inseparable from the immutability of God; while with Augustin it was only a logical inference from
his anthropological premises. He began where Augustin ended. To employ a later (Calvinistic)
terminology, he was a supralapsarian rather than an infralapsarian. He held a two-fold predestination
of the elect to salvation, and of the reprobate to perdition; not in the sense of two separate
predestinations, but one predestination with two sides (gemina, i.e. bipartita), a positive side
(election) and a negative side (reprobation). He could not conceive of the one without the other;
but he did not teach a predestination of the sinner to sin, which would make God the author of sin.
In this respect he was misrepresented by Rabanus Maurus.^683 In his shorter Confession from his
prison, he says: "I believe and confess that God foreknew and foreordained the holy angels and
elect men to unmerited eternal life, but that he equally (pariter) foreordained the devil with his host
and with all reprobate men, on account of their foreseen future evil deeds, by a just judgment, to
merited eternal death." He appeals to passages of the Scriptures, to Augustin, Fulgentius, and Isidor,
who taught the very same thing except the pariter. In the larger Confession, which is in the form
of a prayer, he substitutes for equally the milder term almost or nearly (propemodum), and denies
that God predestinated the reprobates to sin. "Those, O God," he says, "of whom thou didst foreknow
that they would persist by their own misery in their damnable sins, thou didst, as a righteous judge,
predestinate to perdition." He spoke of two redemptions, one common to the elect and the reprobate,
another proper and special for the elect only. In similar manner the Calvinists, in their controversy,
with the Arminians, maintained that Christ died efficiently only for the elect, although sufficiently
for all men.
His predestinarian friends brought out the difference in God’s relation to the good and the
evil more clearly. Thus Ratramnus says that God was the author (auctor) as well as the ruler
(ordinator) of good thoughts and deeds, but only the ruler, not the author, of the bad. He foreordained
the punishment of sin, not sin itself (poenam, not peccatum). He directs the course of sin, and
overrules it for good. He used the evil counsel of Judas as a means to bring about the crucifixion
and through it the redemption. Lupus says that God foreknew and permitted Adam’s fall, and
foreordained its consequences, but not the fall itself. Magister Florus also speaks of a praedestinatio
gemina, yet with the emphatic distinction, that God predestinated the elect both to good works and
to salvation, but the reprobate only to punishment, not to sin. He was at first ill-informed of the
teaching of Gottschalk, as if he had denied the meritum damnationis. Remigius censured the
"temerity" and "untimely loquacity" of Gottschalk, but defended him against the inhuman treatment,
and approved of all his propositions except the unqualified denial of freedom to do good after the
fall, unless he meant by it that no one could use his freedom without the grace of God. He subjected
the four chapters of Hincmar to a severe criticism. On the question whether God will have all men
to be saved without or with restriction, and whether Christ died for all men or only for the elect,
(^683) Rabanus makes Gottschalk teach a "praedestinatio Dei, sicut in bono, sic ita et in malo ... quasi Deus eos [reprobos]
fecisset ab initio incorrigibiles." But even Hincmar concedes (De Praed., c. 15, in Migne 125, col. 126) that the predestinarians
of his day (moderni Praedestinatiani) taught only a predestination of the reprobates ad interitum, not ad peccatum. Cardinal
Noris and Hefele (IV. 140) admit the perversion of Gottschalk’s words in malam partem by Rabanus. The same charge of
making God the author of sin by predestinating and creating men for sin and damnation, has again and again been raised against
supralapsarians and Calvinists generally, in spite of their express denial.