One of the significant aspects of this distinction was that – entirely apart from its theological motivation – it gave medieval authors very powerful and flexible analytical tools.  Buridan, for example, deploys this distinction in a very subtle analysis of some extremely obscure arguments in Aristotle (Knuuttila 2001). Scotus uses different, but related, arguments to investigate modal questions such as that of the contingency of the present. To some extent (although there is considerable argument about this area) these methods allowed a far-reaching reformulation of the metaphysics of modality  (Normore 2003; cf. Knuuttila 1993).  