Theology of Potentia Dei and History of European Normativity

At the threshold of modernity, the programs of politics and the justifications of law assume new forms: analyzing them, the best historians of the last century dismissed the idea that the second millennium AD was one integrated bloc. Today, their counter-interpretation in the sign of discontinuity is being summoned. Rather than to any «revolutionary programme», what the tumultuous innovations of the age of the rising State system might respond to are the unintended collateral effects of unrehearsed and makeshift repair interventions imposed by a chain reaction of newly emerging interdependent problem situations. In this view, the laboratory of the innovations that we call modernity might be the legacy, rather than the victim, of pre-modern conceptions. The late mediaeval distinction of two powers in God (potentia absoluta, potentia ordinata) has made a wide career in the new culture of earthly Power. Ordered power refers to an «ethically» acceptable or legitimate use of power, absolute power closes an otherwise «ungovernable» horizon by proclaiming an unfailing mastery even over the contingent. Their oscillation gives rise to a dynamics to which we are still subject. FOREWORD by Anton Schütz and Massimiliano Traversino 13 PART ONE «Potentia Dei absoluta», its impact on political power and the proto-history of modern society MASSIMILIANO TRAVERSINO The mediaeval distinction of God's potentia absoluta/ordinata as an archaeology of the early modern investigation of power 35 Prolegomena on the use of archaeology in the study of mediaeval doctrine 36 II. Theological background 43 1. Divine omnipotence: an exercise of non-contradiction 46 2. On infinity as an attribute of God. Some scholastic reflections 49 II. Potentia/potestas (Dei) absoluta: the question in relation to the language of power 57 1. Duns Scotus: the distinction applied to any free agents 57 2. Investigation into the pope's prerogatives in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries 61 3. Digression: some historical observations on the Franciscan poverty controversy 68 4. The civil legal theory in the fourteenth century and beyond: from potentia Dei to the concepts of the Prince and Sovereignty 75 5. Beyond the Middle Ages. An outline 79 Summary 82 OLIVIER BOULNOIS From divine omnipotence to operative power 83 III. Divine omnipotence 83 1. Pantocrator 83 2. Potentia and potestas 85 3. Potentia absoluta vs potentia ordinata 86 III. Scotus 89 1. The theory of absolute and ordained power is extended to all free beings 90 2. The absolute power becomes an operative power 92 3. It is linked to a radical theory of alternative possibilities 93 III. Two questions 94 Summary 95 ALBERTO BONDOLFI I teologi della Scuola di Salamanca di fronte alla riproposizione della dottrina della potestas directa 98 1. Stato delle recenti ricerche sulla Scuola di Salamanca 99 2. Ampiezza della questione americana e sua dimensione etica 103 3. Si tratta di un cambiamento di paradigma? 106 4. Chi ha dominio sull'orbe? 110 5. Elementi di attualità geopolitica nel dibattito etico sulla Scuola di Salamanca 115 Summary 117 LUIGI BRESSAN Le radici bibliche del moderno diritto del mare e dell'ambiente: fine universale dei beni e proprietà comune di tutti 119 1. Introduzione: diritto del mare 119 2. Dottrine circa il mare nostrum 121 3. Francisco de Vitoria (1492-1546) 122 4. Domingo de Soto (1495-1560) 125 5. Fernando Vázquez De Menchaca (1512-1567) 127 6. Sviluppi successivi sul diritto del mare 129 7. Contributo cattolico alla Convenzione di Montego Bay (1982) 131 Summary 134 GUIDO GIGLIONI Campanella's notion of potentia as the life and memory of being 135 1. Introduction: meanings of potentia 138 2. Potentia and Campanella's view about the Trinity 141 3. The primalitative nexus 145 4. Power and freedom 155 5. Conclusion: Is God absolutely omnipotent? 161 Summary 163 PART TWO The emergence of the European legal tradition in the tension of theological doctrine, legal exegesis and political campaigns THANOS ZARTALOUDIS Theories of origin as to the progenitor of the trust: the invention of the uses and the Franciscan influence in England 167 1. A note 167 2. Fragments of the transmission of the poverty dispute in England 174 3. The Franciscans in England: ad opus et ad osum 180 4. Theories of origin: assemblages of invention 199 5. The case of Oxford v Friars Minor [1308] 216 6. A note 226 Summary 227 Identità antropologica e semantica normativa nel pensiero francescano: il ruolo di Pietro di Giovanni Olivi 229 1. Pensiero francescano e identità dogmatica 230 2. Onnipotenza divina e onnipotenza terrena 234 3. La semantica del potere pontificio 238 4. Il limite del potere come senso del potere 250 5. Conclusione sull'inevitabile obbedienza 254 Summary 257 ANDREA PADOVANI La glossa alla bolla Unam Sanctam di Bonifacio VIII. Vecchie e nuove questioni 259 Summary 287 JEAN-FRANÇOISE MALHERBE Le dualisme inconfortable de Maître Eckhart 288 1. Définition du dualisme et brève évocation de son histoire 289 2. Le dualisme dans l'enseignement d'Eckhart 294 3. Eckhart précurseur de Giordano Bruno plutôt que de Spinoza 299 Summary 306 FABRIZIO MEROI La potentia Dei nell'oratoria sacra del secondo Cinquecento: Francesco Panigarola 308 Summary 329 PART THREE The ambiguous exceptionality of Western Law: divides, interfaces, Holzwege MARINOS DIAMANTIDES God's political power in Western and Eastern Christianity in comparative perspective 333 Introduction 333 1. Biblical Israel, its “theocracy” and “sovereignty”, or: what is a coherent conception of political authority? 335 2. Byzantine Christianity: not “caesaropapist” but a failed dialectic of sacred and secular power and a functioning centralised State power with deficient authority 339 3. Occidental Christianity: the dialectic of sacred and secular power via the domestication of God's absolute power on earth in the form of “two powers” – a model of liberty guaranteed by faith in some “legitimate” power 348 4. Repressed: perceptual faith and the third dialectic 370 5. Conclusions 378 Summary 380 PIYEL HALDAR Sovereignty and Divinity in the Vedic tradition: Mitra-Varuna, Prajā-pati and Ṛta 382 1. Rta/Dharma 382 2. Mitra-Varuna 388 3. The guardian function of Mitra-Varuna 390 4. Prajā-pati 393 5. Digression 397 6. Conclusions 399 Glossary of key-concepts and deities 401 Summary 401 ADRIANO MAGNANI «Fthonos theou»: rifunzionalizzazioni di un concetto dall’Antichità al Medioevo 402 Summary 417 ANTON SCHÜTZ Legal modernity and medieval theology: the case of Duns Scotus, Ordinatio I, D. 44 418 I. Why crisis is a potent motive to care for management, why it is not, for history 420 II. Duns Scotus’s voluntas and potentia, and Nietzsche’s Wille zur Macht 425 III. The Menschenfassung of the doctor subtilis and its slow but irresistible trajectory 433 IV. Contingency and torture 438 V. Potentia absoluta cum potentia ordinata: the bi-component fiber from which Western institutions are made 443 Summary 452 INDEX OF NAMES 453