Molina, Luis de

(1535-1600)

   A leading sixteenth-century Spanish scholastic and Jesuit, Molina is today chiefly remembered for the doctrine of middle knowledge that he developed from the teachings of his master, Pedro da Fonseca (1528-99). In his Liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina praescientia, providentia, praedestinatione et reprobatione concordia (1588) Molina uses this doctrine to reconcile the libertarian understanding of freedom and divine foreknowledge, since God knows what I shall do tomorrow by knowing in what circumstances I shall find myself tomorrow and what I should do were I in those circumstances; and to reconcile free will and predestination, since God predestines me to Heaven by putting me in circumstances in which he knows I shall freely accept the gifts of his grace. Molina also wrote on ethical and political questions, including his five-volume work, De Justitia et Jure (posthumously published in 1614), a defence of free-market economics and an attack on the contemporary practice of the slave trade.

   See foreknowledge and freedom, problem of; knowledge, free; knowledge, middle; knowledge, natural; omniscience; predestination; scholasticism

   Further reading: Molina 1953 and 1988