Molina Luis de (1535–1600), Spanish Jesuit theologian and philosopher. He studied and taught at Coimbra and Évora and also taught in Lisbon and Madrid. His most important works are the Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis (‘Free Will and Grace,’ 1588), Commentaria in primam divi Thomae partem (‘Commentary on the First Part of Thomas’s Summa,’ 1592), and De justitia et jure (‘On Justice and Law,’ 1592–1613).
Molina is best known for his doctrine of middle knowledge (scientia media). Its aim was to preserve free will while maintaining the Christian doctrine of the efficacy of divine grace. It was opposed by Thomists such as Bañez, who maintained that God exercises physical predetermination over secondary causes of human action and, thus, that grace is intrinsically efficacious and independent of human will and merits. For Molina, although God has foreknowledge of what human beings will choose to do, neither that knowledge nor God’s grace determine human will; the cooperation (concursus) of divine grace with human will does not determine the will to a particular action. This is made possible by God’s middle knowledge, which is a knowledge in between the knowledge God has of what existed, exists, and will exist, and the knowledge God has of what has not existed, does not exist, and will not exist. Middle knowledge is God’s knowledge of conditional future contingent events, namely, of what persons would do under any possible set of circumstances. Thanks to this knowledge, God can arrange for certain human acts to occur by prearranging the circumstances surrounding the choice without determining the human will. Thus, God’s grace is concurrent with the act of the will and does not predetermine it, rendering the Thomistic distinction between sufficient and efficacious grace superfluous. See also AQUINAS, FREE WILL PROBLEM , FUTURE CONTINGENTS , MIDDLE KNOWLEDG. J.J.E.G.