Molina between Fideism and Theological Inversion

Having presented, very schematically, Molina’s doctrine and — as a necessary counterpoint — that of Báñez, let us now justify in what sense we can maintain that Molina, contrary to Báñez, moves in rationalist positions with regard to the theme of divine voluntarism — in which, in sum, what one attempts to elucidate is which divine attribute holds preeminence: will or intellect.

Because if we consider God as an absolutely free will in his omnipotence, any rationalist restriction we might try to impose upon him would be meaningless, since will in God would be equivalent to reason or knowledge — for that which God would know would be what he had decreed through his will: that is, there would be no instances superior to his own will. Now, if we consider the exercise of the divine will as subject to an examination of reasons — whether by reason of man’s freedom or of the objectivity of the tablets of the law and of the physical laws — we cannot consider God absolutely omnipotent, but rather submitted to principles of reason that would go beyond his own will; for this reason, God would not know something by having decreed it, but rather divine knowledge would be prior to his will and would be limiting it — that is, telling it what it can do and what it cannot, what is within its reach or what not even God in his omnipotence — which would therefore not be such — could accomplish. That is, not even God could contradict the principle of Archimedes, nor the first commandment. Nor could he determine the acts of man, because then divine justice would disappear; and yet the supreme being can never be unjust, since this would imply contradicting his own divine essence.

Now, in the Báñez-Molina discussion, the terms in which we have presented the theme of divine voluntarism appear clearly marked. First, Báñez eliminates middle knowledge, since, according to him, this science would imply that God’s knowledge of future contingents would be fallible — for it would depend on a created cause that had not been determined by God and that could therefore act in an unforeseen manner, and thus cause middle knowledge to fail in its foreknowledge. Therefore, according to Báñez, God’s knowledge of things cannot be founded on something exterior to his own essence, because only in that essence does God know infallibly everything — both the necessary and the possible, and the contingent conjunctions of things that have being at some moment in time. In this way, for knowing conditioned futures, the science of simple intelligence would suffice. And for knowing how man will in fact act, the science of vision suffices, because this science is subsequent to the decree granted by God. That is, God knows in his own decree how man will act, placed in a determinate order of circumstances. These would therefore be decrees ante praevisa merita (before foreseen merits) — that is, God would know in the very decision of his will the action of man, and in God, knowing would be the same as decreeing, as deciding with his own will what man must do.

Molina, for his part, criticizes this solution by pointing out that the freedom of man, as well as divine justice and goodness, would disappear if God’s decrees were ante praevisa merita. This solution would bring the Thomists and Báñez closer to the theses of Luther, who openly denied human freedom by acknowledging that the antinomy between the omniscience and infinite power of God and human freedom is irresolvable. For this reason, Luther came to maintain that God is the cause of sin. But this was unacceptable to the Thomists, who could not fail to acknowledge freedom in man as something that experience itself makes manifest. Nevertheless, their solution — presenting a distinction between necessity of the consequence and necessity of the consequent, and acknowledging that man is free in potency — but not in fact — not to follow the divine decree, could not convince Molina, who therefore in his Concordia attempts to resolve the irresolvable antinomy that constitutes the Gordian knot of all the de auxiliis controversies. To this end he resorts to middle knowledge. Through this science, God knows how any man would act, placed in any order of circumstances. Therefore, in the light of this science, God decides to place man in one state of things or another, with man himself being the one who, by virtue of his innate freedom, performs his actions. In this way, Molina believes he preserves human freedom and divine justice and goodness. For this reason, divine decrees can only be post praevisa merita (after foreseen merits) — that is, only after knowing how man is going to act and what his merits will be does God decide to issue his decree. These decrees post praevisa merita represent a great restriction of the voluntarism defended by Báñez and respond to reason’s own demand of supposing that man acts freely in his acts, since otherwise he could not be considered responsible for them. This defense of human freedom against divine determinism will, incidentally, be the foundation that will lead the Jesuits along the path of probabilism and the defense of a Catholic morality that, in its rationalism, will be critical of a blind obedience to laws that does not respond to an examination of reasons; for this reason, the probabilist Jesuits will defend that, faced with any moral dilemma, it is always licit — even contradicting the divine law — to follow the most probable opinion, provided that a careful examination of reasons so counsels. In this way, the Jesuits will make a practical application of this principle when, asking themselves whether it is licit for them to disobey the fifth commandment and kill the Jansenists — who, as is well known, censured probabilist morality, branding it as lax — they answer, after a consideration of reasons, that it is not, because the greatness of the Society of Jesus could never suffer harm from attacks so insignificant. Given this, it also seems clear what fate the Jansenists would have had to suffer, had the Jesuits concluded — after a careful examination of reasons — that the Jansenist attacks merited a response proportionate to their capacity to inflict harm.

As we are seeing, it seems clear that Domingo Báñez — by rejecting middle knowledge and by maintaining that God knows through the science of vision how man is going to act (that is, God knows how he is going to act because he has previously decided through his decree that he act in a determinate manner) — adheres to the theses of divine voluntarism: the defense of a God whose omnipotence admits no limits and whose omniscience is in direct relation with the decisions of his will; a God who is pure infinite and unlimited power in his pretensions and who offers the image of a supreme being that would act moved by the capricious command of his will — that is, indeterminately and without being submitted to any necessity other than that of actualizing the whims of his will; a supreme being in relation to whom the created world would appear to respond rather to pure chance than to principles of necessity, appearing thus as an unstable and unmotivated world subject to the capricious vagaries of the will of the supreme being rather than to a determinate plan; in sum, a world in which no more rationality could be found than in the dream of a madman, and which would render useless any attempt at study subject to reason.

On the contrary, it seems clear that Molina — desiring to preserve the freedom of man and divine justice and goodness, and therefore maintaining that God’s decrees are post praevisa merita, that is, that divine knowledge through middle knowledge of how man would act, placed in one order of circumstances or another, must be prior to the decision of his will to place him in a determinate order of things — limits the pretensions of God’s absolute omnipotence, which would no longer appear to us as pure arbitrary will, but whose decisions would be submitted to reasons (moral, physical...) within the teleological projection of a program that would give meaning to the created world, and to man within it, and would render it susceptible to rational study. Therefore, Molinist doctrine represents a critical step with regard to the theses of divine voluntarism.

Now, one might ask: does Molina really resolve the antinomy we have been mentioning? Do the rational motivations — divine justice, human freedom, middle knowledge — represent a true restriction of God’s omnipotent will?

But before answering these questions and before proceeding to a reinterpretation of the de auxiliis controversy, let us outline the general lines along which the doctrine of freedom proposed from philosophical materialism ⁶ runs. In particular, it will be of great use to us to make use of the typology of philosophical conceptions of freedom offered by Gustavo Bueno. He, first of all — starting from materialist ontological presuppositions — opposes an indeterminist conception of freedom, denying that freedom can exist apart from causality. ⁷ For this reason, freedom would imply causality and, as an attribute of the person, could be defined as the power to cause one’s acts. In this way, it is the acts of the person that forge his freedom. Now, according to Bueno, it is indispensable that those acts “have been projected as episodes of a global process in a prolepsis whose components must have been given by anamnesis previously.” ⁸ That is, only the acts of a person who found himself in a situation in which his trajectory as a person had been “prefigured with certainty at a given scale” — as happens in a political society, in which persons already have, so to speak, their “orbits” fixed in advance — could be considered free.

Thus, Gustavo Bueno — by acknowledging that freedom cannot exist apart from causality — presents a typology of philosophical conceptions of freedom in which the antinomy of freedom appears formulated through the idea of causality. To carry out this classification of philosophical doctrines of freedom, Bueno resorts to the axes of the anthropological space. Let us recall that the anthropological space is a system of coordinates in symploké devised to order and relationally analyze the different anthropological materials, which would appear articulated around three axes: the circular axis (which gathers the relations that men maintain among themselves), the radial axis (which gathers the relations of men with terms of nature — that is, entities lacking intelligence), and the angular axis (which gathers the relations that men maintain with non-human entities but endowed with intelligence, though not necessarily divine, since they could be daemons, extraterrestrials, or animals that would possess numinous characteristics).

Gustavo Bueno proceeds to classify philosophical doctrines of freedom, attending to what he calls “the horizon of freedom,” which can be impersonal or personal. In the impersonal horizon, the antinomy of freedom would be mediated by a dialectical opposition between a natural, non-proleptical order and human operational activity. This natural order would refer to the radial axis. And the type of causality proper to this horizon would be efficient causality. Here the doctrines of the Stoics, and also of Kant, Schopenhauer, and Sartre, would have to be situated.

With respect to the personal horizon, Gustavo Bueno points out that here the antinomy of freedom would arise from the opposition between human personal terms and also personal terms, whether human or not (and for this reason Bueno situates in this horizon both the circular axis and the angular axis). For this reason, the causality proper to this horizon would be final causality, since these personal terms would operate operationally in accordance with plans and programs fixed in advance.

On the angular axis, the opposition would be given between human persons and non-human persons capable — thanks to their power and intelligence — of determining and enveloping the actions of men. Therefore, here we could situate the Báñez-Molina controversy.

Finally, on the circular axis the antinomy would have as its terms human persons against other also human persons. And it is on this axis that Bueno properly situates the true antinomy of freedom, after rejecting — from materialist presuppositions — cosmic (natural) causality and divine causality as metaphysical, though philosophically pertinent (since they have permitted the formulation of the antinomy) from the point of view of a doctrine of freedom that considers the idea of freedom interwoven with that of causality, as against indeterminist conceptions.

Once delineated — in an extremely concise manner, but sufficient for our purpose — the doctrine of freedom from which we are going to reinterpret the Báñez-Molina controversy, we will attempt to answer the previously formulated questions. Does Molina really resolve the antinomy we have been mentioning — apparently inextricable? Do the rational motivations — human freedom, divine justice, middle knowledge — represent a true restriction of God’s omnipotent will? And if so, what consequences would follow?

First of all, we must say that the objective that moves Molina at every moment is to preserve human freedom. Man cannot be, as Luther maintains, a corrupt automaton. If this were the case, man’s responsibility for his actions would be nonexistent and, therefore, so too the value of his works. Thus, only by admitting human freedom as an irrenunciable principle can man commit himself to his actions and to his conduct in the world and, consequently, acknowledge himself responsible for his acts. Moreover, if man did not freely perform his actions, God could not be just in his rewards and punishments. And the justice of God is something that the revealed word itself presents as unquestionable. Now, God is also always presented as omnipotent and omniscient. But then, how can man be free? Because if man is free to do one thing or another, will divine knowledge not be fallible? And would not human freedom equally limit the omnipotence of God? Because how could God be omnipotent if he could not force man in his actions?

As we have seen, Molina resorts to middle knowledge and to simultaneous concurrence in order to reconcile divine omnipotence and omniscience with human freedom. That is, God knows infallibly through middle knowledge how man would act placed in any state of things and, in function of this knowledge, decides to place him in one order of circumstances or another. It seems that in this way both the thesis and the antithesis of the antinomy are preserved. However, we are going to maintain that Molina, as cannot be otherwise, fails in his attempt to resolve the mentioned antinomy. In reality, despite the ingenious solution Molina offers by resorting to middle knowledge, the antinomy remains unresolved in its inextricability in Molina’s system, because the following objection can always be presented to him. But let us hear it from the mouth of Báñez himself in the discourse he addresses to the judges of the Holy Office:

“Therefore, we argue against Molina in a manner similar to how he argues against Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas... For this reason, our argument will be ad hominem and we will propose it starting from his doctrine: God necessarily knows, as Molina says, through middle knowledge, the infinite possible orders of things he can produce; but from all of them he chooses a determinate order of things — of nature and grace — knowing that some men, placed in such an order of things, with such circumstances of nature and grace, will make good use of their free will and will therefore be justified and saved; likewise, he foreknows that other men — almost innumerable — if placed in such an order of things, will make bad use of their free will and will be condemned. Then, we argue against Molina as follows: God could have created — men whom, placed in one order of things, he foreknew would be condemned — in another order of things, knowing through middle knowledge that in this other order of things they would make good use of their free will. Therefore, it is proper to someone harsh and fierce, rather than to the most clement prince, that, by his will alone, he should have willed and chosen that order of things and in it created those men, foreknowing that in that order of things they would make bad use of their free will and would be condemned forever, and yet have placed others in another order of things, foreknowing that, with certainty, in this order they would make good use of their free will. Therefore, we want to know: why does he decide to establish one order of things before another, knowing that in this order some are going to be saved and others are going to perish? Thus their fate could have been the contrary. For God knew that if those who are going to be saved were placed in another order of things, they would be condemned; and, conversely, if those who are going to be condemned were placed in some other order of things, they would be saved. Certainly, to no first reason can this difference of effects be attributed, save to the divine will, which chooses some in particular and all the others, on the contrary, does not choose, but permits them to sin, so as to show in these his justice and power, and in those, on the contrary, his mercy. But why he should have wished in particular to show his mercy in some and his justice in all the others cannot be attributed to any reason except the divine will.” ⁹

And against the response Molina presents — saying that the goodness, equanimity, and clemency of God prevent him, without taking into account the use of free will, from having chosen and predestined only some men — Báñez adds that children who are baptized and die immediately would have been predestined without taking into account the use of their free will. To this, Molina points out that the fact that a priest has the free intention to baptize would not be an effect of predestination, but would merely be a contingent future foreknown by God. But faced with this response, Báñez in turn objects the following: foreknowing the use of the free will of the priest does not justify God more than ordering through his eternal predestination such use of the free will of the priest for the salvation of the child. Thus Báñez will add: “If God is not cruel, according to Molina, by placing by virtue of his free will a child in an order of things in which he foreknows that it will be baptized by a free act of another, and by deciding to create many other children in a determinate order of things, foreknowing that in this order they will die without the immediate remedy — will he indeed be cruel for ordering it by virtue of his own will, and not merely foreknowing it? That is, will he be cruel for preordaining — and for this very reason God has foreknowledge — that his minister should come to baptize him and that the child should thus be saved, and yet for permitting from eternity that others die in original sin?” ¹⁰

We have seen that Gustavo Bueno situates both the doctrine of Báñez and that of Molina within the angular axis — that is, the antinomy of freedom would be given by the opposition between human operational subjects and non-human subjects that are also operational and therefore endowed with will and intellect. Therefore, the antinomy between the omnipotent and omniscient God and free man would have to be placed on the angular axis, which moreover, from a materialist perspective, would be more adequate than the radial axis (cosmic, non-proleptical causality) for the treatment of the problem of human freedom; nevertheless, in the last instance, it would be necessary to go beyond the angular axis, to end up on the circular axis — which is equivalent to saying that the true antinomy of freedom will be given through the opposition between human persons and other also human persons.

On the other hand, Gustavo Bueno points out that the God of Báñez — who would determine the actions of man through physical premotion — seems to approach the radial axis, insofar as the causality of the Báñezian God, who determines man most freely according to the command of his will, would assimilate itself to a greater degree to the type of non-proleptical causality — that is, efficient causality, found on the radial axis (cosmic causality), since it would respond only to the arbitrary impulses of his will and not to a plan subordinated to rational motivations — than to proleptical causality, that is, final causality, which prevails on the circular axis. And for this reason also the causality of the God of Molina — who possesses middle knowledge and who acts with man through simultaneous concurrence, but without determining him in his acting — would assimilate itself to a greater degree to the type of final causality proper to the circular axis, though also to the angular axis, whenever divine voluntarism appears limited.

However, let us recall the criticism Báñez presents to Molina. Why would God be more just for foreknowing, instead of preordaining, the merits of man? Could not God have placed a man in that state of circumstances in which he knew he would have made good use of his free will and would have been saved, instead of placing him in the order of things in which he knew he was going to be condemned? Molina himself is aware of this criticism, and for this reason resorts to the mysterious terribleness of God to explain why God places a man in a determinate state of things, knowing that in that state he is going to be condemned, instead of placing him in the state in which he knows he would be saved with certainty. But what does this mean? Has a voluntarist thesis not inadvertently appeared in Molina’s doctrine?

As we have seen, Molina believed he had resolved the inextricable antinomy between divine omnipotence and omniscience and human freedom. But did he actually manage it? Here we will maintain that the antinomy is altogether irresolvable and that, for this reason, Molina, in trying to resolve it, leads onto-theology to a limit state in which the contradictions are already insurmountable. Because, on the one hand, Molina — who believed he had preserved human freedom and divine justice — must nonetheless end up resorting to the mysterious terribleness of God to explain why God places a man in a state of things in which he knows he is not going to make good use of his free will and is going to be condemned, when he could have placed him in the state in which he knows he would have been saved. Yet, on the other hand, since God does not force man in his actions, it seems that the latter’s freedom receives no detriment. Moreover, according to the definition of free agent offered by Molina — a free agent is one who can act and not act, or do one thing as well as its contrary — it seems that man would still be free, because in that state of things in which God foreknows he is going to be condemned, he could have acted in the contrary manner — and this is what is required, according to Molina, in order to speak of freedom of will — and could have been saved, although in reality, in such a state of things, man would in fact never act in the contrary manner, because then the knowledge of God would be fallible, which is impossible.

But then it seems that we arrive at the same paradox about which Pascal ironizes with reference to the sufficient grace of which the Dominicans speak — which is sufficient for man to be able with it to convert, and for this reason he is obliged to convert, but which in reality does not suffice for man actually to convert, unless he receives efficacious grace. In the same way, according to Molina, man is free to act in the contrary sense, because he can act contrarily, but in fact, once placed in that state of things, man will never act contrarily, and for this reason God’s knowledge of future contingents will be infallible. Then, can it be said that a man is free whom circumstances lead to act in such a way that, although he can act contrarily — because God does not force him — he will never in fact act contrarily? Evidently Molina would answer yes, because this man would not be determined physically, as Báñez maintains. Now, would not the Molinist doctrine imply another type of determinism, which we could call “circumstantial” or “environmental”? Because if the good use of man’s free will depends on the state of things in which God has decided to place him — that is, in one order of circumstances he would make good use of his free will and would be saved, and in another he would make bad use and would be condemned — then this too would be a type of determinism. And in that case, we could only present the difference between the Báñezian and Molinist doctrines in the following manner. While Báñez maintains that when God physically premoves man toward something, necessarily man freely moves toward it, Molina will say that when God places man in a determinate state of things, necessarily man will freely perform what God would already have known through middle knowledge. Therefore, considered under its voluntarist aspect, the doctrine of Molina — and not only that of Báñez — would approach the radial axis. On this axis, as Gustavo Bueno points out, the Stoic doctrine would have to be placed, according to which freedom is nothing other than the consciousness of the necessity of cosmic causality. For this reason, if we consider Molina’s doctrine under its voluntarist aspect, we would have to say that man would only be free in appearance, since he would not be conscious of the “circumstantial” necessity that leads him to act in a determinate manner. Moreover, since God’s knowledge is infallible, we can say that what man is going to do would be determined by virtue of a necessity of causal connections that he would ignore, but which would have been known by God through middle knowledge by “most eminent comprehension of the second causes.” In this way, Molina’s defense of middle knowledge does not allow him to escape entirely from divine voluntarism.

Let us recall the words of Báñez: “If those who are going to be condemned were placed in some other order of things, they would be saved. Certainly, to no first reason can this difference of effects be attributed, save to the divine will, which chooses some in particular and all the others, on the contrary, does not choose...” But then it would seem that not only human freedom, but also divine justice would be in danger — despite Molina’s efforts to preserve divine goodness, equity, and clemency. Thus, although Molina denounces that Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas present an iniquitous and cruel God — because, according to him, he would arbitrarily force man to act in a determinate manner — nevertheless it seems that this same accusation, or indeed one of greater gravity, could be directed at the God of Molina, since he would not only be iniquitous and cruel, but also treacherous: he would be a calculating God who would act — so to speak — sibilantly, making all blame fall upon man and thereby completely exonerating himself from it, despite the fact that, as Báñez says, he could have placed man in a state of things in which he would have made good use of his free will and would have been saved.

Now, what does Molina respond to this accusation? Let us recall that Báñez, when he must explain the mystery of divine predestination, resorts to the inscrutability of God’s designs. Well then, Molina in the last instance seems to offer the same response, when he must appeal to the unfathomable terribleness of God to explain why God places a man in one state of things and not in another. For this reason, despite his efforts, Molina also fails to escape divine voluntarism when he attempts to resolve the antinomy of freedom — although it is true that, in trying to preserve human freedom, he subjects the divine will to certain restrictions. Because with respect to man, God cannot limit himself to arbitrarily actualizing the desires of his will, but must previously know the various states of things and know how man would act in each of them. In reality, this would bring God very close to the circular axis — characterized by its final, proleptical causality — because God would not be pure blind will, but would have to foresee, premeditate, calculate: that is, he would have to lie in wait for man and suppose in him a certain rationality, so as to be able to envelop the consciousness of man from the height of his divine intellect in the manner of a dominant player capable of foreseeing the movements of the dominated player in order to act accordingly. This would bring God closer to the mode of acting of human operational subjects and also of animal numens — that is, operational subjects equally endowed with will and intellect, which, as Gustavo Bueno maintains, would have been the origin of genuine religious experience through the practical relations — of fear, suspicion, hatred — that men would have maintained with them in prehistoric times. ¹¹

Finally, we must point out that, although discussions on the theme of human freedom and divine predestination had already been present in Christian theology since the times of the first Fathers of the Church, it was nevertheless the Spanish scholastics of the sixteenth century who brought onto-theology to a limit state. In particular, the rationalist attempt of Molina — once all solutions had been explored — to harmonize in a coherent system the thesis and antithesis of an antinomy that is in itself irresolvable, led onto-theology into a “dead end” in which only two possibilities would remain, as we mentioned at the outset: either to fall back upon a fideism that dispensed with rational reflection on the content of belief, or else to arrive at theological inversion. And Molina’s own system offers both paths.

Because, on the one hand, interpreting Molina’s doctrine in a voluntarist sense — as we have shown above — despite middle knowledge and human freedom, God appears as pure arbitrary will who places man in the state of things he wishes, even knowing that he is going to be condemned; for which reason Molina must ultimately resort to the same explanation offered by Báñez or Saint Augustine: God is an unfathomable mystery and the terribleness of his designs goes beyond our comprehension — that is, our intellect will never succeed in penetrating the inscrutability of the divine will. This explanation will leave unsatisfied anyone who seeks reasons in the divine acting. Therefore, no other option remains than to find refuge in fideism, dispensing with any attempt to construct rationally a natural theology.

But on the other hand, it is indubitable that Molina’s great defense of human freedom implies a limitation of divine omnipotence. For Molina presents us with a God subjected to a rationality beyond which not even his will can go. This is the path of theological inversion which, as Gustavo Bueno maintains, would be the moment in which “theological concepts cease to be that by means of which we speak of God (as a trans-mundane entity) and become that by means of which we speak about the World.” ¹²

To arrive at this moment, it is necessary first to have limited the omnipotence of God and to have subjected him to reasons that not even his will could contradict. And once this point is reached, the supposition in the created world of the rationality to which the creator God himself would be subjected would necessarily have to follow. This supposition will be indispensable for undertaking the rational study of the world. For this reason, when in the modern age there is the intention of speaking of political economy, of physics, or of philosophy, theological concepts will be resorted to in order to speak of the contents of the world with the rationality supposed to be proper to the thoughts of God. Thus, for example, when Descartes tries to determine the degree of confidence that man can have in his reason, he will resort to the non-deceiving God and to the evil genius. These theological concepts will allow him to show that confidence in reason must be made compatible with its limitations. And for this reason, Vidal Peña reinterprets the rationalism of Descartes, presenting it as a critical rationalism.

As we have already seen, the work of Molina represents the struggle for freedom. Man must be free. This is a practical necessity that — against Lutheran fatalism — implies a limitation of the omnipotence of God and introduces a rationality into the world, which will no longer appear at the mercy of the fluctuations of the divine will. Thus, the struggle for freedom is a practical and rational necessity, because Luther could not be right. In this way, the Jesuits — with Molina at the head — followed the steps already marked out for them by the founder of their order, Saint Ignatius, as well as by Emperor Charles V himself, who at the Diet of Worms, in the presence of Luther himself, had already condemned the pretensions of the Augustinian friar. For this reason, it is evident that these discussions were not gratuitous, nor purely speculative, but were the theme of their time — the sixteenth century — in which theology was a fundamental pillar of the Spanish Catholic Empire.