MOLINISM. – A theological system named after Molina (v.). On 10 October 1567, St Pius V, with the bull Ex omnibus afflictionibus, had condemned the heretical and erroneous opinions of Baius. The Jesuits were not unconnected with this condemnation. In the controversy that so agitated the 16th century regarding the spiritual possibilities of man after sin and the nature of original sin, they were led, by their very spirituality, to an optimism that directly contrasted with the pessimism of the Protestants and their followers. Molinism is the theological expression of this attitude of the Society of Jesus and of that entire epoch, to which it owes much of its spiritual vitality. Molina provided the first systematic exposition from the Jesuit perspective on the controversy over Grace.
Drawing in part on the positions of Lessius and utilizing the philosophical principles of Fonseca, Molinism holds that:
1) God, infinitely wise, knows what is true in the manner in which it is true. A thing, in relation to God, can be true in three different ways: a) as possible, and in this respect its truth is necessary and eternal and is known by God through necessary science and simple intelligence, because it is founded on the intellectual comprehension that God has of Himself as an infinitely participable exemplar cause; b) as future independently of the sole free act of the divine will that determines its existence. This science in God is free, because it depends on His will and is founded on the comprehension of His will, and is not merely of simple intelligence, but of vision, since it is eternal knowledge of a thing as existing; c) as something that could exist independently of the free choice of a created will. A created will could, in fact, in different circumstances, perform a variety of acts. What it could freely do is still in the order of the possible. But among these possibilities it would choose one. This free determination of a created will within an order of possibles is called a “futurible.” God does not know futuribles through necessary science, because they do not have in themselves a determinate truth that is immediately founded in the divine essence: they are, in fact, free; nor through free science, since they do not depend solely on His will, but also on the free choice of the creature. Nor through science of simple intelligence, because their truth does not depend solely on the knowledge that God has of the divine essence in itself; nor through science of vision, because, if the circumstances are not realized, they will never come to pass. God therefore knows them through a science that is intermediate between the aforementioned and which the Molinists call precisely “middle knowledge,” founded in the divine essence with a relation of reason to the free act of the creature, which God neither predetermines (otherwise the creature’s freedom would be undermined), nor is determined by it in knowledge (otherwise it would depend on the creature), but with which He hypothetically co-determines Himself together with the creature.
2) God is the first and universal cause. Even the free act of the creature does not escape this causality. The divine premotion required for such an act is therefore physical. Since, however, such an act is, by supposition, free, this physical premotion cannot be predetermining. It is therefore an indeterminate premotion which, being received in an entity capable of self-determination (the human will), is sufficient to move it to act, to which God concurs by co-determining Himself. In the order of nature, such premotion is identified with the universal causality of God sustaining a nature capable of self-determination. Actual grace, as a supernatural motion, follows this same rule. It must therefore not be conceived as a physical predetermination of the will, but as an immediate influence on the undetermined act, with which it is identified, that is, as an act produced by God and in itself Grace. This Grace, depending on whether, being congruous to such a nature in those particular circumstances, it is accepted and followed by the deliberate act, or instead rejected, becomes efficacious or remains in the order of merely sufficient grace.
3) God sincerely wills the eternal salvation of all men; therefore He died for all and gives to each the truly sufficient graces to attain eternal life. This antecedent divine will is, however, conditional, that is to say, if men accept grace and merit glory. Through middle knowledge and the consequent knowledge of futuribles, God knows which graces would remain merely sufficient and which, being congruous, would become efficacious in any order of possibles, and He also knows, as a consequence, which men in every order would be saved and which would freely damn themselves. Since, however, the choice of a particular order of futures depends solely on the free divine will, this will, with regard to those who in the freely chosen order will be saved, has in itself the reason of a benefit. For this reason, and also because faith, justification, and final perseverance cannot be merited but are a gratuitous gift of God, it can be affirmed that there exists a true order of divine predestination which, taken as a whole, is absolutely gratuitous, and that there also exist efficacious graces which God bestows as such.
Here the Molinists divide. Some, with Bellarmine, Suárez, Lugo, and Ruiz de Montoya, hold that the choice of such an order of futures supposes in God a positive will of salvation toward the predestined, thus falling back into the Bañezian system. Others, among whom are Lessius, Valentia, Vázquez, and the majority of moderns, affirm that, although in a consequent sense the choice of this order has the reason of a benefit for the predestined, God has not elected it by an antecedent will for any reason whatsoever dependent on the creature, and they therefore deny any antecedent negative reprobation, which would be contrary to the universal salvific will of God. All Molinists, however, agree in affirming that the divine will of predestination to glory, taken in itself, or of condemnation to eternal punishment, follows the prevision of supernatural merits or demerits, so that the state of death in grace or in sin is the term relative to which the divine will, from antecedent and conditional of salvation for all men, becomes consequent and absolute of predestination or of positive reprobation.