Luis de Molina

Life and Works

Luis de Molina (1535–1600) was a Spanish Jesuit theologian and philosopher whose work became a focal point in early modern debates over divine providence and human free will. Born in Cuenca, in the kingdom of Castile, Molina entered the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1553. He studied philosophy and theology in Coimbra and Évora, major intellectual centers in Portugal, and was deeply formed by Scholastic methods while also engaging with Renaissance humanist currents.

Molina taught philosophy at the University of Coimbra and later theology at the Jesuit college in Évora, where he gained renown as a teacher. His most important work, Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina praescientia, providentia, praedestinatione et reprobatione (1588), usually referred to simply as the Concordia, examines the relationship between free will, grace, divine foreknowledge, and predestination. In this massive treatise he offered the systematic position later labeled Molinism.

Beyond the Concordia, Molina wrote influential treatises on moral theology, law, and economics, notably his multi-volume De iustitia et iure (On Justice and Law), which addressed contracts, property, usury, slavery, and the emerging commercial practices of early modern Europe. He spent his final years in Madrid, working on revisions and further volumes of his writings, and died there on 12 October 1600.

Molinism and Middle Knowledge

Molina’s most distinctive and enduring contribution is his theory of middle knowledge (scientia media), framed as an attempt to harmonize robust human freedom with exhaustive divine foreknowledge and providence.

Traditional accounts typically distinguished:

• Natural knowledge: God’s knowledge of all possibilities—everything that could happen.
• Free knowledge: God’s knowledge of the actual world—everything that will in fact happen, given God’s creative decree.

Molina argued that these two kinds of knowledge were insufficient to explain how God can infallibly know future free actions without determining them. He therefore posited a third logical “moment” of divine knowledge:

• Middle knowledge: God’s knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom—that is, what any free creature would do in any possible set of circumstances, including circumstances that never actually occur.

On this view, before deciding which world to create, God knows, for each possible circumstance, how any rational creature would freely act. By sovereignly choosing which circumstances actually obtain, God can providentially order history while the actions performed within those circumstances remain genuinely free and contingent.

Key features of Molina’s account include:

• Libertarian freedom: Molina defends a strong notion of freedom in which a person could genuinely do otherwise under the very same conditions. Human acts are not necessitated by prior causes, including grace, though grace can strongly influence the will.
• Conditional future contingents: God’s middle knowledge concerns conditionals such as “If person X were in situation S, X would freely choose action A rather than B.” These conditionals are, for Molina, true prior to and independently of God’s decision to create.
• Providence without determinism: Because God knows these conditionals, he can design the world’s history so that certain events are infallibly brought about (for example, key historical or salvific events) through the free acts of creatures, chosen in situations God foresees they would freely respond to in particular ways.

Proponents of Molinism have seen this as preserving both divine sovereignty and authentic human freedom, while providing a detailed account of how God’s providential governance operates through free choices.

Critics have raised several objections. Some argue that the truth of counterfactuals of freedom either undermines freedom (by fixing what the agent would do) or lacks a clear metaphysical grounding if it does not depend on God’s will or on actual creaturely decisions. Others, especially from more deterministic or Thomist perspectives, contend that Molina’s solution diminishes the efficacy of divine grace or makes God dependent on creaturely decisions in ordering the world. These debates made Molina’s position highly controversial in his own time and continue to animate contemporary philosophy of religion.

Views on Grace, Morality, and Economics

Molina’s doctrine of grace was closely tied to his theory of freedom and middle knowledge. In opposition to certain Thomist interpretations that emphasized a physically determining motion of grace, Molina argued for congruent grace—grace offered in circumstances where God knows (through middle knowledge) that a person would freely cooperate with it. Thus, divine election and predestination are coordinated with God’s prior knowledge of how individuals would respond to various graces in different contexts.

This account was criticized by some contemporaries, particularly members of the Dominican order, who worried that Molina made grace too dependent on human response and weakened the doctrine of God’s unconditional initiative in salvation. The resulting De Auxiliis controversy, concerning the “helps of grace,” led to extended proceedings in Rome, though the papacy ultimately declined to issue a definitive condemnation of either side.

In moral theology, Molina was part of the wider Jesuit development of casuistry, the use of detailed case-based reasoning to guide conscience. He contributed to the tradition later associated with probabilism, the idea that one may licitly follow a morally “probable” opinion (supported by solid authority or argument) even if the opposite view seems more probable. Supporters claimed this provided realistic guidance amid moral uncertainty; critics charged that it could be used to justify lax or self-serving decisions.

Molina’s De iustitia et iure occupies an important place in the history of economic and legal thought. Working within the broader Spanish late Scholastic tradition, he analyzed emerging commercial practices such as banking, currency exchange, insurance, and long-distance trade. He discussed:

• Just price: Rather than a fixed intrinsic value, Molina tended to treat just price as determined by common estimation in a competitive market, taking into account scarcity, risk, and demand.
• Usury and interest: He refined traditional prohibitions on usury, distinguishing illicit exploitation from legitimate compensation for risk, opportunity cost, and services rendered.
• Slavery and colonialism: Like other Spanish theologians, he addressed the moral status of enslaved persons and the legitimacy of enslavement in war or trade, sometimes criticizing abuses while nonetheless accepting certain forms of slavery that later thinkers would reject more fully.

These analyses contributed to the development of more sophisticated conceptions of contract, property, and market dynamics, and have been cited by historians as anticipations of certain ideas in modern economic theory.

Reception and Influence

Molina’s ideas sparked significant controversy almost immediately. His Concordia was challenged by Dominican theologians, who defended a more strongly Thomist position on grace and predestination. The dispute culminated in the Congregatio de Auxiliis, a special papal commission convened from 1597 to 1607 to examine the Jesuit and Dominican positions. Although the discussions were intense and detailed, the papacy refrained from a definitive doctrinal ruling, effectively allowing both systems to coexist within Catholic theology.

Over the following centuries, Molinism retained a significant following among Jesuit and some other Catholic theologians, while also drawing criticism from those who saw it as either too rationalistic or insufficiently protective of divine initiative. In Protestant contexts, Molina’s name was less prominent, but aspects of his theory, especially middle knowledge, resurfaced in various debates over predestination, foreknowledge, and human responsibility.

In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, interest in Molina has grown sharply among analytic philosophers of religion. His account of middle knowledge has become a central reference point in contemporary discussions of:

• The compatibility of omniscience and libertarian free will
• The problem of evil and God’s providential ordering of a world with suffering
• Divine guidance of history, prophecy, and petitionary prayer
• The metaphysics of counterfactuals and modality

Some philosophers have developed sophisticated “neo-Molinist” models, applying his framework to questions about possible worlds semantics and the grounding of counterfactual truths. Critics continue to question whether middle knowledge is coherent or necessary, proposing alternative accounts such as open theism, simple foreknowledge, or more deterministic providential schemes.

In both theology and philosophy, Luis de Molina is thus remembered as a pivotal figure whose attempt to articulate a detailed reconciliation of divine sovereignty, grace, and creaturely freedom set an agenda that remains influential and contested in modern debates.