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Capacity and Volition: A History of the Distinction of Absolute and Ordained Power.
By WILLIAM J. COURTENAY. Quodlibet 8. Ricerche e strumenti di filosofia medievale. Bergamo, Italy: Pierluigi Lubrina Editore, 1990. 214 pp. $32.00.
The use made by thinkers from the high Middle Ages to the early modern period of the teaching about the two powers of God, absolute and ordained, has been subjected to considerable scholarly debate. Earlier generations of scholars tended to look with suspicion on the teaching. More recent scholars have stressed the value of the dialectic of the absolute and ordained powers of God for maintaining divine freedom while underscoring both the contingency and the reliability of the created order. In his writings in the late 1960s and early 1970s, William Courtenay played a leading role in placing the dialectic of the two powers in its medieval guise in a more positive light. In the present book, originating in a series of invited seminar lectures that he gave in Milan in 1986, Courtenay revisits the topic that had been so important to him in the early stages of his career. In the eight chapters that follow the introduction (which is itself concerned with modern scholarship on the dialectic), Courtenay offers a well-written survey of the main stages of the development and deployment of an analytical tool significant for many of the leading thinkers of the Middle Ages; this survey by a recognized expert will be appreciated by all students of medieval thought.
While its virtues are many, the book is not without flaws. As is...