Molinism, named after Luis de Molina, is a theological system for reconciling human freedom with God's grace and providence. Presupposing a strongly libertarian account of freedom, Molinists assert against their rivals that the grace whereby God cooperates with supernaturally salvific acts is not intrinsically efficacious. To preserve divine providence and foreknowledge, they then posit "middle knowledge", through which God knows, prior to his own free decrees, how any possible rational agent would freely act in any possible situation. Beyond this, they differ among themselves regarding the ground for middle knowledge and the doctrines of efficacious grace and predestination.


Molinism's three distinguishing marks are a strongly libertarian account of human freedom; the consequent conviction that the grace whereby God cooperates with supernaturally salvific free acts is not intrinsically efficacious; and the postulation of divine middle knowledge (scientia media), by which God knows, before any of his free decrees regarding creatures, how any possible rational being would freely act in any possible situation (see MOLINA, LUIS DE §§ 2-3).

Beyond this, Molinists disagree about three important issues. The first is the question of how God knows the "conditional future contingents" or "futuribilia" that constitute the objects of middle knowledge. Molinists cannot accept the Bañezian claim that God knows futuribilia by virtue of his freely decreeing their truth, since according to Molinism futuribilia have their truth prior to any free divine decree. Nor can Molinists claim that God knows futuribilia simply by virtue of comprehending all possible creatures, if "comprehending" a creature means just understanding all the metaphysical possibilities involving it. For such comprehension is insufficient for knowing how a possible creature would freely act - as opposed to how it could act - in any possible situation.

Molina himself claims that because God's cognitive power infinitely surpasses the natures of creatures, God is able to know those natures "in a more eminent way than that in which they are knowable in themselves." So God not only comprehends possible creatures but also "super-comprehends" them, as later Molinists put it, and in this way knows futuribilia involving them. One corollary, explicitly defended by Molina, is that God does not know futuribilia concerning his own free decrees, since his cognitive power does not infinitely surpass his own nature.

Other Molinists retort that no amount of insight into the natures of possible creatures can yield infallible knowledge of futuribilia, since such natures are exhausted by their metaphysical possibilities and do not include futuribilia. Instead, God has direct knowledge of futuribilia, unmediated by his knowledge of natures - and this simply because the futuribilia are true and hence intelligible to an infinite intellect. On this view there is no reason why God should not know futuribilia concerning his own free decrees - a result Molina takes to be incompatible with God's freedom.





References and further reading

Bellarmine, R. (1873) Opera Omnia, vol. 5, ed. J. Fèvre, Paris. (Contains the tract De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, one of the main sources for Congruism.) 

Garrigou-Lagrange, R. (1952) Grace, St Louis: Herder. (Chapters 7 and 8 contain a Bañezian assessment of the Molinist and Congruist accounts of efficacious grace.) 

Molina, L. (1953) Liberi Arbitrii cum Gratiae Donis, Divina Praescientia, Providentia, Praedestinatione et Reprobatione Concordia, ed. J. Rabeneck, Oña and Madrid; trans. A.J. Freddoso (1988) On Divine Foreknowledge: Part IV of the Concordia, Ithaca: Cornell. (Translation of and introduction to Molina's theory of middle knowledge.) 

Pohle, J. (1947) Grace: Actual and Habitual, ed. A. Preuss, St Louis: Herder. (Gives a weaker characterization of Congruism than that laid out above in order to classify Molina himself as a Congruist.)

Suárez, F. (1963) Opera Omnia, vols 7-11, ed. C. Berton, Brussells: Culture et Civilisation, 1963. (Suárez's voluminous treatise De Gratia, containing the most sophisticated explication and defense of Congruism.)