The Jesuits found the explanation in that middle knowledge (scientia media) whereby God knows, in the objective reality of things, what a man, in any circumstances in which he might be placed, would do.
[2] The controversy is usually considered to have begun in the year 1581, when the Jesuit Prudencio de Montemayor defended certain theses on grace that had been vigorously attacked by the Dominican Domingo Bañez.
The Jesuit (afterwards Cardinal) Francisco de Toledo, authorized by Gregory XIII, had obliged Baius, in 1580, to retract his errors in presence of the entire university.
Learning of this scheme, Leonard Lessius, the most distinguished theologian of the Society in the Low Countries and the special object of Baius' attacks, drew up another list of thirty-four propositions containing the genuine doctrine of the Jesuits.
In view of these measures, the Belgian provincial of the Society, Francis Coster, issued a protest against the action of those who, without letting the Jesuits be heard, accused them of heresy.
To clear up the issues Lessius, at the insistence of the Archbishop of Mechelen, formulated six antitheses, brief statements, embodying the doctrine of the Jesuits relative to the matter of the condemned propositions, the third and fourth antithesis bearing upon the main problem, i.e., efficacious grace.
He reminded the contestants that definitive judgment in such matters belonged to the Holy See, and he forwarded to Sixtus V the principal publications of both parties with a petition for a final decision.
[2] In 1588 the Spanish Jesuit Luis de Molina published at Lisbon his Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiæ donis, in which he explained efficacious grace on the basis of scientia media.
Bañez, the Dominican professor at Salamanca, informed the Archduke Albert, the Habsburg's Viceroy of Portugal, that the work contained thirteen certain provisions that the Spanish Inquisition had censured.
[2] The debates continued for five years and in 1594 became public and turbulent at Valladolid, where the Jesuit Antonio de Padilla and the Dominican Diego Nuño defended their respective positions.
In view of the disturbances thus created, Pope Clement VIII took the matter into his own hands and ordered both parties to refrain from further discussion and await the decision of the Apostolic See.
Clement VIII appointed a commission under the presidency of Cardinals Madrucci (Secretary of the Inquisition) and Aragone, which began its labours on 2 January 1598 and on 19 March handed in the result condemning Molina's book.
Thereupon Clement VIII ordered the generals of the Dominicans and the Jesuits, respectively, to appear with some of their theologians before the commission, explain their doctrines, and settle their differences.
The pope's decree communicated on 5 September 1607 to both Dominicans and Jesuits allowed each party to defend its own doctrine, enjoined each from censoring or condemning the opposite opinion, and commanded them to await, as loyal sons of the Church, the final decision of the Apostolic See.
The long controversy aroused considerable feeling, and the pope, aiming at the restoration of peace and charity between the religious orders, forbade by a decree of the Inquisition (1 December 1611) the publication of any book concerning efficacious grace until further action by the Holy See.