La Puissance et son nombre, d'Abélard à Kepler

Abstract

Power and its Number, from Abelard to Kepler. Catholic theology has always held, contrary to what the philosophers say, that God can do everything: his power is infinite, he always has a reserve of power and this reserve is not exhausted in the opus creationis. Thus, God's power is divine because it is incomprehensible. Therefore, there is an essential equivocity in the potentia Dei, which cannot be confused with the power of nature. What are examined here instead are some of the arguments in favor of the opposite thesis. Let us take seriously a logical objection: by saying that divine power is inexhaustible, is this not to assert the impossibility of its being exhausted and, in so doing, to impose on it a limit which, by definition, it cannot bear? Should not a consistent theology refrain from considering the divine power according to comparisons borrowed from the kingdom of created things (metaphors of royalty, source, light)? Kepler's attempt to think of nature as a pure Trinitarian symbol seems in this respect to deserve special attention.