When Luis de Molina died in Madrid in 1600, he had every reason to believe he was about to be anathametized by Pope Clement VIII. The Protestant Reformation was splitting Europe, tribunals of the Inquisition met regularly in a dozen Spanish cities, and the Pope had launched a commission two years earlier to investigate Molina’s writings. Molina was eventually vindicated, though the decision came seven years after his death. In the centuries that followed Molina was relegated to relatively minor status in the history of theology until a renaissance of interest in recent years. His doctrine of God’s “middle knowledge,” in particular, has been appropriated by a number of current philosophers and theologians, with apologist William Lane Craig calling it “one of the most fruitful theological ideas ever conceived.” In Luis de Molina: The Life and Theology of the Founder of Middle Knowledge, author Kirk R. MacGregor outlines the main contours of Molina’s subtle and far-reaching philosophical theology, covering his views on God’s foreknowledge, salvation and predestination, poverty and obedience, and social justice. Drawing on writings of Molina never translated into English, MacGregor also provides insight into the experiences that shaped Molina, recounting the events of a life fully as dramatic as any of the Protestant Reformers. With implications for topics as wide-ranging as biblical inerrancy, creation and evolution, the relationship between Christianity and world religions, the problem of evil, and quantum indeterminacy, Molina’s thought remains as fresh and relevant as ever. Most significantly, perhaps, it continues to offer the possibility of a rapprochement between Calvinism and Arminianism, a view of salvation that fully upholds both God’s predestination and human free will. As the first full-length work ever published on Molina, Kirk MacGregor’s Luis de Molina provides an accessible and insightful introduction for scholars, students, and armchair theologians alike.

Since his rediscovery by Alwin Plantinga in the 1970s, the possibility of counterfactuals of freedom in Molinism has become one of the main issues in the contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. Notwithstanding this, Luis de Molina (1535-1600) remains one of the most influential and least known authors of late scholasticism and early modern philosophy. The papers collected in this volume treat the whole range of issues posed by his metaphysics as set out in his revolutionary "Concordia" and in his practical philosophy - especially concerning law and economics - in his groundbreaking work "De Justitia et Jure". They also examine Molina's historical commitments and his influences on philosophy. In this way this Companion offers the first comprehensive and thorough overview of Molina's thought.

Luis de Molina (1535-1600) was the first scholastic doctor to legitimize the practice of money lending as a career. His De Iustitia et Iure offers a thorough description of trade practices of the vibrant economies of Portugal and Spain in the Sixteenth Century. This detailed analysis allows him to provide a moral assessment of these practices. His treatise is a capital example of how a deep commitment to received tradition and to contemporary economic issues can advance economic science and perfect moral theology through a better understanding of reality. This book shows how threads of field research, economic reflection, natural law tradition, casuistry and the quest for justice may weave together to form a major work of Catholic moral theology.

This book shows how threads of field research, economic reflection, natural law tradition, casuistry and the quest for justice weave together in Luis de Molina’s De Iustitia et Iure, thus forming a major work of Catholic moral theology.