Luis de Molina, S.J., was a central figure in the sixteenth-century renaissance of scholasticism on the Iberian peninsula. He was born in Cuenca, Spain, in 1535. At eighteen he entered the Jesuit order. He studied and later taught at Coimbra and Évora in Portugal. In 1583, he left his academic post to devote himself to writing. He spent the next fifteen years in Cuenca, Lisbon, and Évora. He died on October 12, 1600, shortly after being called to take a chair in moral theology at the newly established Jesuit University in Madrid.

Molina's best known work, Liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina praescientia, providentia, praedestinatione et reprobatione concordia (The compatibility of free will with the gift of grace, divine foreknowledge, providence, predestination, and reprobation) was first published at Lisbon in 1588; a second, expanded edition was published at Antwerp in 1595. He also authored a three volume...