RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Predestination
the traditional teaching of foreknowledge. The new content he had given the older doctrine was by no means firmly established, so that later it could be affirmed much more emphatically than by Augustine himself that foreknowledge of evil was not a predestination " imposed by necessity upon the human will " (Fulgentius of Ruspe, Ad Monimum, i. 7; MPL, lxv. 157). Except for a number of obscure deviations, no new concepts were developed during the succeeding centuries. On the Augustinian side the only event of interest was the attempt of the unknown author of the fifth century De vocatione omnium gentium (cf . MPL, li. 664 sqq.) to reconcile the particularism of election with a serious universalism of the will to save, and by faith he rose superior to the paradox that God alone works salvation and gives it to all men, though all are not saved. On the opposing side certain passages of Liber prmdestinatus (iii. 1; MPL, liii. 629-632; see Prjedestinatus, Liber) mark the first attempt to refer predestination from human persons to the general plan of salvation. A new factor first entered into the controversy in the ninth century with Gottschalk (see Gottschalk, 1). His formula of a twofold predestination applying equally to those who had thus far been distinguished as " foreordained " and " foreknown," however disturbing to theologians who officially recognized Augustine but were far from sharing his views, was, nevertheless, a reproduction of Augustine's own theory. Even for his supralapsarianism he could appeal not only to Augustine (ut sup.) but also to Fulgentius (De veritate proedestinationis, iii. 5) and to the declaration of Isidore of Seville (Sent. II., vi. 1; MPL, lxxxiii. 606): " there is a twofold predestination, of the elect to blessedness, and of the reprobate to death." Gottschalk's theological views, however, would scarcely have brought condemnation upon him had he not employed the doctrine of predestination, in connection with his own experience, to assert the independence of the inner man from the Church. The numerous followers of Augustine who gave Gottschalk literary support did not accept the doctrine of the assurance of salvation, so that Ratramnus (q.v.), like Augustine, maintained that no man might presume to consider himself one of the elect (De proedestinatione, ii.). In the mass of writings produced at this period the sole new element is the multiplication of ambiguous formulas with which each one sought to make his own divergent opinions pass as Augustinian. A master of this type was Hincmar of Reims (q.v.), who emphasized, in the theses of the Synod of Chiersey (853), the universality of salvation, but as regards free will and predestination advanced Semipelagian views in Augustinian terminology, affirming that " God elects from the mass of perdition after his foreknowledge those whom through grace he predestined to life; others, moreover, whom he abandons in the mass of perdition, by a just judgment, he foreknew would perish but did not predestine that they should perish " (cf. Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, iv., 217-218). Rabanus Maurus (q.v.) declared that " God does not predestine all that he foreknows; for he only foreknows evil, he does not predestine it; but good he
both foreknows and predestines " (Epist. ad Notingum, MPL, cxii. 1532-33). At the same time he openly expressed Semipelagian views on free will (ut sup., pp. 1541, 1553; Epist. ad Hincmarum, p. 1524). In the controversy only resolute Augustinians spoke in unmistakable terms, although the most of them had changed the Augustinian point of view. The interest is no longer in the anthropomorphic problem, admitting of various irreconcilable views, but in the construction of a simple, speculative formula of God. Gottschalk manifests a decided tendency to determinism, wishing to avoid foreknowledge in the formulation of a conception of God immutable, a trend found in milder form in Ratramnus (De proedestinatione, ii.), who applies the twofold predestination of God simply to his all-embracing government of the world. On this scheme, which now appeared to receive a pantheistic application, Scotus Erigena (q.v.) based his De proedestinatione, though in fact he agreed far more with Gottschalk's determinism than with the current Semipelagianism.
The Gottschalk controversy ended with the transformation of a vital problem into a scholastic theory, a character which was retained throughout the Middle Ages. During the following 5. Scholastic centuries the prevailing doctrine, Theology, while carefully avoiding both Semipelagian terms and the extreme deductions of Augustinianism (irresistible grace and perseverance), exalted the operation of grace alone and constantly repeated the formulas of Augustine on foreknowledge and predestination to good, but mere foreknowledge of evil (Anselm, De concordia prcescientice prcedestinationis cum libero arbitrio, i. 7; MPL, clviii. 517; Peter Lombard, Sent. I., xl. 1, 4; MPL, cxcii. 631; Thomas Aquinas, Summa, I., xxiii. 5). At the same time it was held, with Augustine, that the will of fallen man remained free, but was made and maintained good only by grace, the gift of God (Anselm, ut sup., iii. 3-4; Bernard of Clairvaux, De gratia et libero arbitrio, xiv. 46-47, MPL, clxxxii. 1026-27; Peter Lombard, ut sup., II., xxviii. 4; Thomas Aquinas, ut sup., I., cv. 4). This would indicate thoroughgoing predestinarianism, were it not for a sentence of Bernard (ut sup., x. 35) according to which those fallen in this life by their free will may be saved by divine aid, but not after the resurrection. Since, however, perseverance was now placed in the future life, it became possible not only for Adam but for the elect even to fall from grace; and the Augustinian doctrine of two forms of divine aid (possibility and actuality ; ut sup.) was disregarded. From this view only Thomas Aquinas is to be excepted, and his more deterministic position (cf . Summa, I., xxiii. 7) henceforth was the pillar of genuine Augustinianism. A complete change was inaugurated by Duns Scotus (q.v.) whose widely divergent expressions on predestination can be explained only on the assumption of an equally justifiable twofold point of view. The will is by nature the sole cause of its own acts, so that even God does not work immediately on the human will (Sent., II., xxv. 2, xxxvii. 2, 8, III., iii. 21); therefore, the will of God, being determined by nothing beyond itself, is the
Predestination