Molinism

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

As a Molinist, Fénelon never ceased to combat the assimilation of Jansenism to Thomism, which Jansenists used in order to discredit Roman condemnations against them. He was so fierce that his contemporaries wondered if he wished to proscribe the Thomist theses as well as Jansenism. Some, on the other hand, esteemed that Fénelon drew closer to Thomism when he acknowledged the orthodoxy of the thesis regarding physical premotion, a notion that Thomists used to characterize divine aide given to a will in action. Congruism and Thomism are, in the end, the only two systems in which Fénelon recognizes full orthodoxy. More precisely, in his view, true Thomism is only orthodox in that it is close to Congruism.
Moliniste, Fénelon n’a cessé de combattre l’assimilation du jansénisme au thomisme dont les jansénistes se servaient pour discréditer les condamnations romaines à leur encontre. Il a été si acharné que les contemporains se sont demandé s’il n’avait pas voulu proscrire les thèses thomistes en même temps que le jansénisme. Certains ont au contraire estimé que Fénelon s’était rapproché du thomisme en reconnaissant l’orthodoxie de la thèse de la prémotion physique, notion par laquelle les thomistes caractérisaient le secours divin octroyé à une volonté en acte. Congruisme et thomisme sont finalement les deux seuls systèmes auxquels Fénelon reconnaisse une pleine orthodoxie. Davantage, pour lui, le vrai thomisme n’est orthodoxe que parce qu’il est proche du congruisme.

God is thought to be eternal. Does this mean that he is timeless? Or is he, rather, omnitemporal? In this paper we want to show that God cannot be omnitemporal. Our starting point, which we take from Bernard Williams’ article on the Makropulos Case, is the intuition that it is inappropriate for persons not to become bored after a sufficiently long sequence of time has passed. If God were omnitemporal, he would suffer from boredom. But God is the greatest possible being and therefore cannot be bored. God, hence, is not omnitemporal. After the presentation of our argument, we address several objections by examining possible differences between human and divine persons.

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.

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.

Over the past four decades, the issue of the relationship between divine omniscience and human freedom has been the subject of a great debate in the context of Analytic Philosophy of Religion. Many authors have contributed to the debate by formulating some 'solutions', taking inspiration from the thought of classical authors (e.g. Boethius, Aquinas, Ockham). One of these, is inspired by Luis de Molina's thought. The Author, therefore, aims to present the main theoretical thesis of this solution, following the development in the various publications about this question. The Author also tries to show how the thought of Molina has beeen "translated" in contemporary discourse, the limits of the solution, and make understandable the transition occurred within the debate, which led to the Molinist solution and then to the Open Theism. 1 Per una rapida consultazione delle tesi principali dell'open theism si consiglia il sito ad esso dedicato: http://opentheism.info; sempre nel web, una buona sintesi: J. RISSLER, Open Theism, in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Saggi 72

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.

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.

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.

In addressing the problem of the (in)compatibility of divine fore-knowledge and human freedom, philosophers of religion encounter problems regarding the metaphysics and structure of time. Some models of temporal logic developed for completely independent reasons have proved especially appropriate for representing the temporal structure of the world as Molinism conceives it. In particular, some models of the Thin Red Line (TRL) seem to imply that conditionals of freedom are true or false, as Molinists maintain. Noting the resemblance between Molinism and TRL models, Restall (2011) has advanced some criticisms of Molinism that have also been leveled against TRL models. In particular, Restall believes that the implication p → HFp is not true in TRL models. Because Molinists must also accept that this implication is not true, this is a problem for them. We will show that Restall's criticism is wide of the mark. Firstly, it will be demonstrated that in many open future models (not just TRL) the implication p → HFp is invalid. Secondly, while it is possible to account for this implication, some modifications are required in respect of the branching time semantics. In proposing one such modification, we show that this new

In this paper, I defend a recent model of divine providence called Philosophical Arminianism (henceforth, 'PA'). To do so, it will be necessary to engage in a decent amount of propaedeutic concerning deliberative models of creation and providence. Thus, in what follows, I will begin by describing the goal of two particular theories of providence: PA and Molinism 1. Once I have laid out some constraints on the adequacy of a deliberative model of creation and providence, I will then turn to an exposition of both views. I begin with Molinism, followed by two worries for the view: (i) the Grounding Problem and (ii) the less familiar Deliberative Uselessness Problem. Neither of these difficulties, however, faces PA, as I will demonstrate in my explication of it. Once I have completed my presentation of the PA's model of creation and providence, including an explanation of how it avoids the two above problems facing Molinism, I will turn my attention to a worry (or family of worries) directed at PA (or more specifically, directed at its epistemic conditionals of creaturely freedom). I will conclude by defending PA against these objections.

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.

The results from contemporary science, especially the theory of evolution and quantum physics, seem to favor process theology. Moreover, the evil committed by free will leads some theologians to reduce divine action in order to prevent God from being responsible for evil. Thus, among those who defend a particular providence, Molinism finds many followers. This article first argues that contemporary science does not constrain us to deny particular providence. Second, it criticizes the implicitly deterministic character of Molinism. Thirdly, a Thomistic solution is proposed as an alternative which, by means of a different metaphysical approach to cosmic contingency and freedom of will, defends particular providence without reducing divine activity except in personal sins.

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.

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.

iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Penetriamo nuovamente in epoche che non aspettano dal filosofo né una spiegazione né una trasformazione del mondo, ma la costruzione di rifugi contro l'inclemenza del tempo. Nicolás Gómez Dávila A c u r a d i S t e f a n o B o r s e l l i IL MOLINISMO DIFESO ED EMENDATO N Il Covile, ISSN 2279-6924, è una pubblicazione non periodica e non commerciale, ☞Redazione:

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.