In philosophy proper he must be credited, despite his inconsistency, with deep and original thought. [1241] Like every theologian of philosophic capacity before and since, he passes into pantheism as soon as he grapples closely with the difficulties of theism, and "the expressions which he uses are identical with those which were afterwards employed by Spinoza.... It was a tradition of the fourth or fifth century transferred to the ninth, an echo from Alexandria." [1242] Condemned by Pope Nicholas I and by two Church Councils, [1243] his writings none the less availed to keep that echo audible to later centuries. The range and vigour of his practical rationalism may be gathered from his attitude in the controversy begun by the abbot Paschasius Radbert (831) on the nature of the Eucharist. Paschasius taught that there was a real transformation of the bread and wine into the divine body and blood; and the doctrine, thus nakedly put, startled the freer scholars of the time, who were not yet habituated to Latin orthodoxy. Another learned monk, Ratramnus, who had written a treatise on predestination at the request of the rationalizing emperor, Charles the Bald (discussing the problem in Gottschalk's sense [1244] without naming him), produced on the same monarch's invitation a treatise in which transubstantiation was denied, and the "real presence" was declared to be spiritual [1245]--a view already known to Paschasius as being held by some. [1246] John Scotus, also asked by the emperor to write on the subject, went so far as to argue that the bread and wine were merely symbols and memorials. [1247] As usual, the irrational doctrine became that of the Church; [1248] but the other must have wrought for reason in secret. For the rest, he set forth the old "modal" view of the Trinity, resolving it into the different conceptual aspects of the universe, and thus propounding one more vital heresy. [1249]