Molina, Luis de

Abstract

Luis de Molina, S.J., was a Spanish Jesuit philosopher-theologian who was a prominent figure in the second scholasticism that flourished in the Iberian Peninsula in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Born in Cuenca in 1535, Molina eventually studied at some of the most prominent universities in Spain: Salamanca and Alcalá. He is perhaps most famous for his Liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina praescientia, providentia, praedestinatione et reprobatione Concordia, a work that sought to reconcile human freedom with divine grace and foreknowledge. The work was fiercely contested by a number of theologians, mostly Dominicans, who accused its Jesuit author of Pelagianism. The dispute played into the de Auxiliis controversy that was only settled through papal intervention. In addition to his work on grace and freedom, Molina also authored a commentary on the prima pars of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae as well as a vast work devoted to law and moral theology, the De iustitia et iure. Molina died in Madrid in 1600 before the latter work could be completed.