Suárez, Francisco de

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Suárez, Francisco de (1548–1617). Christian theologian and philosopher. He was born in Granada, in Spain, and became a Jesuit in 1564. He was ordained in 1572, and, apart from five years in Rome, spent his life teaching in Spanish universities. In philosophical theology, he developed a position (especially in Disputationes Metaphysicae, 1597, Disputed Issues in Metaphysics), which is sometimes called after him ‘Suarism’ or ‘Suarezianism’. He maintained, with the Jesuits against the Dominicans, that God does not create the acts of individuals, but rather gives them the special graces (gratia congrua, from which this position is known as ‘congruism’) which, by his foreknowledge, he knows they will need. He was called by Paul V ‘doctor eximius et pius’.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions