Article 2. Molinism And Congruism
The point in which these two systems meet, and in regard to which they differ from Thomism and Augustinianism, is the definition of efficacious grace as efficax ab extrinseco sive per accidens.
This conception was violently attacked by the Spanish Dominican Bañez and other divines. About 1594, the controversy between the followers of Bañez and the Molinists waxed so hot that Pope Clement VIII appointed a special commission to settle it. This was the famous Congregatio de Auxiliis, consisting of picked theologians from both the Dominican and the Jesuit orders. [pg 256] It debated the matter for nine full years without arriving at a decision. Finally Pope Paul V, at the suggestion of St. Francis de Sales, declared both systems to be orthodox and defensible, and strictly forbade the contending parties to denounce each other as heretical.[759]
While Thomism devoted its efforts mainly to the defense of grace, Molinism made it its chief business to champion the dogma of free-will.
1. Molinism.—Molinism takes its name from the Jesuit Luis de Molina, who published a famous treatise under the title Concordia Liberi Arbitrii cum Gratiae Donis at Lisbon, in 1588. His teaching may be outlined as follows:
a) In actu primo there is no intrinsic and ontological but merely an extrinsic and accidental distinction between efficacious and sufficient grace, based upon their respective effects. Sufficient grace becomes efficacious by the consent of the will; if the will resists, grace remains inefficacious (inefficax) and merely sufficient (gratia mere sufficiens). Consequently, one and the same grace may be efficacious in one case and inefficacious in another. It all depends on the will.[760]
b) This theory involves no denial of the priority and superior dignity of grace in the work of salvation. The will, considered as a mere faculty, and in actu primo, is raised to the supernatural order by prevenient grace (gratia praeveniens), which imparts to it all the moral and physical power necessary to perform free salutary acts. Neither can the actus secundus be regarded as a product of the unaided will; it is the result of grace coöperating with free-will.[761] Consequently, the will by giving its consent does not increase the power of grace, but it is grace which makes possible, prepares, and aids the will in performing free acts. To say that the influence of grace goes farther than this would be to assert that it acts independently of the will, and would thereby deny the freedom of the latter.[762]
c) The infallibility with which efficacious grace works its effects is to be explained not by God's absolute will, but by His infallible foreknowledge through the scientia media,—a Molinistic postulate which was first defined and scientifically demonstrated by Father Fonseca, S. J., the teacher of Suarez.[763] God foreknows not only the absolutely free acts (futura) of His rational creatures [pg 258] by the scientia visionis, but likewise their hypothetically free acts (futuribilia) by means of the scientia media, and hence He infallibly knows from all eternity what attitude the free-will of man would assume in each case if grace were given him. Consequently, when God, in the light of this eternal foreknowledge, actually bestows a grace, this grace will prove efficacious or inefficacious according as He has foreknown whether the will will give or withhold its consent. Thus can the infallibility of efficacious grace be reconciled with the dogma of free-will without prejudice to such other dogmas as final perseverance and the predestination of the elect, because God by virtue of the scientia media has it absolutely in His power to give or withhold His graces in each individual case.[764]
Critical Estimate of Molinism.—Even the most determined opponents of Molinism admit that this system possesses three important advantages.
a) First, it gives a satisfactory account of the [pg 259] sufficiency of “merely sufficient grace,” which in its physical nature does not differ essentially from efficacious grace.