Medieval historians have long recognised the distinction between God's absolute (potentia absoluta) and ordained power (potentia ordinata) as a staple of medieval theology and often indicative of a writer's broader philosophical commitments.Footnote 1 The distinction strikes immediately at the heart of the debate regarding the relationship between reason and faith, nature and grace, and the contingency of the created order. By the time of the late Middle Ages, it quickly became apparent any rigorous conceptual analysis or application of ideas concerning necessity and possibility required engagement with the distinction, and theological enquiry in scholastic contexts frequently broached such a subject. Additionally, while recent decades have witnessed a resurgence of scholarly interest in the degrees of positive continuity which can be found between Reformed theology in the seventeenth and even sixteenth century and the medieval period, limited investigation has been given to how this central medieval distinction was deployed in Reformed systems. Even more importantly, consideration of the distinction in Reformed theology by historians is often restricted to theology proper or the nature and necessity of the atonement with little regard for how the concept can inform the question of the extent of the atonement.Footnote 2 This paper seeks to fill this lacuna by considering two influential Reformed theologians in the seventeenth century: the bishop of Salisbury, John Davenant, and the Congregationalist Puritan John Owen.Footnote 3 Davenant and Owen are well-suited for this investigation, as their educational backgrounds and engagement with medieval sources are sufficiently accessible. For, as Zahnd has wisely cautioned, when considering claims of influence in the work of intellectual history, a careful contextualisation is required which distinguishes between explicit and implicit reception and considers the availability and knowledge of sources accessible to the authors at hand.Footnote 4 Furthermore, both thinkers use the two-powers distinction explicitly in their writings, albeit only Davenant specifically applies the concept to the question of the extent of the atonement. Importantly, while considerable attention has been given to the distinctly Thomist influence on Reformed theologians in general and these two thinkers in particular, this paper seeks to qualify these legitimate assessments with the following conclusion: Davenant and Owen both understand the two-powers distinction in a way that differs from Aquinas and reflect a shift in the concept in late medieval theology. Before considering Owen and Davenant, however, an overview of the distinction itself in the medieval period must be considered.
The two powers in medieval theology
Medieval scholasticism sought to integrate the data of biblical revelation as understood through centuries of church tradition with the insights of Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic philosophical reflection. Tension often arose, however, over how to integrate the philosophical positions of antiquity with the unique commitments required by Christian orthodoxy, and the relationship between necessity and contingency was no exception. Aristotelianism and Neo-Platonism tended to stress necessitarianism, which, when brought into conversation with Christian orthodoxy, required qualification. For example, university theologians in the twelfth century often debated whether God could have redeemed humankind another way than through the incarnation, or even whether the divine nature required there to be a redemption at all.Footnote 5 Even earlier, in the late eleventh century Peter Damian was asserting a distinction between divine capacity and volition.Footnote 6 Peter Abelard was famous for claiming God could only do what was decreed to be done in an attempt to protect divine goodness, but his view was rejected firmly by Peter Lombard, who enshrined the two-powers distinction into medieval theology in his Sentences.
Drawing on Augustinian precedent, Lombard affirmed against Abelard, ‘let us profess that God can do many things which he does not will, and can leave undone many things which he does’.Footnote 7 Though Lombard does not use the strict terminology, here he lays out the heart of the two-powers distinction: God's capacity covers a broader range of possibilities than merely what is actualised through his will.Footnote 8 Importantly, William Courtney observes that this distinction also had a corresponding conceptual utilisation in the developing notion of obediential potency (potentia obedientalis) in the twelfth century. What was it that explains how a miracle can occur that results in nature operating differently than before, as in the case of a fire that does not burn? Courtney explains that in the twelfth century ‘all authors assumed there must be something inherent in the nature of the created thing that permits it to respond in both of these very different situations….Potentia obedientialis was a natural inherent power but one that exceeded the common course of nature’.Footnote 9 In other words, God has the capacity to act differently than what God has in fact decreed, and nature itself has the capacity to be realised differently than the ordinary course of its operations. This raises the question of how miracles ought to be considered in relation to the two-powers distinction: do they fall in the category of the absolute or of the ordained power?
As with many medieval scholastic debates, the answer depends on the thinker being considered. For several early medieval theologians, including Godfrey of Poiters, Alexander of Hales and, most importantly, Thomas Aquinas, miracles fall squarely into the category of the ordained power of God. This is due to the fact the distinction was considered to be an adverbial modification of the single power of God considered from different perspectives. On this view, absolute power is the divine capacity understood in abstraction from all concrete instances of divine action and considered only according to what is logically possible. Conversely, the ordained power consists in the order of nature God has established and decided to actualise in history, as well as the temporary suspensions of that order. On this account, there is no possibility of miracles being realised via God's absolute power, as absolute power is by definition God's capacity to act when considered apart from his particular volition. Aquinas makes this quite clear:
what is attributed to His power considered in itself, God is said to be able to do in accordance with His absolute power. Of such a kind is everything which has the nature of being…. What is, however, attributed to the divine power, according as it carries into execution the command of a just will, God is said to be able to do by His ordinary power. In this manner, we must say that God can do other things by His absolute power than those He has foreknown and pre-ordained He would do. But it could not happen that He should do anything which He had not foreknown, and had not pre-ordained that He would do, because His actual doing is subject to His foreknowledge and pre-ordination, though His power, which is His nature, is not so.Footnote 10
Thus, Francis Oakley rightly concludes, ‘the absolute power for Aquinas then refers to God's ability to do many things that he does not choose to do’.Footnote 11 This applies to miracles as well, which are foreordained by God to be temporary suspensions of the ordinary course of nature. As Paul Helm argues, for Aquinas a miracle, ‘should it occur, is clearly not an exercise of the divine potentia absoluta, but of the potentia ordinata’.Footnote 12 On this account, the ordained power includes both the ordinary and extraordinary providential workings of God, but extraordinary causality must not be confused for absolute power. In the words of Courtenay, ‘no one before the middle of the thirteenth century viewed potentia absoluta as a type of divine action’.Footnote 13
A shift occurred, however, at some point from the thirteenth to fourteenth century, with scholarly focus typically resting on the canonist Hostiensis (d. 1271), who operationalised the divine absolute power into a parallel for the papal power to act through the plentitudo potestatis to supersede the current bounds of the religious order and establish a new law.Footnote 14 The question arose whether the pope was able to release monks from their monastic vows, and Hostiensis argued the pope could do so, not according to their ordained power but by their absolute power.Footnote 15 This transition not only actualised the absolute power, but also led to an emphasis on absolute power being considered more as an authority to act in a certain manner than the mere capacity to do so.Footnote 16 Though Scotus has been credited as the originator of applying this canonist definition of papal power to the theological analysis of God's power, it is unclear whether he can legitimately be interpreted as endorsing the canonist definition or retaining the earlier view.Footnote 17 In either case, what is most important to note here is that this shift did not occur as a distinctly Franciscan, or even necessarily voluntarist, emphasis. Recall, the earlier view was retained by both Dominicans (Aquinas, Albert the Great) and Franciscans (the Summa Halensis, Bonaventure) and the canonists’ shift was eventually held by both Franciscans (Ockham) and Dominicans (Holcot).Footnote 18 Additionally, for thinkers committed to this view, such as Gregory of Rimini or Pierre d'Ailly, miracles more easily fit under the category of the potentia absoluta, which was already operationalised.Footnote 19 Thus, this version of the distinction, held by Ockham amongst others,Footnote 20 became increasingly popular and is widely considered to be the predominant position within intellectual discourse in the sixteenth and seventeenth century.Footnote 21 A look at various Reformed thinkers however will reveal both formulations of the distinction.
The two powers in Reformed theology
John Calvin repeatedly criticises the notion of a potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata throughout his theological writings and commentaries, for he finds the terminology to be indicative of a scholastic excess of speculation without due reflection on the revelation of God. Steinmetz has argued Calvin not only rejects the abuse of the concept (a position defended by Turretin), but the very utility of the distinction entirely.Footnote 22 For Steinmetz Calvin's critique of discussions of absolute power is based in their being entirely divorced from questions of justice and revelation, which results in undue speculation on the divine nature. His reading has been persuasively challenged, however, by Paul Helm, who notes that even the earlier adherents of the two-powers distinction did not attempt to conceive of God's absolute power as separated from his essentially holy and just nature: the mere observation that God could have decreed otherwise than he in fact did is not equivalent to claiming the consideration of all logical possibilities is entirely unrelated to the essential characteristics of the divine nature. In other words, the potentia absoluta need not be construed in an arbitrary fashion or abstracted from what has been revealed about the character of God. In the words of Helm, ‘For Calvin the inscrutable decree of God is therefore not a decree of pure power divorced from all other features of the divine nature; it is the decree of a necessarily holy and righteous God.’Footnote 23 This interpretation of Calvin is compelling and reflects not only the earlier Thomistic formulation, but also the work of other early Reformed thinkers as well.Footnote 24 Peter Martyr Vermigli was more explicitly engaged with the medieval tradition than Calvin and shows his familiarity with debates surrounding the potentia absoluta when he writes, ‘it is commonly said in the schools that God cannot do anything that implies a self-contradiction’.Footnote 25 Furthermore, Vermigli defines miracles not as the imposition of the absolute power of God, as found in Luther,Footnote 26 but rather as ‘a difficult and unusual work of divine power, surpassing every capacity of created nature’.Footnote 27 That the power is ‘unusual’ means it is not the establishment of a new ordained system entirely and is a rare occurrence.Footnote 28 Calvin and Vermigli were followed by Ames in considering miracles as part of God's extraordinary providence, but nevertheless as part of his ordained power rather than absolute power. Ames explicitly defines the potentia absoluta as ‘that whereby God is able to do all things possible, even though they never shall be’, and the potentia ordinata as ‘that whereby he not only can do that which he wills, but also indeed actually does whatever he wills’.Footnote 29 Interestingly, Herman Bavinck claims this Augustinian and Thomist version of the distinction was ‘generally accepted by Reformed theologians’ and cites Polanus, Alsted, Heidegger and van Mastricht in support of this claim.Footnote 30 Indeed, van Mastricht certainly seems to support this view, as he defines the absolute power ‘insofar as we conceive it as preceding his will and ordained power insofar as we conceive it as following his will’.Footnote 31 Examples of this position amongst the Reformed could be multiplied,Footnote 32 and yet Bavinck fails to note that there are also proponents of the alternative formulation of the two-powers distinction amongst the Reformed. Gisbertus Voetius, for example, is explicit that God does miracles by his absolute power and thus reflects the later canonists’ formulation which operationalised the potentia absoluta.Footnote 33 Rather than surveying the entirety of the Reformed tradition here, I will focus on John Owen and John Davenant, each of whom were educated in the medieval debates broadly, and each of whom, like Voetius, reflected the later canonist position on the two powers.
An examination of John Owen's library (which includes editions of Lombard, Aquinas and Ockham, amongst others) reveals his acquaintance with medieval scholastic debates in theology, as he was taught well by his superintendent in metaphysics and theology, Thomas Barlow. Sebastian Rehman has argued that Owen showed a particular inclination for Aquinas above other medieval theologians like Bernard or Scotus, and his conclusions have recently been supported by a more in-depth study from Christopher Cleveland.Footnote 34 Though both of these scholars are likely correct when Owen's theology is considered as a whole, with regards to the use of the two-powers distinction in particular, Owen fits better in the later canonists’ position rather than the earlier view found in Aquinas. Repeatedly, Owen will use the phrase ‘absolute power’ to refer not to the mere capacity to realise a range of possibilities, but to the authority to legitimately impose a law. Thus, in Christologia (1679) Christ has the ‘absolute power and disposal of all the good things we pray for’;Footnote 35 and in the Discourse on the Holy Spirit (1674), ‘the command of God proceeds from the absolute power of a sovereign legislator’.Footnote 36 In On the Mortification of Sin in Believers (1656), Owen even contrasts absolute power with a power that is ‘clothed with mercy’, which reflects Calvin's concern that the absolute power not be considered divorced from the other divine attributes.Footnote 37 In his first work, A Display of Arminianism (1642), he uses ‘absolute power’ to describe the Arminian view of the sovereignty of the human will to resist God;Footnote 38 and later in Truth and Innocence Vindicated (1669), he pairs the term with the concept of the magistrate, albeit in his arguments against their absolute authority.Footnote 39 Finally, Owen uses the term in ecclesiastical contexts when he argues absolute power is not given to the church to be used over its members. In True Nature of a Gospel Church (published posthumously in 1689), Owen writes, ‘those who were in supreme absolute power as kings and princeps are never called elders’.Footnote 40 In all these cases, Owen uses the phrase ‘absolute power’ as a way of emphasising the authority and irresistible efficacy of the volitional act rather than the earlier medieval view of the possibilities at hand prior to any act of the will.
Yet, curiously, there is one passage where Owen directly defines the two-power distinction in a way that undermines his typical usage throughout his works. In his Dissertation on Divine Justice (1653), in the middle of the debate regarding the necessity of the atonement, Owen makes the following distinction:
It is well known that the word ‘impossibility’ may be considered in a twofold point of view. The first is in itself absolute, which respects the absolute power of God, antecedent to any free act of the divine will: in this respect, it was not impossible that that cup should pass from Christ. The second is conditional, which respects the power of God, as directed in a certain order, that is determined, and (if I might so phrase it) circumscribed by some act of the divine will: and in this sense it was impossible; that is to say, it being supposed that God willed to pardon any sins to sinners, it could not be done without laying their punishment upon the suretyFootnote 41
Here Owen lays out the standard early medieval understanding of the distinction in a way that is a parallel case to what Courtenay has argued regarding Scotus’ use of the distinction. Whereas, on Courtenay's view, Scotus’ typical usage of the distinction is in line with the early medieval view, in one passage where he offers a direct definition of the two powers, he appears to shift to the canonist position in order to grant more authority to the pope.Footnote 42 In the mirror Owenian case, it must be admitted an interpretation that concludes an author is self-contradictory must be broached cautiously and with great consideration. Nevertheless, it is not entirely unlikely that in the more polemical and specifically scholastic debates Owen was having on the necessity of the atonement he appealed to what he considered a ‘well-known’ distinction amongst his favourite medieval authors, most of whom were early, while thereby forgetting that his standard usage of ‘absolute power’ reflected a different definition that was more popular in political settings in his day.
It should be noted that Owen by this point had shifted from his earlier stance on the necessity of the atonement for the forgiveness of sins which was defended in his work The Death of Death (1648).Footnote 43 There Owen had argued, in harmony with other Reformed theologians such as William Twisse and Samuel Rutherford, that God could have saved humanity merely by willing so apart from the incarnation and death of Christ.Footnote 44 Twisse had even claimed this position fundamentally depended on a correct understanding of the two-power distinction which did not operationalise the potentia absoluta.Footnote 45 Yet, as Schendel observes, despite Twisse's express definition, in at least one place he seemed to use the phrase ‘absolute power’ in an active way, much like Owen.Footnote 46 Schendel goes to great lengths to explain what he considers Twisse's ‘infelicitous’ language in a way that harmonises his usage with the classical distinction between the two powers,Footnote 47 but the close reading he provides of a specific passage in Twisse cannot equally explain Owens numerous references to an active absolute power throughout his corpus. The survey provided above has shown Owen uses ‘absolute power’ in a wide variety of contexts throughout his writings, with a consistent preference for the connotation of ‘legitimate authority to act’ in a way which comports with the canonist rather than the classical understanding.
Before analysing the impact of this distinction theologically, however, a brief word should be said regarding Owen's most qualified opponent concerning the extent of the atonement in the Reformed tradition: John Davenant. Though Davenant's specific treatise on the extent of the atonement, De Morte Christi, was only published in 1650 after his death, Lynch claims that it ‘began as lectures at Cambridge around the time of the Synod of Dordt in 1619’ and was ‘ready for publication by 1628’.Footnote 48 Lamentably, this means its composition significantly predated any of Owens work, and there is no record of Davenant specifically responding to Owen's stance on the atonement or formulation of the two powers. Yet, Davenant's Animadversions, published in 1641, also contains references to the absolute power of God which are worth considering. Here Davenant exemplifies the operationalised view of the absolute power, as seen in his affirmation that God ‘has an absolute power and freedom to make men do any good whereunto he maketh promise of reward’.Footnote 49 Likewise, later he writes,
if we reject the doctrine of absolute Predestination we must withal of necessity abridge God of his absolute power over the wills of men. It is therefore no small issue that we make of this doctrine when we learn from thence that God hath an omnipotent power of turning the hearts of men.Footnote 50
Both of these citations reflect an understanding of absolute power as an active and efficacious force. Correspondingly, Davenant's definition of the potentia ordinata in De Morte Christi (1650) reflects the canonist formulation, which stresses the legal imposition of a law to be obeyed rather than strictly the realisation of the divine will. Thus, citing Bañez approvingly, Davenant defines absolute power as God's ability to do anything logically possible – something proponents of both formulations would have affirmed – but the ordained power of God is ‘any common law given and promulgated by God according to which anything is understood as possible to be done or not to be done or also according to the common course of natural or moral things’.Footnote 51 Defining the ordained power of God merely as the ‘common course of natural or moral things’ allows one to affirm the potentia absoluta as the ground for miracles as well as the source of changes in the ordained order, such as the transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant. Though Davenant does not explicitly link the potentia absoluta to miracles in his writings, that this is the correct interpretation of his understanding of the potentia ordinata is confirmed by his argument that all living humans have an obligation to obey the call for repentance and faith, whereas this is impossible for the damned. This is not only true for the potentia ordinata, however, as Davenant affirms ‘not only according to the absolute power of God but according to his ordinary power any unbelieving and impenitent person whatsoever may be endued with true repentance and saving faith’.Footnote 52 It appears Davenant believes that though the universal order is such that all are commanded to have faith, and there is even a sense in which all have the capacity for faith (something which would be denied by Owen), when God actually grants repentance and faith, it is infallibly efficacious due to God's absolute power. Once again, the operationalised view of the potentia absoluta is presumed.
The two powers applied to the extent of the atonement
With this extensive groundwork laid, the final point can be made quite briefly. Though Davenant and Owen both use the two-powers distinction the same way, only Davenant applies the concept to the matter of the extent of the atonement, which reflects a more consistent approach with his theological commitments elsewhere. For example, Davenant is committed to the proposition that the condition of faith is possible for all men.Footnote 53 For Davenant, this stems from God's ordained system of preaching the gospel to all people, because there was a real offer for all people, since satisfaction has been made for them and will be applied upon the condition of faith.Footnote 54 Thus, Davenant's position is a form of hypothetical universalism. Moreover, Davenant recognises that not all God-appointed ends are realised; thus, all people are made with the capacity for faith, though for some it is never realised; not unlike the natural capacity to learn and speak a foreign language which also may never be actualised. To be clear, for Davenant, it is God's gift of faith and repentance which realises this natural capacity rather than an intrinsic human volition, but the capacity is there via the ordained system nevertheless. Problematically, for Owen there is a recognition that God could do other than what God has done, which is the counterfactual possibility at the heart of the two-powers distinction, and there is a recognition that God has ordained an order in which all are commanded to repent; yet there is no corresponding admission that there is any natural potency within nonelected human creatures to believe. This is inconsistent, as Davenant points out, for this position would logically demand the view that the reprobate are in the same position in relation to Christ as the fallen angels; a view which is clearly contradicts the principle that the gospel call is intended to reach all humankind, including the reprobate, while the fallen angels are excluded from such an offer.Footnote 55 In order to avoid the view that reprobate humans are in the same position as reprobate angels, one must affirm humans have a natural capacity (potentia obedientialis) for faith. Surprisingly however, Owen goes a step further when he argues ‘commands do not signify what is God's intention should be done but what is our duty to do which may be made known to us whether we be able to perform it or not: it signifieth no intention or purpose of God’.Footnote 56 This is surprising, for earlier it was shown Owen affirmed the absolute power of God to impress a law of holiness upon the created order, but here we find that Owen does not consider divine commands to necessarily be linked to the will of God whatsoever.Footnote 57 This kind of disjunction between Owen's use of the distinction to ground ethical imperatives from the divine law in other contexts and his rejection of the distinction in matters of the extent of the atonement is telling. Had Owen applied the difference between God's absolute power (which cannot be frustrated) and his ordained power (a common law that is regularly frustrated, in a qualified sense, by the presence of sin in the world), it seems he could have more consistently applied his typical Reformed and robust doctrine of divine providence, which stresses the sovereign will of God and yet recognises the permission of evil in the world.Footnote 58
Summary
This essay has attempted not only to offer a historical survey of how the rich conceptual distinction of the potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata has shifted over the centuries from the medieval through the Reformation periods, but also to provide an analysis of how it could be consistently applied to the question of the extent of the atonement. In this light, John Davenant's position was found to be more consistent than John Owen's, albeit with the recognition both thinkers utilised an operationalised form of the two-powers distinction that reflected a later fourteenth-century strain of theology and disagrees with Aquinas’ approach. Here a lesson can be learned not to presume Aquinas was the only giant of the medieval period influencing later theology, or even that frequent positive citation of his works implies universal agreement. On the contrary, it is quite likely Owen and Davenant were unaware of the shift in definition throughout the Middle Ages and were simply reflecting the predominant usage of their time. In any case, this qualification should not be read as a rejection of the influence Thomas had upon the Reformed but rather as a caution against over-emphasising his prominence to the neglect of other medieval thinkers, such as Scotus. Additionally, this research has uncovered that significantly more work needs to be done in considering how these two formulations of divine omnipotence were applied by Reformed theologians in other doctrinal loci, such as covenant theology.
