Potentia Dei absoluta

The Condemnation of 219 articles in theology and natural philosophy by the bishop of Paris in 1277 points to a significant development in the history of medieval philosophy generally, but especially natural philosophy. Whatever may have induced bishop Stephen Tempier and his advisers to promulgate the condemnation, the most significant outcome was an emphasis on the reality and importance of God's absolute power (potentia Dei absoluta)to do whatever He pleases short of bringing about a logical contradiction. Although the doctrine of God's absolute power was hardly new in the thirteenth century, the introduction into the Latin West of Greco-Arabic physics and natural philosophy, with their independent, and often deterministic, philosophical and scientific explanatory principles, conferred on that doctrine a new and more significant status. After 1277, appeals to God's absolute power were frequently introduced into discussions of Aristotelian physics and cosmology.

The range of the Condemnation

The wide range of topics covered by the Condemnation indicates its potential impact on natural philosophy. Among the themes at which several articles were directed are God's knowability, nature, will, and power; the causation and eternality of the world; the nature and function of intelligences; the nature and operation of the heavens and the generation of terrestrial things; the necessity and contingency of events; the principles of material objects; man and the active intellect. Whether implicitly or explicitly, many of the articles asserted God's infinite and absolute creative and causative power against those who those who thought to circumscribe it by the principles of natural philosophy.