Molinism v. Thomism

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Can somebody give me, or direct me to a concise, clear and easily understandable discussion of these two principles?

I’m not one of these —> 🤓 but I really do want to learn. I’ve read lots of stuff on Molinisim and Thomisim and just when I think I’m beginning to get one of these —> :newidea: I get confused and end up doing this —> :doh2: Somebody help before I go completely—> :whacky:

Thanks.
 
Legal_Eagle said:
Can somebody give me, or direct me to a concise, clear and easily understandable discussion of these two principles?

I’m not one of these —> 🤓 but I really do want to learn. I’ve read lots of stuff on Molinisim and Thomisim and just when I think I’m beginning to get one of these —> :newidea: I get confused and end up doing this —> :doh2: Somebody help before I go completely—> :whacky:

Thanks.
Click to expand...
newadvent.org/cathen/10437a.htm
newadvent.org/cathen/14698b.htm
 
thistle said:
newadvent.org/cathen/10437a.htm
newadvent.org/cathen/14698b.htm
Click to expand...
Thanks, but that’s where I went first. I need something a 4th grader can understand. Not that I’m going to show it to my 4th grader, but that’s evidently the level I operate on. I just can’t fit the New Advent definitions of Molinism and Thomism in my pea sized brain. I never really thought of myself as being dim witted, but reading this stuff is like reading Chineese.
 
The Thomists in question (not to be confused with the general principle of Thomism, i.e. following the understanding of Aquinas, which is an umbrella that includes Molinists) followed the argument of Banez, who said that people are saved because God specifically wills this person to be saved irresistably. They believed that all people were “potentially saved” in that the power of Grace was out there for them to be saved (sufficient Grace), but that only if God “forced” them to accept it (efficient Grace) they would absolutely not be saved.

Molinists, following Molina, said that it’s not that God uses a different form of Grace to “force” certain people to accept the power of Salvation, but rather He chooses the world and circumstances in which certain people will be saved, and then they “activate” the sufficient Grace. For example, God wants to save Tony, and in one possible world Tony will reject God, and in another Tony will accept God (let’s say that the difference is a rainstorm that causes Tony to step inside the nearest building that happens to be a church, and encounters God that way). God then creates the world that would lead to Tony being saved, as opposed to the Thomist answer that God forces the “activation” of Grace on Tony through efficient Grace.

These aren’t the only two possibilities, not even from reading Aquinas’ arguments, but they were the two that clashed head to head in a famous theological controversy that ended in a draw. It’s important to remember that both sides claimed to be upholding Aquinas. 😛

Hope that helps a little!
 
Ghosty said:
Hope that helps a little!
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It helps a lot, thanks.

So, Thomism then, shares at least some ides in common with Calvinism. Whereas with Molinism one’s salvation is more dependant on whether the individual chooses to cooperate with God’s Grace. Correct? In other words, Thomism says God provides the Grace and the person has no say so in the matter. Molinism says that God provides the Grace and the person either says yes or no. Is this close?

Also, what does either school have to say about God’s desire to save all of humanity and not just particular individuals or groups?

Thanks, again.
 
Legal_Eagle said:
The article, which I’ve read before, seems to confirm that Thomism shares at least some ideas with Calvinism. Yes?
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The answer is “yes” to the extent that Thomism (in the narrow sense that Ghosty described) does indicate that those who are saved are predestined by God to be saved. What the Thomists adamantly reject is Calvin’s notion of double predestination, where God also affirmatively predestines souls to hell.
 
Legal_Eagle said:
In other words, Thomism says God provides the Grace and the person has no say so in the matter. Molinism says that God provides the Grace and the person either says yes or no. Is this close?
Click to expand...
They both say God provides the grace but man must correspond. Thomism does not teach that man has no say in the matter; or that his choice does not affect his salvation.
 
I am a Molinist, since I believe that God knows what choice we will make, but He gives us free will to make our own choice. I do not believe that mankind is an automaton that is forced to have faith or not. God grants us the freedom to accept or reject Him, but He is omniscient, so He knows what choice we will make.
 
The Thomist position, as proposed by Banez as opposed to the more general principles laid out by Aquinas, holds to a cooperation with Grace on the part of man, but it’s very, very weak in describing just how this plays out. In my opinion it’s a critical flaw in the position. I also don’t agree with the traditional Molinist position mostly because I don’t buy into the “middle knowledge”, i.e. that God picks the world situation that will save those He will save.

There are other options one can arrive at while remaining in the general category of Thomist (which both Molinists and Banezian “Thomists” fall into), such as God providing enough Grace for everyone to be saved, but allowing those who do not follow it to fall away. This eliminates the distinction that the Banezian Thomists made between efficient and sufficient Grace (a distinction Aquinas never made), and fits Aquinas’ description of how people are damned, namely by rejecting Grace.

In this way, those that are saved are saved by Grace and not by their own actions inspiring Grace (though they must cooperate with Grace), and those that are damned are damned entirely by their own choices. God predestines the Saved because He dwells in Eternity, outside of time, and all moments in time are present to Him at once. Therefore God knows every single person who is saved “before” it happens, though in reality there is no “before” or “after” with God; He simply sees all things as they are, and He sees all moments at once. Those who are predestined to Heaven are carried to Heaven infallibly not because of the omnipotence of God’s Will in pushing them to accept Grace, but by the fact that God already sees them in Heaven through His eternal (non-time based) presence and vision. It is those who accept and work with Grace who are saved, without any previous merits of their own, and God knows exactly who those people are because it’s “already happened” in His experience, even though we are experiencing the moments in sequence.

This latter option also preserves freedom of will, because we’re not forced by our future to make the choices we will, but rather the choices we will make causes the future that is already present to God in Eternity. It’s just a little mind-bending to juggle mentally between Eternity and time, but that’s exactly what Aquinas told the monks of Monte Cassino to do if they were to understand how predestination and free will are compatible.

Incidently, it’s fairly rare to find a “Thomist” Thomist anymore in my experience. I don’t personally know any Dominicans who hold to the view of the Banezian “Thomists”, though it used to practically be a party line for them. 😛

Peace and God bless!
 
Yay I sure wish I;d sen this thread before I posted my poll last week. 😃
 
As you see here in replies like Ghosty’s, popular contemporary opinions lean toward the Molinistic side. But it would be incorrect to say that there are currently no defenders of Thomism. Garrigou-Lagrange, one of the most celebrated theologians of the 20th century, was an ardent Thomist, and many Dominican and Thomistic schools support the doctrine.

As Ludwig Ott helpfully points out in Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, the dispute revolves around two poles: divine universal causation and God’s universal salvific will. The traditional Catholic theologian is strongly committed to both of these doctrines. Divine universal causation says that God is the cause of every single thing that is real–all things that exist are created by God. God’s universal salvific will is the idea that God desires that all men be saved (1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9). Molinists stress God’s universal salvific will, and Thomists (or Banezians) stress divine universal causation.

Instead of trying to explain why these doctrines are at the heart of the issue, it may be easier to see how they play into the prima facie objections. Here are the two paradigmatic objections simplified:

Molinist: God must first look to see how we will respond to His grace before he decides how he will create the world and distribute grace.
Thomist: But if that is true, then God does not cause everything, and he must wait on human decisions before deciding what to cause. The human decision is in some sense uncaused since it is (logically) prior to God’s causal activity and an action of the Creator is somehow dependent on the actions of creatures!​

Thomist: God causes the elect to freely cooperate with his grace. Since God is the creator of all things, it is not impossible for him to cause free cooperation.
Molinist: I deny that God can cause truly free cooperation. Therefore your position entails a sort of fatalism with respect to cooperation with grace. If God only causes some people to freely cooperate, then how can we say that he desires all to be saved?​

These positions are very nuanced, and an official debate went on for many years in the Church regarding them (see 4 below). To my mind, Molinism is analogous to Arminianism, and Thomism is analogous to Calvinism. That is, they are motivated by some of the same factors, but Arminianism and Calvinism are very much further apart than Molinism and Thomism. The Catholic positions are also inevitably much more theologically rigorous. Because of this, an understanding of the Protestant positions may be a good preliminary measure to understanding the Catholic positions.

Here are some sources that may be helpful (in increasing order according to difficulty and length):


  1. *]Ludwig Ott’s book Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, chapter 3
    *]Father Hardon’s analysis
    *]Lawrence Feingold on God’s Universal Salvific Will
    *]Congregatio de Auxiliis
    *]Freddoso’s essay on Luis de Molina
    *]Garrigou-Lagrange’s book Predestination
    *]Garrigou-Lagrange’s book Grace (available here)
    *]Freddoso’s translations of some of Molina’s disputations
    *]Freddoso’s partial translation of Molina’s Concordia, On Divine Foreknowledge

    God bless,
    -zip 🙂
 
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