Wednesday 29 April 2015

Mark Vaillancourt: The Predestinarian Gottschalk of Orbais: Faithful Augustinian or Heretic? The Carolingian Predestination Debate Revisited.

In 849 Gottschalk of Orbais was condemned and imprisoned for his teaching of double predestination, and forced to burn his writings and live for 20 years under confinement in the Abbey of Hautvillers.  Gottschalk professed the orthodoxy of his position until his death, and continuously protested that his was the true teaching of St. Augustine of Hippo.  Recent discovery of his works by Germain Morin and Cyril Lambot in the mid-twentieth century, along with a number of recent translations and analyses of his texts by Francis Gumerlock and Victor Genke, have brought the light of modern scholarship on his teaching.  This revisiting of Gottschalk's predestination doctrine has caused many to see his teaching as more orthodox than heretical and one that effectively countered the semi-Pelagian and Origenistic tendencies of his own day.  This short communication will examine those tendencies and contrast them with the strict Augustinianism of Gottschalk who wrote against them.

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