Context
During the Council of Trent (1545–1563), the Roman Catholic Church had reaffirmed, as against Protestantism, both the reality of human liberum arbitrium (free will) and the necessity of grace. Catholicism was then divided into two main interpretations, Augustinism and Thomism, which both agreed on predestination and on efficacious grace, which meant that people cannot resist God's grace, although it did not cancel free will. Augustinism was rather predominant, in particular in the Catholic University of Leuven, where a rigid form of Augustinism, Baianism, was condemned by the Vatican in 1567.
Following the Council, two rival theories emerged in the Church. Under the influence of the ideas of the Renaissance, the newly-founded Society of Jesus asserted the role of free will, with authors such as George de Montemajor, Gregory of Valentia, Leonardus Lessius and Johannes Hamelius (1554–1589). The Jesuit Luis Molina thereafter published in 1588 his treaty De liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina praescientia, praedestinatione et reprobatione concordia, which stressed that God offers His grace to all people, and that it was by an act of free will that each one accepted it or rejected it. Molina's theology of a sufficient grace became popular, but was opposed by large sectors of the Church who found it incompatible with God's sovereignty. In opposition to Jesuit theologians espousing Molina's view, the Jansenists espoused Augustinism, which insisted on an efficacious grace. The Jesuits thus accepted Augustine's assertion of the necessity of grace, but rejected his conception of it as being infallibly efficient and of being granted to only a small number of elected people. A similar controversy opposed Dominicans to Jesuits, which led Pope Clement VIII to establish the Congregatio de Auxiliis (1597–1607) in order to settle the debate. Although the issue seemed unfavorable to Molinism, the issue finally was suspended rather than solved. In 1611 and 1625, a decree from the Holy See prohibited any publication concerning this theme, although it was often informally violated by writings presented as commentaries of Thomas Aquinas.
Read more about this topic: Formulary Controversy
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