What's Molinism Exactly?

No One Knows What MOLINISM Is…
Scholastic Answers | 16 July 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKy-SnGivIE

1:28 Since my days back before Catholic conversion (outdrawn process from 16 + to near 20), I took over the position of CSL, and found it pretty compatible with what I heard about Molinism.

Don't get me wrong. In Chronicles of Narnia Aslan's recurrent "no one is ever told what would have happened" ... sounds like a quip against Classic Molinism.

However, they are pretty compatible, both involve God giving us a true freedom of will.

Molinism: "before" God decides (in his eternal present) to give so and so efficient grace, He knows what that person would do in different scenarii.
Lewis: God sees all of time spread out before Him, like an author the plot. Even if the character's are so vivid to the author they make their choices, the author knows how to fix the coherence.

2:21 Was there any order that was strictly St. Thomas + Bishop Tempier?

8:01 "Catholic view of grace"

It could need mention that Second / Third Great Revivals, Asuza Street and a few more are far closer to the Catholic view than the Reformers were.

They hold grace is really an indwelling of God Who transforms the justified from within.

11:22 "in first act" .... scholastic term needing explanation!

I know what act and power is, but what's the distinction between "first act" and "second act"?

dt>Mystic Jeremy

@_MysticKnight

Essentially, first act refers to the state of being, while second act refers to the activities or operations that flow from the first act.

So in context, the Molinists hold that sufficient grace and efficacious grace are really identical in themselves, but only become really distinct after they God pours out those graces on us. In other words, grace is extrinsically efficacious; grace becomes efficacious if the will cooperates with it, but remains sufficient if we don't.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

hglundahl

@_MysticKnight Thank you very much for the clarification.

12:24 I'd have tended to agree with Acquaviva.

Denying the distinction between efficiacious and sufficient seems to be part of Calvin's case for [what amounts to] positive negative antecedent reprobation [even if he would possibly not have admitted it amounted to that].

But I have a problem.

Given God's knowledge, how is a sufficient grace that's not efficacious sufficient? Does it mean "sufficient in theory"? Does it mean God says "it sufficed for someone else, who was a better guy, so if I give him this, he can't complain when he's damned"?

15:46 I've perhaps already mentioned I favour a specific eclecticism involving St. Thomas and Bishop Tempier.

Meaning the positions of the Paris bishop (this is before Paris became an archdiocese) in late 1276 or early 1277 (early March in what we would count as 1277), as indicated by the negation of what he condemns.

Would you mind analysing his views? David Piché made a book side by side of the Latin plus translation. As an appendix, he gave the Latin in the repetition given in England (by Arundel, I think), where it was systematised after subjects. I copied that one and added footnotes in what I hope was matching scholastic not too classic Latin from Paris 13th C:

Index in stephani tempier condempnationes
EN LENGUA ROMANCE EN ANTIMODERNISM Y DE MIS CAMINACIONES | WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11, 2012
https://enfrancaissurantimodernism.blogspot.com/2012/01/index-in-stephani-tempier.html

I think capitula VI, IX, XIV, perhaps in the smaller chapters at the end (XX) would be go-tos.

Many of my footnotes are obviously just reminders to the scholastically unwary reader that Tempier issued in Syllabus form, so each bit of text is sth he condemned.