MOLINISM. — A theological system that takes its name from Molina (v.). On 10 Oct. 1567 Pius V, by the bull Ex omnibus afflictionibus, had condemned the heretical and erroneous opinions of Baio. The Jesuits were not uninvolved in that condemnation. In the controversy that so greatly agitated the sixteenth century concerning man’s spiritual possibilities after the Fall and the nature of original sin, they were led, by their very spirituality, toward an optimism that directly opposed the pessimism of the Protestants and their followers. M. is the theological expression of this attitude of the Society of Jesus and of that entire period, to which it owes a large part of its spiritual vitality. Molina provided the first systematic exposition, from the Jesuit point of view, of the controversy concerning Grace.
Partly taking up the positions of Lessio and using the philosophical principles of Fonseca, M. holds that:
1) God, infinitely wise, knows whatever has a reason for truth and knows it in the manner in which it is true. A thing can be true with respect to God in three different ways: a) insofar as it is possible; in this respect its truth is necessary and eternal, and it is known by God through necessary knowledge and simple intelligence, because it is founded on the intellectual understanding that God has of himself as an infinitely participable exemplary cause; b) insofar as it is future dependently upon the sole free act of the divine will, which determines to bring it into existence. This knowledge in God is free, because it depends upon his will and is founded on the understanding of his will; it is no longer knowledge of simple intelligence but of vision, since it is eternal knowledge of a thing as existing; c) insofar as it could exist dependently upon the free choice of a created will. A created will could, in different circumstances, perform very many different acts. What it could freely do still belongs to the order of possibilities. But among these possibilities it would choose one. This free determination of a created will within an order of possibilities is called a “futurible.” God does not know futuribles through necessary knowledge, because they do not possess in themselves a determinate truth immediately founded in the divine essence: they are in fact free; but neither does he know them through free knowledge, since they do not depend solely upon his will, but also upon the free choice of the creature. They are not known through simple intelligence, because their truth does not depend solely upon the knowledge God has of the divine essence in itself; nor through knowledge of vision, because, unless the circumstances are realized, they will never come to pass. He therefore knows them through a kind of knowledge that is intermediate between the preceding kinds and which the Molinists call precisely “middle knowledge.” This knowledge is founded in the divine essence with a relation of reason to the free act of the creature, which God does not predetermine (otherwise the creature’s freedom would disappear), by which he is not determined to knowledge (otherwise he would depend upon the creature), but to which he hypothetically determines himself together with the creature.
2) God is the first and universal cause. The free act of the creature, too, does not escape this causality. The divine premotion required for such an act is therefore physical. Since, by supposition, this act is free, this physical premotion cannot, however, 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 the act, to which God concurs by determining himself together with II. In the order of nature, such premotion is identified with God’s universal causality sustaining a nature capable of self-determination. Actual Grace, as a supernatural motion, likewise follows this rule. It must therefore not be conceived as a physical predetermination of the will, but as an immediate influence upon the indeliberate act, with which it is identified—that is, which, insofar as it is produced by God, is in itself Grace. Such Grace, according as, being congruent with that nature in those particular circumstances, it is accepted and followed by the deliberate act, or is instead rejected, becomes efficacious or remains within the order of purely sufficient Grace.
3) God sincerely wills the eternal salvation of all men; therefore he died for all and gives each person Graces truly sufficient to attain eternal life. This antecedent divine will is, however, conditional, namely, if men accept Grace and merit glory. Through middle knowledge and the consequent knowledge of futuribles, God knows which Graces would remain purely sufficient and which, being congruent, would become efficacious in any order of possibilities; and he likewise knows, consequently, which men would be saved in each order and which would freely damn themselves. Since, however, the choice of a determinate order of futures depends solely upon the free divine will, with respect to those who will be saved in the order freely chosen, that choice therefore possesses in itself the character of a benefit. For this reason, and also because faith, justification, and final perseverance cannot be merited but are God’s gratuitous gift, 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 Bellarmino, Suárez, Lugo, and Ruiz de Montoya, hold that the choice of such an order of futures presupposes in God a positive will of salvation toward the predestined, thus falling back into the Bannezian system. Others, among them Lessio, Valentia, Vasquez, and most modern writers, assert that, although in a consequent sense the choice of this order has the character of a benefit for the predestined, God did not choose it by an antecedent will for a reason in any way dependent upon the creature, and therefore deny any antecedent negative reprobation, which would be contrary to God’s universal salvific will. All Molinists nevertheless agree in affirming that the divine will of predestination to glory, taken in itself, or of condemnation to eternal punishment, follows the foreknowledge of supernatural merits or demerits; consequently, the state of death in Grace or in sin is the term in relation to which the divine will, from being antecedent and conditional salvation for all men, becomes consequent and absolute predestination or positive reprobation.