he himself held the particularistic view, but was willing to allow freedom of opinion, since the
church had not decided that question, and the Bible admitted of different interpretations.^684
The Synod of Valence, which met at the request of the Emperor Lothaire in 855, endorsed,
in opposition to Hincmar and the four chapters of the Synod of Chiersy, the main positions of the
Augustinian system as understood by Remigius, who presided.^685 It affirms a two-fold predestination
("praedestinationem electorum ad vitam et praedestinationem impiorum ad mortem"), but with
such qualifications and distinctions as seemed to be necessary to save the holiness of God and the
moral responsibility of man. The Synod of Langres in the province of Lyons, convened by Charles
the Bald in 859, repeated the doctrinal canons of Valence, but omitted the censure of the four
chapters of Chiersy, which Charles the Bald had subscribed, and thus prepared the way for a
compromise.
We may briefly state the system of the Augustinian school in the following propositions:
(1) All men are sinners, and justly condemned in consequence of Adam’s fall.
(2) Man in the natural state has no freedom of choice, but is a slave of sin. (This, however,
was qualified by Remigius and the Synod of Valence in the direction of Semi-Pelagianism.)
(3) God out of free grace elected from eternity and unalterably a part of mankind to holiness
and salvation, and is the author of all their good deeds; while he leaves the rest in his inscrutable
counsel to their merited damnation.
(4) God has unalterably predestinated the impenitent and persistent sinner to everlasting
punishment, but not to sin, which is the guilt of man and condemned by God.
(5) Christ died only for the elect.
Gottschalk is also charged by his opponents with slighting the church and the sacraments,
and confining the effect of baptism and the eucharist to the elect. This would be consistent with
his theory. He is said to have agreed with his friend Ratramnus in rejecting the doctrine of
transubstantiation. Augustin certainly did not teach transubstantiation, but he checked the logical
tendency of Predestinarianism by the Catholic doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and of the visible
historical church as the mediatrix of salvation.^686
II. The doctrine of a Conditional and Single Predestination.
Rabanus and Hincmar, who agreed in theology as well as in unchristian conduct towards
Gottschalk, claimed to be Augustinians, but were at heart Semi-Pelagians, and struck a middle
course, retaining the Augustinian premises, but avoiding the logical consequences. Foreknowledge
(praescientia) is a necessary attribute of the omniscient mind of God, and differs from foreordination
or predestination (praedestinatio), which is an attribute of his omnipotent will. The former may
exist without the latter, but not the latter without the former. Foreknowledge is absolute, and
(^684) The particularists appealed to the passage Matt. 26:26, pro multis (περὶπολλω̑ν, without the article), and understood
it in the restricted sense as distinct from pro omnibus; while they arbitrarily restricted the omnes (παν́τες) in 1 Tim. 2:3 and
similar passages.
(^685) See the canons of this Synod in Mansi, XV. I sqq., and Hefele, IV. 193-195.
(^686) Dr. Bach, a learned Roman Catholic historian, states this point thus (l.c., I. 230): "Der historische Christus und die
Kirche, der sichtbare Leib Christi verflüchtigt sich schon bei Gottschalk zu einem leeren Abstraktum, sobald der concrete Boden
der Erwählung nicht mehr die Kirche und ihre Sakramente, sondern ein lediglich fingirtes vorzeitliches Decret Gottes ist. Es
taucht dann immer ein Surrogat der Phantasie, die s. g. unsichtbare Kirche auf, und diejenigen, welche die grossartige realistische
Lehre des hl. Augustin von der Kirche und den Sakramenten zerstören, nennen sich vorzüglich Augustinianer, indem sie nicht
wissen, dass die Lehre Augustins von der Praedestination auf dem concreten Boden der Christologie und Anthropologie steht
und ohne diese zur gefährlichsten Häresie wird."