Newton made similar design arguments in a later book, the Opticks, based upon the qualities of light and the exquisite functional integration of the many parts of the eye.26 Thus, in his work Newton affirmed what theologians since the Middle Ages had conceived of as two complementary but distinct powers of God: (1) the potentia ordinata, God’s ordinary power, by which God sustains the order of nature, and (2) the potentia absoluta, the absolute or fiat power of God, by which God accomplishes special acts of creation or design or initiates events in human history at discrete times for special
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