FREE CONSCIENCE AND "NATURAL LAW" IN CALVINISM AND MOLINISM

Authors

  • Carlos Martínez Valle

Keywords:

Legal casuistry, Rigorism, law, epieikeia, Calvinism, Jesuitism, free conscience, freedom of conscience

Abstract

The author states that Molina’s and the Jesuits’ catholic theory —focused on a particular circumstancialism and legal casuistry— was better prepared to defend the free conscience and autonomy of human beings than the law’s rigorism characteristic of Calvinists, who thought free conscience could easily lead to fanaticism, something that the Jesuit flexibility did not allow. However, Jesuit thinking was not therefore less exposed to the final lack of coherence. This detail prevented free conscience in them and in the Spanish catholic thinking from evolving into its modern shape, that of freedom of conscience.

Issue

Section

Iusnaturalismo y razón católica