Molinism

El 12 de noviembre de 1930 el físico Max Planck pronunció la conferencia "Positivismo y mundo externo real", que constituye una defensa del realismo en filosofía de la ciencia. Aquí se ofrece la traducción del texto de Planck y un prólogo que identifica los problemas tratados, el marco de la conferencia y su lugar en la obra del autor. El objetivo de la física no son nuestras observaciones de la naturaleza inanimada. Contra lo que sostiene el positivismo, la ciencia física resultaría inexplicable si no se admite la existencia de un mundo externo real. En tal caso no podríamos dirimir sobre la verdad de las teorías científicas ni sobre el progreso en la ciencia. Planck sostiene por ello que el mundo físico es independiente de nosotros aun cuando el físico lo conozca de manera mediata e hipotética a través de sus mediciones. La causalidad, por su parte, alberga una determinación de la que no está exenta ni siquiera la libertad humana.

Pope Francis has remarked that acedia-a condition long referred to as "the noontime devil" in the Western monastic tradition-is the great sin of the modern age. As scientific advancement continues to exponentially increase against our incremental understandings of self, the distance between our material capability and our spiritual refinement has created a gap challenging Western understandings of faith, culture, suffering, and human freedom. This paper will explore these challenges in the light of Schelling's commentaries on human freedom and Kierkegaard's discourse on modernist society, specifically with an eye towards Pope Francis' re-introduction of the works of Romano Guardini to the Catholic world.

Is it possible to control and direct other individuals without affecting their libertarian freedom? There is a remarkable similarity between the views of the political scientist William Riker and the Molinist model of divine providence. Riker coined the term heresthetic to refer to " the art of strategically setting up, to one's advantage, the alternatives among which others get to choose. " This sounds like Molinism – the doctrine where God uses His middle knowledge and will to set up actual situations so that " free " creatures gets to choose. In this paper I discuss some critiques of Molinism as a form of objectionable manipulation and compare these criticisms to Riker's concept of control in political thought.

Pedro de Ledesma is one of the Dominican theologians of the School of Salamanca involved in the De Auxiliis controversy, i.e., the disputes around a famous book by Luis de Molina on the relation between divine foreknowledge and providence and our free will. Studying an unpublished manuscript by Ledesma and his 1611 book on this subject, the article shows that he opposed Molina with a Thomistic position that we call deflationary. According to this interpretation, God, in moving the created will to do good actions, does not bring about an entity distinct from volition itself. Contrary to other Thomists, he does not think that the immediate effect of the divine motion of the will is an intermediary entity used by God to produce, with the will, the created free act. Ledesma defends his thesis by using some elements of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, in particular, a minimalist interpretation of the relation between action and passion already present in Domingo de Soto and the specific causality of immanent acts.

Contemporary conversations over the relationship between divine election and whether a person can lose his or her salvation often consider the unconditional or conditional nature of God’s predestination of individuals. A neglected element of this conversation, with strong historical precedence in scholastic approaches to the doctrine and which is only recently being recovered, concerns the relationship between God’s knowledge and will. This study examines the question of the irrevocable nature of salvation, arguing that greater clarity concerning what divides various positions is to be found in consideration of the divine knowledge and will dialectic. How one understands the way in which what God knows is determined by what God wills dictates the contours of how one approaches election, its conditionality, and whether it can be lost. This study therefore considers the relationship of God’s knowledge to his will in historical Calvinist, Arminian, and Molinist conceptions to conclude that in its approach to this dialectic Arminianism possesses problematic features towards the development of a consistent basis for assurance of salvation that the other two views do not possess.

It is not the intent of this paper to investigate or dissect this ages-old debate,  but rather to present a summary of an alternative  to the (often polarized) positions of Calvinism or Arminianism. The hypothesis reviewed here is called Middle Knowledge or Molinism. This construct might be best called a compatibilist  model, as it seeks to make the clear scriptural teachings of divine foreknowledge and human freedom of will compatible under God’s omniscience.

I examined evidence concerning the coherence of divine foreknowledge as defined by Arminianism and Molinism. Arminianism argues that God has complete and infallible knowledge of the future, and attempts to simultaneously maintain a strong view of libertarian freedom. Molinism agrees with the Arminian stance on foreknowledge and human freedom, but argues God must have middle knowledge to maintain strong providential control over creation. I argued that Molinism better accounts for the biblical data and provides a more coherent theological and philosophical position, because Arminianism cannot provide a strong theory of providential control. I also briefly presented my concept of Reformed Molinism, which combines Molinism with Robert Kane’s event-causal version of libertarian freedom.

40 essays by Ronnie Hsia, Ulrich Leinsle, Marius Reiser, Thomas Marschler, Trent Pomplun, Jean-Louis Quantin, William O'Brien SJ, Stefania Tutino, Carl Trueman, Andreas Beck, Willem van Asselt, Eric Carlsson, Stephen Hampton, Benjamin Mayes, Robert Kolb, Risto Saarinnen, Ola Tjorholm, Sarah Mortimer, Jeff Bach, Keith Stanglin, Hartmut Lehmann, Jonathan Strom, Craig Atwood, Stephen Burnett, Emanuele Colombo, Aza Goudriaan, Carolina Armenteros, Eric Watkins, Maria Rosa Antognazza, Stephen Gaukroger, Jonathan Israel, John Henry.

Kirk R. MacGregor (ed.), Contemporary Perspectives on Molinism. Theories, Responses to Objections, and Applications [Celebrating 500 Years since the Reformation, 1518-2018: Tome sixième] (Oradea, Warsaw, Berlin, and Enschede: Emanuel University Press, De Gruyter Open, and Refo500, 2018).

Molinism is the conjunction that humans have libertarian free will and that God has middle knowledge. Tim Stratton has recently published a book on the topic of human freedom and Molinism, and has described his view as "mere Molinism." In this reply, I discuss a wide range of philosophical issues that plague his view of Molinism. I begin and end Volume 1 with detailing (at a considerable length) the problems with how Stratton defines his terms, as well as how he approaches philosophical preliminaries involving the philosophy of freedom debate in contemporary literature.

In this study I argue that Abraham Kuyper’s doctrine of common grace is ultimately inconsistent with his understanding of particular grace within the parameters of supralapsarianism which he sets for himself. This inconsistency leads to stark tension in Kuyper’s thought which gives rise to prolific debates in the early to mid-twentieth century over the doctrine of common grace among the Dutch Reformed churches on both sides of the Atlantic. Ultimately these debates concern whether God’s disposition of favor towards his creation in general, as articulated by Kuyper’s doctrine of common grace, can be reconciled with Reformed orthodoxy.

This study surveys Kuyper’s theology of common grace and the ensuing debates over the doctrine represented in the writings of Herman Bavinck, Herman Hoeksema, Klaas Schilder, and Cornelius Van Til. This study will then argue that, as shown by the debates over common grace, Kuyper’s supralapsarianism hamstrings what he intends to accomplish in his doctrine of common grace, namely a program for Christian cultural engagement. Further, infralapsarian attempts to modify Kuyper’s framework pose no better progress towards consistency regarding common grace and God’s decrees. My proposal is for common grace to be reconstructed within a Molinist framework in order to accomplish what Kuyper intends for his popularly-cited doctrine.

This article compares two influential accounts concerning whether the saving grace of God is resistible, one offered by theologians following the Synod of Dort, and the other, the ‘Middle Knowledge’ account. I argue that Dort’s account is inconsistent with the love of God as manifested by the extent of the atonement, but this problem does not arise on the ‘Middle Knowledge’ account. I show that the ‘Middle Knowledge’ account is consistent with what the Scriptures say concerning human depravity, the atonement, as well as divine sovereignty, omnipotence, freedom, election, love, and grace. I conclude that the ‘Middle Knowledge’ account is to be preferred

The article explores the modern distrust of God as a threat to human freedom. The teachings on the relationship between freedom and grace sustained by the Spanish theologian Luis de Molina have some features that could be related to this distrust. Divine providence is preserved in his system by a somewhat deterministic conception of the human psyche. Thus, freedom is not completely safeguarded but a certain suspicion about Divine power is introduced nevertheless. As an answer to these difficulties, the author proposes an alternative Thomist consideration to contemplate the relationship between God and man in a harmonious way.

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of St. Robert Bellarmine, this article pays attention to his significant contribution to the De Auxiliis controversy. The main milestones of his intervention are considered: Bellarmine’s internal censure of the Concordia by Molina made for Aquaviva, as well as some details of his relationship with Pope Clement VIII. He composed several opuscules on these topics, most of which have already been published. Here we transcribe an unpublished manuscript from the last years of De Auxiliis Congregations. It is a report written for Pope Paul V on the divine knowledge of conditioned futures. This question provides Bellarmine with another opportunity to criticize the doctrine of physical predetermination. According to the Jesuit cardinal, such a thesis was more dangerous a doctrine than the erroneous affirmations that even he could recognize in the Concordia by Molina.

Against an interpretation of Saint Thomas Aquinas's thought that understands the divine motion of the created will only providing a generic impulse to it, in this article is defended that God moves specifically for every good choice. This motion doesn't prevent at all the contingency of creatures and neither freedom of choice. Is also shown how Báñez's thought is quite faithful to Saint Thomas in this and doesn’t intend anything else but simply to make it known and defend it from molinists misinterpretations. That’s why is shown that the divine motion of the will doesn't make God responsible for sin, especially since that would only be possible if divine causality were not the action of the eternal God, who is outside the created causality.

Discussion will focus almost entirely on portions of the oft-debated Book 3 of Paradise Lost, in which Milton’s stated aim to offer a defense advances in earnest. It will be, in brief, an examination of God’s theologizing about foreknowledge and predestination as presented in this part of the poem. The argument is simple: Milton’s articulation of the matter, while decidedly not Calvinist, is not quite Arminian; it instead cuts a not unheard of middle-way.

In a series of papers, Thomas P. Flint has posited that God the Son could become incarnate in any human person as long as certain conditions are met (Flint 2001a, 2001b). In a recent paper, he has argued that all saved human persons will one day become incarnated by the Son (Flint 2011). Flint claims that this is motivated by a combination of Molinism and orthodox Christology. I shall argue that this is unmotivated because it is condemned by orthodox Christology. Flint has unknowingly articulated a version of the heresy called Origenism that is condemned by the Fifth Ecumenical Council. After arguing that Flint’s account is unmotivated because it is condemned, I shall offer some reflections and prolegomena on the relationship between contemporary analytic theology and the ecumenical creeds.

Diego de Deza has been designed by Christian Pesch as a premolinist while Friedrich Stegmüller has stressed the alleged disagreement between his version of Thomism and the one professed by later Spanish theologians. This paper aims to revisit this interpretation of Deza’s doctrine of divine foreknowledge by showing its fundamental agreement with Domingo Báñez, especially in placing the divine free will as an ingredient of divine knowledge of created things. Moreover, Deza’s teaching about divine grace brings him quite close to a Bañezian idea of premotion insofar as he supposes a special divine aid for every morally good act.

This presentation paper covers the Scriptural evidence that contradicts the premise of settled foreknowledge before creation, as presented in Calvinism, Arminianism, and Molinism. It especially surveys the passages where God is said to make decisions/choices which stand in contradiction to the premise that all His choices were already finalized before creation.

En este TFM se estudia el atributo de la omnisciencia de Dios tal como se ha venido desarrollando en el campo de la teología filosófica dentro de la tradición de la filosofía analítica. ¿Son lógicamente compatibles entre sí la presciencia divina y la libertad humana? La aportación de William Lane Craig a este debate sugiere que sí. Craig recupera la idea de la scientia media de Luis de Molina. Dicha idea podría ser la clave para lograr resolver esta aparente aporía y otros enigmas teológicos relacionados con la omnisciencia y con la providencia de Dios.

This study analyses the attribute of God's omniscience as it has been developed in the field of Philosophical Theology within the tradition of Analytic Philosophy. Are divine foreknowledge and human freedom logically compatible? The contribution of William Lane Craig to this debate suggests so. Craig recovers the idea of the scientia media of Luis de Molina. Such idea could be the key to solving this seeming aporia and other theological enigmas related to the Omniscience and Providence of God.

Tanrısal önbilgi – özgür irade sorununa karşı zaman dışı sonsuzluk çözümünün gerek geleneksel gerekse çağdaş savunucuları bulunmaktadır. Bu çalışmada öncelikle tanrısal önbilgi – özgür irade sorunu ortaya konduktan sonra, zaman dışı sonsuzluk çözümünün geleneksel ve çağdaş savunucularının görüşleri aktarılacaktır. Son olarak, Tanrı’nın zaman dışında olmasının sorunun çözümüne bir katkısı olup olmadığı değerlendirilecektir.

This note addresses the issue of divine providence by engaging the representative po­sitions exhibited in Zondervan’s Four Views of Divine Providence in light of the question, Does God always get what he wants? After briefly surveying and evaluating the implications of the determinist, openness, and Molinist responses as portrayed in Four Views, the essay concludes that an indeterminist perspective that affirms both human freedom to do otherwise than God desires and God’s exhaustive foreknowledge provides the most adequate response to the question such that, whereas God’s desires are sometimes unfulfilled, he will certainly accomplish his all-encompassing and omnibenevolent providential purpose.

The concept of middle knowledge has enjoyed rising prominence among evangelical Christians as evidenced in the works of philosophers, theologians, and apologists such as William Lane Craig,  Alvin Platinga,  Thomas Flint,  and others.  Middle knowledge is an attempt to reconcile God’s sovereignty in predestination and human libertarian free will. This paper seeks to accurately describe the doctrine of middle knowledge as proposed by 16th Century Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina, and then proceed to suggest possible (poor word choice) problems with the doctrine.

En 1588, el jesuita Luis de Molina publicaría su famosa Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, en la cual intenta defender –contra el fatalismo protestante- la libre determinación de la voluntad con respecto a su fin último sobrenatural. Sin embargo, las explicaciones teológicas del P. Molina suponen graves errores metafísicos, particularmente con respecto al concurso general o simultáneo de  Dios sobre las causas segundas en las que Dios no obra in sino cum causa, donde la acción de la creatura determina al Creador a producir conjuntamente un efecto. A partir de la Apología de los Padres Dominicos que recoge la doctrina de Santo Tomás acerca de la premoción física, procederemos en la crítica de esta tesis molinista: sólo Dios es Acto Puro y por eso es causa del movimiento actualizador tanto de las potencias naturales como espirituales, pues todo efecto –sea contingente o necesario– depende de la voluntad divina que trasciende todo orden de necesidad y contingencia: de allí que sólo Dios puede mover eficazmente nuestro intelecto y voluntad, y no por eso nuestros actos dejan de ser  nuestros y personales.

Cuando don Juan Manuel compuso El libro de los estados, entre 1327 y 1330, fue testigo del proceso de fortalecimiento del poder regio de Alfonso XI, que se desarrolló en detrimento del poder nobiliario. Si atendemos a la imagen del rey que se presenta en el texto, vemos que se define, entre otras cosas, por su sometimiento ante la ley y por la corresponsabilidad con la nobleza en el ejercicio del poder. De este modo, se puede comprender que don Juan Manuel, productor cultural y actor político de su tiempo, reaccionó ante el proyecto de Alfonso XI recuperando algunos valores del marco político-cultural molinista de la época de Fernando IV en la que se formó.

While composing El libro de los estados, from 1327 to 1330, don Juan Manuel witnessed the strengthening of the royal power of Alfonso XI, which was a detriment to the noble power. If take a look at the image of the king draw in the text, we see that it is partly defined for his subjugation to the law and for the joint responsibility with his nobles in the execution of power. Thus, we can assume that don Juan Manuel, a cultural producer and a political actor of his time, reacted to Alfonso's project bringing back some values from the molinist political and cultural frame from the times of Fernando IV, in which he was raised.

Dans une lettre bien connue, adressée en décembre 1655 à la comtesse de Maure, madame de Choisy décrit avec vivacité les effets néfastes des doctrines jansénistes : Voyons s'il est juste qu'un particulier sans ordre du Roy, sans bref du Pape, sans caractère d'wesque, ni de curé, se mesle d'escrire incessamment pour réformer la religion et exciter par ce procédé-là des embarras dans les esprits qui ne font autre effet que celuy de faire des libertins et des impies.

Many Christians often confuse the term ‘providence’ with ‘provision’ by defining the former as the latter, revealing its obscurity even among believers. While surely providence encompasses provision, providence involves much more as it connects God’s works from creation to eschatological new creation. Unlike the term ‘sovereignty’, providence gives a sense of comfort to many Christians for many centuries as it implies God’s loving and relational character in addition to God being in control. However, Christians have particularly disagreed over the extent of contribution by God and humankind, especially when it comes to evil and misfortune. Hence, this paper aims to evaluate a synthesis of Paul Helm’s four models of providence as a workable model for understanding providence.