Thomist or Molinist?

[picasso_13]

Since my Protestant friends are usually well versed on knowing whether they are an Arminian or a Calvinist, I wondering where the Catholics stand. Do you consider yourself a Thomist or Molinist when looking at things such as the elect and predestination?

I think I lean more towards the Thomist side.

 

[Hesychios]

I am delighted that you brought this up!

I look forward to learning something from this thread, although I don’t have high hopes that many will venture into these waters, most will not remember who de Molina is or what he wrote. I suspect a great many are Molinists in perspective although they are not aware of it.

I myself will refrain staking a position. As a Byzantine Catholic the question doesn’t really fit and my theology is apophatic.

I do recommend that anyone coming across this thread study up on the question and stake a position!

Michael

 

[picasso_13]

MOLINISM
Molinism, named after Luis de Molina, is a theological system for reconciling human freedom with God’s grace and providence. Presupposing a strongly libertarian account of freedom, Molinists assert against their rivals that the grace whereby God cooperates with supernaturally salvific acts is not intrinsically efficacious. To preserve divine providence and foreknowledge, they then posit “middle knowledge”, through which God knows, prior to his own free decrees, how any possible rational agent would freely act in any possible situation. Beyond this, they differ among themselves regarding the ground for middle knowledge and the doctrines of efficacious grace and predestination.
Molinism is an influential system within Catholic theology for reconciling human free choice with God’s grace, providence, foreknowledge and predestination. Originating within the Society of Jesus in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, it encountered stiff opposition from Bañezian Thomists and from the self-styled Augustinian disciples of Michael Baius and Cornelius Jansen.

Molinism’s three distinguishing marks are a strongly libertarian account of human freedom; the consequent conviction that the grace whereby God cooperates with supernaturally salvific free acts is not intrinsically efficacious; and the postulation of divine middle knowledge (scientia media), by which God knows, before any of his free decrees regarding creatures, how any possible rational being would freely act in any possible situation (see MOLINA, LUIS DE §§ 2-3).

Entire Article www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/molinism.htm

 

[picasso_13]

Hesychios:

I myself will refrain staking a position. As a Byzantine Catholic the question doesn’t really fit and my theology is apophatic.

Michael

Could you givea brief explanation of this theology? I’m always up for learning more. I have just started this journey to figure out where I stand on these issues. Funny it all started by talking to a Calvinist.

Also, sorry for not putting Augustine as an option in the poll. As I said I am just learning about the different positions in the Church. I am so glad that our Church is big enough for all these ideas to be debated.

Another article I found:ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ120.HTM

 

[Melchior]

Hesychios:

I am delighted that you brought this up!

I look forward to learning something from this thread, although I don’t have high hopes that many will venture into these waters, most will not remember who de Molina is or what he wrote. I suspect a great many are Molinists in perspective although they are not aware of it.

I myself will refrain staking a position. As a Byzantine Catholic the question doesn’t really fit and my theology is apophatic.

I do recommend that anyone coming across this thread study up on the question and stake a position!

Michael

Michael,

Could a Byzantine Catholic be an Augstinian or Thomist? If I become Catholic it will most likely be Melkite. But the only reason I did not become Orthodox a while ago is because I am a convinced Agustinian or maybe Thomist when it comes to Election. And the Orhtodox have no room for Predestiniation in therir theology. I have spoken with several priests about it.

Catholicism seems much bigger, in this regard, to me.

Mel

 

[thomist]

Duhhh!!!

 

[Hesychios]

I only now realized that there was a question or two for me here.

I am not a theologion or a bishop but I’ll attempt to answer some of the questions. There is always a risk that I may inadvertantly misrepresent the church’s position, I take full reponsibility for any errors. I ask your understanding and forgiveness in advance.

Byzantine Spirituality is not based upon the Augustinian tradition. Augustines influence was most directly on the West, and a great deal of the doctrinal formulations in the west are based upon Augustinian philosophy/theology. Ditto for Thomist Philosophy, (and de Molina) which is peculiar to the Western church.

Eastern Catholic Priests and Deacons are generally familiar with Augustinian Theology and Thomist Philosophy, it is usually part of their seminary training, as far as I know.

The Byzantine liturgy and prayers reflect the theology of the Greek East. Byzantine Theology is a match to Orthodox theology in almost every way, (with the exception that we understand Western theological constructs as a valid for them).

To reiterate, Catholic churches recognize each others theologies as equally valid, but different, perspectives on the same underlying Truths, or Dogmas. All Catholics have a right to receive the Eucharist in other Catholic Sui Iuris churches without any obligation to change their own understanding of doctrine.

One can convert directly into the Byzantine Catholic church if one has come to an understanding of the Faith as a Byzantine. People may transfer to the Byzantine Catholic church from the Roman Church if their understanding of theology matches Byzantine teaching and they follow the Byzantine liturgical life and calendar through a Byzantine parish. The Eparch (bishop) will usually require a 1 to 3 year waiting period and a favorable report from the parish priest before going ahead with a canonical transfer. The request to transfer must come from the layperson, and is not suggested by the clergy.

There are many Roman Catholics who register with Byzantine Catholic parishes and follow the Byzantine liturgical life for many years and do not ultimately transfer into the Byzantine church, there is no pressure to do so.

So, for various reasons, there are worshippers at Byzantine parishes that have an Augustinian understanding of theology, there is nothing to forbid them from holding these views, but that theological perspective will not normally be taught at the parish or be reflected in the homiles.

I hope that this helps somewhat.

In Christ,
Michael

 

[Melchior]

Hesychios:

I only now realized that there was a question or two for me here.

I am not a theologion or a bishop but I’ll attempt to answer some of the questions. There is always a risk that I may inadvertantly misrepresent the church’s position, I take full reponsibility for any errors. I ask your understanding and forgiveness in advance.

Byzantine Spirituality is not based upon the Augustinian tradition. Augustines influence was most directly on the West, and a great deal of the doctrinal formulations in the west are based upon Augustinian philosophy/theology. Ditto for Thomist Philosophy, (and de Molina) which is peculiar to the Western church.

Eastern Catholic Priests and Deacons are generally familiar with Augustinian Theology and Thomist Philosophy, it is usually part of their seminary training, as far as I know.

The Byzantine liturgy and prayers reflect the theology of the Greek East. Byzantine Theology is a match to Orthodox theology in almost every way, (with the exception that we understand Western theological constructs as a valid for them).

To reiterate, Catholic churches recognize each others theologies as equally valid, but different, perspectives on the same underlying Truths, or Dogmas. All Catholics have a right to receive the Eucharist in other Catholic Sui Iuris churches without any obligation to change their own understanding of doctrine.

One can convert directly into the Byzantine Catholic church if one has come to an understanding of the Faith as a Byzantine. People may transfer to the Byzantine Catholic church from the Roman Church if their understanding of theology matches Byzantine teaching and they follow the Byzantine liturgical life and calendar through a Byzantine parish. The Eparch (bishop) will usually require a 1 to 3 year waiting period and a favorable report from the parish priest before going ahead with a canonical transfer. The request to transfer must come from the layperson, and is not suggested by the clergy.

There are many Roman Catholics who register with Byzantine Catholic parishes and follow the Byzantine liturgical life for many years and do not ultimately transfer into the Byzantine church, there is no pressure to do so.

So, for various reasons, there are worshippers at Byzantine parishes that have an Augustinian understanding of theology, there is nothing to forbid them from holding these views, but that theological perspective will not normally be taught at the parish or be reflected in the homiles.

I hope that this helps somewhat.

In Christ,
Michael

Thanks, Michael. That is hepful.

Mel

 

[Hesychios]

Apophatic Theology

I will have to give a very brief response that will not do the subject justice.

Western theology is basically cataphatic (not entirely though, I’ll get back to that*). It is structured on building blocks of facts or knowledge. Cataphatic theology then, strives to determine and define what we know to be Truth.

God is ALL POWERFUL
God is ALL SEEING
God is ALL KNOWING

The idea is to know as much about God as possible, to learn until we are filled up! Most of the threads in this Forum are based upon that premise.

Apophatic theology defines what the Divine is not! It is not to deny what we know to be True but to deny what we know to not be true.

God is WITHOUT LIMITS
The emphasis is on the mystery, it is not what we know of God but what we do not and often can not know. The Cloud of Unknowing. Silence.

The mystery of God is beyond our ability to absorb, we are incapable. But it is not to say that do not wish to know God, we penetrate deeper and deeper into the mysteries of God knowing that we will never penetrate the depths of His unfathomable Being, it goes on and on ever and forever.

*The western monastic tradition has been influenced by Apophatic theology. This has been attributed to John Cassian, a Father of the church and a contemporary of Saint Augustine.

In Christ,
Michael

 

[Hesychios]

Apophatic Theology II
(shamelessly boosted from another website!)

Three theologians who emphasized the importance of negative theology to an orthodox understanding of God, were Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, and Basil the Great. John of Damascus also employed it when he wrote that positive statements about God reveal ‘not the nature, but the things around the nature.’

It continues to be particularly prominent in Eastern Christianity (see Gregory Palamas), and is used to balance cataphatic theology. Apophatic statements are crucial to all orthodox Christian theology. God is described negatively as not a creation (uncreated), not definable in terms of space (infinite), invisible, beyond the reach of understanding (incomprehensible), whose being is not conceptually confinable to assumptions based on time (eternal), etc. In other words, God’s essence cannot be spoken of (ineffable), and can only be compared to what it is not (incomparable).

In sum, Christianity teaches by apophatic theology that, it is not necessary or even possible to know the essence of God; knowledge of God is true knowledge, when it is limited to what is revealed, and does not presume to venture beyond this.

+T+

 

[Ian_McClave]

1. The question (Molinist or Thomist) has almost become anachronistic in theology since the Popes wisely refused to side with either in the details of the workings of grace, freedom and predestination.
2. This is because “God is not in time. His transcendence places Him in an eternity which has neither past nor future, but only an eternal present”. (Henri Rondet)
3. Thus all questions about whether God grants his grace “before” or “after” a prevision of what he knows we will do with it is by definition non-sense.
4. What is certain and what we must know is that Christ died for all human beings and that we have all been given “more than enough grace to save our souls” (St. Francis de Sales). Note: “MORE than enough…”
5. The realities of both grace and freedom are ultimate mysteries and can only be understood in the Beatific Vision. How much more their intimate reconciliations! Thus it is a playful hubris which seeks to “resolve” what cannot be understood or “known” until the Beatific Vision if anything of it all is proper to be known at all, ever.

From a note from Stephen Hand, TCRNews.com