Molinism

MOLINISM. - A theological system that takes its name from Molina (v.). On 10 Oct. 1567, Pius V, with the bull Ex omnibus afflictionibus, had condemned the heretical and erroneous opinions of Baius. The Jesuits were not unconnected with that condemnation. In the controversy that so agitated the 16th century concerning man's spiritual capacities after the Fall and the nature of original sin, they were led, by their very spirituality, to an optimism that stood in direct contrast to the pessimism of the Protestants and their followers. Molinism is the theological expression of this attitude of the Society of Jesus and of that whole era, which owes to it a great part of its spiritual vitality. Molina provided the first systematic exposition from the Jesuit point of view on the controversy of Grace.

Taking up in part the positions of Lessius and using the philosophical principles of Fonseca, Molinism holds that:
1) God, infinitely wise, knows whatever has a ground of truth and in the manner in which it is true. A thing with respect to God can be true in three different ways: a) insofar as it is possible, and under this aspect its truth is necessary and eternal and is known by God with necessary knowledge and simple intelligence, because it is founded on the intellectual comprehension that God has of himself as an exemplary cause infinitely communicable; b) insofar as it is future, depending solely on the free act of the divine will, which determines to make it exist. Such knowledge is in God free, because it depends on his will and is founded on the comprehension of his will, and it is no longer of simple intelligence but of vision, since it is eternal knowledge of a thing as existing; c) insofar as it could exist depending on the free choice of a created will. A created will could in fact, in different circumstances, perform the most varied acts. What it could freely do is still in the order of possibles. But among these possibilities it would choose one. Such a free determination of a created will in an order of possibles is called a "futurible." Futuribles God does not know with necessary knowledge, because they do not have in themselves a determined truth that is immediately founded in the divine essence: they are in fact free; nor yet with free knowledge, since they do not depend solely on his will, but also on the free choice of the creature. Not with knowledge of simple intelligence, because their truth does not depend solely on the knowledge that God has of the divine essence in itself; not with knowledge of vision, because, if the circumstances are not realized, they will never come to pass. He therefore knows them with a knowledge that is middle between the foregoing, and which Molinists call precisely "middle knowledge," and which is founded in the divine essence with a relation of reason to the free act of the creature, to which God does not predetermine (otherwise the creature's freedom would fail), by which he is not determined to knowledge (otherwise he would depend on the creature), but to 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 such an act is by supposition free, such physical premotion cannot, however, be predetermining. It is therefore an indeterminate premotion which, being received in a being capable of self-determination (the human will), is sufficient to move it to the 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 too, a supernatural motion, follows this rule. It must therefore not be conceived as a physical predetermination of the will, but as an immediate influence on the indeliberate act, with which it is identified, which is to say that act, insofar as it is produced by God, is of itself Grace. Such Grace, according as, 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 purely sufficient Grace.

3) God sincerely wills the eternal salvation of all men, and therefore died for all and gives to each Graces truly sufficient to attain eternal life. Such antecedent divine will is, however, conditional, that is to say, if men will 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 congruous, would become efficacious in any order of possibles, and he knows likewise, consequently, which men in each order would be saved and which would freely be damned. Since, however, the choice of a determined order of futures depends solely on the free divine will, it has, with respect to those who in the chosen order will freely be saved, therefore in itself a ground of benefit. For this reason, and also because faith, justification, and final perseverance cannot be merited but are a free gift of God, one can affirm 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, Ruiz de Montoya, hold that the choice of such an order of futures supposes in God a positive will of salvation toward the predestined, thereby falling back into the Bannezian system. Others, among them Lessius, Valencia, Vásquez, and the majority of the moderns, affirm that, although in a consequent sense the choice of this order has a ground of benefit for the predestined, God has not elected it by antecedent will for a motive in any way dependent on the creature, and they therefore deny any antecedent negative reprobation, which would be contrary to God's universal salvific will. All Molinists are, however, agreed in affirming that the divine will of predestination to glory taken in itself, or of condemnation to eternal punishment, follows upon the foreknowledge of supernatural merits or demerits, whereby the state of death in Grace or in sin is the term with respect to which the divine will, from antecedent and conditional of salvation for all men, becomes consequent and absolute of predestination or of positive reprobation.

Corrado Baisi