against Eutychian and Nestorian departures, but left the problem of the full and genuine humanity of Christ unsolved. While he is the eternal Son of God, he is at the same time truly and fully the Son of man. The medieval Church dwelt chiefly on the divine majesty of Christ, and removed him at an infinite distance from man, so that he could only be reached through intervening mediators; but, on the other hand, she kept a lively, though grossly realistic, remembrance of his passion in the daily sacrifice of the mass, and found in the worship of the tender Virgin-Mother with the Infant-Saviour on her protecting arm a substitute for the contemplation and comfort of his perfect manhood. The triumph of the theory of transubstantiation soon followed the defeat of Adoptionism, and strengthened the tendency towards an excessive and magical supernaturalism which annihilates the natural, instead of transforming it.
Note
The learned Walch defends the orthodoxy of the Adoptionists, since they did not say that Christ, in his two-fold Sonship, was alius et alius, 'e1Ì“Ì'eb'eb'ef'f2 'ea'e1'e9Ì€ 'e1Ì“Ì'eb'eb'ef'f2 (which is the Nestorian view), but that he was Son aliter et aliter, 'e1Ì“Ì'eb'eb'f9'f2 'ea'e1'e9Ì€ 'e1Ì“Ì'eb'eb'f9'f2. Ketzerhistorie, vol. IX., pp. 881, 904. Baur (II., p. 152) likewise justifies Adoptionism, as a legitimate inference from the Chalcedonian dogma, but on the assumption that this dogma itself includes a contradiction. Neander, Dorner, Niedner, Hefele, and M'f6ller concede the affinity of Adoptionism with Nestorianism, but affirm, at the same time, the difference and the new features in Adoptionism (see especially Dorner II., p. 309 sq.).
119. The Predestinarian Controversy
Comp. vol. III., 'a7'a7158-160, pp. 851 sqq.
Literature
I. Sources
(1) The remains of the writings of Gottschalk, viz., three Confessions (one before the Synod of Mainz, two composed in prison), a poetic Epistle to Ratramnus, and fragment of a book against Rabanus Maurus. Collected in the first volume of Mauguin (see below), and in Migne’s “Patrol. Lat.,†Tom. 121, col. 348-372.
(2) The writings of Gottschalk’s friends: Prudentius: Epist. ad Hincmarum, and Contra Jo. Scotum; Ratramnus: De Praedest., 850; Servatus Lupus: De tribus Questionibus (i.e., free will, predestination, and the extent of the atonement), 850; Florus Magister: De Praed. contra J. Scot.; Remigius: Lib. de tribus Epistolis, and Libellus de tenenda immobiliter Scripturae veritate. Collected in the first vol. of Mauguin, and in Migne’s “Patrol. Lat.,†vols. 115, 119 and 121. A poem of Walafrid Strabo on Gottschalk, in Migne, Tom. 114, col. 1115 sqq.
(3) The writings of Gottschalk’s opponents: Rabanus Maurus (in Migne, Tom. 112); Hincmar of Rheims: De Praedestinatione et Libero Arbitrio, etc. (in Migne, Tom. 125 and 126); Scotus Erigena: De Praedest. Dei contra Gottescalcum, 851 (first ed. by Mauguin, 1650, and in 1853 by Floss in Migne, Tom. 122). See also the Acts of Councils in Mansi, Tom. XIV. and XV.
II. Works of Historians
Jac. Ussher (Anglican and Calvinist): Gotteschalci et Praedestinatianae controversiae ab eo motto Historia. Dublin, 1631; Hanover, 1662; and in the Dublin ed. of his works.
Gilb. Mauguin (Jansenist, d. 1674): Vet. Auctorum, qui IX. saec. de Praedest. et Grat. scripserunt, Opera et Fragm. plurima nunc primum in lucem edita, etc. Paris, 1650, 2 Tom. In the second volume he gives the history and defends the orthodoxy of Gottschalk.
L. Cellot (Jesuit): Hist. Gotteschalci praedestinatiani. Paris, 1655, fol. Against Gottschalk and Mauguin.
J. J. Hottinger (Reformed): Fata doctrinae de Praedestinatione et Gratia Dei. Tiguri, 1727. Also his Dissertation on Gottschalk, 1710.
Card. Noris: Historia Gottesc., in his Opera. Venice, 1759, Tom. III.
F. Monnier: De Gotteschalci et Joan. Erigenae Controversia. Paris, 1853.
Jul. Weizs'e4cker (Luth.): Das Dogma von der g'f6ttl. Vorherbestimmung im 9ten Jahrh., in Dorner’s “Jachb'fccher f'fcr Deutsche Theol.†Gotha, 1859, p. 527-576.
Hefele (R. Cath.): Conciliengesch. IV. 130-223 (second ed., 1879).
V. Borrasch: Der M'f6nch Gottschalk v. Orbais, sein Leben u. seine Lehre. Thorn, 1868.
Kunstmann: Hrabanus Maurus (Mainz, 1841); Spingler: Rabanus Maurus (Ratisbon, 1856); and C. v. Noorden: Hinkmar v. Rheims (Bonn, 1863); H. Schr'f6rs: Hincmar Erzbisch v. R. (Freil. B. 1884).
See also Schr'f6ckh, vol. XXIV. 1-126; Neander, Gieseler, Baur, in their Kirchengeschichte and their Dogmengeschichte; Bach (Rom. Cath.), in his Dogmengesch. des Mittelalters, I. 219-263; Guizot: Civilization in France, Lect. V.; Hardwick: Middle Age, 161-165; Robertson, II. 288-299; Reuter, Rel. Aufkl'e4rung im Mittelalter, I. 43-48; and M'f6ller in Herzog2, V. 324-328.
The Predestinarian Controversy
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 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 Semi-Pelagianism, giving the chief weight to the preceding and enabling grace of God, yet claiming some merit for man’s consenting and cooperating will. This compromise may be called Semi-Augustinianism, 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 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 Babanus 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 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 Augustin and agrees with the Semi-Pelagians. He also distinguishes between praesciti and praedestinati. 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.
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) and quite similarly (similiter omnino), by which he seemed to put the two foreordinations, i.e. election and reprobation, on the same footing; but he qualified it by a reference to the guilt and future judgment of the reprobate. He also maintained against Rabanus that the Son of God became man and died only for the elect. He measured the extent of the purpose by the extent of the effect. God is absolutely unchangeable, and his will must be fulfilled. What does not happen, cannot have been intended by him.
The details of the synodical transaction are unknown, but Rabanus, who presided over the Synod, gives as the result, in a letter to Hincmar, that Gottschalk was condemned, together with his pernicious doctrine (which he misrepresents), and handed over to his metropolitan, Hincmar, for punishment and safe-keeping.
121. Gottschalk and Hincmar
Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, a most influential, proud and intolerant prelate, was ill-disposed towards Gottschalk, because he had been somewhat irregularly (though not invalidly) ordained to the priesthood by a rural bishop (chorepiscopus), Rigbold of Rheims, without the knowledge of his own bishop of Soissons, and gone on travels without permission of his abbot. He treated the poor monk without mercy. Gottschalk was summoned before a synod of Chiersy (in palatio Carisiaco) in the spring of 849. He refused to recant, and was condemned as an incorrigible heretic, deposed from the priesthood, publicly scourged for obstinacy, according to the rule of St. Benedict, compelled to burn his books, and shut up in the prison of a convent in the province of Rheims. According to the report of eye-witnessses, he was scourged “most atrociously†and “nearly to death,†until half dead he threw his book, which contained the proofs of his doctrine from the Scriptures and the fathers, into the fire. It is a relief to learn that St. Remigius, archbishop of Lyons, expressed his horror at the “unheard of impiety and cruelty†of this treatment of the miserabilis monachus, as Gottschalk is often called by his friends.
In his lonely prison at Hautvilliers, the condemned monk composed two confessions, a shorter and a longer one, in which he strongly re-asserted his doctrine of a double predestination. He appealed to Pope Nicolas, who seems to have had some sympathy with him, and demanded a reinvestigation, which, however, never took place. He also offered, in reliance on the grace of God, to undergo the fiery ordeal before the king, the bishops and monks, to step successively into four cauldrons of boiling water, oil, fat and pitch, and then to walk through a blazing pile; but nobody could be found to accept the challenge. Hincmar refused to grant him in his last sickness the communion and Christian burial, except on condition of full recantation. Gottschalk scorned the condition, died in his unshaken faith, and was buried in unconsecrated soil after an imprisonment of twenty years (868 or 869).
He had the courage of his convictions. His ruling idea of the unchangeableness of God reflected itself in his inflexible conduct. His enemies charged him with vanity, obstinacy, and strange delusions. Jesuits (Sirmond, Peteau, Cellot) condemn him and his doctrine; while Calvinists and Jansenists (Ussher, Hottinger, Mauguin) vindicate him as a martyr to the truth.