 The Condemnations of 1277 and John Duns Scotus impelled the view that the world could be other than it is. The idea that God’s omnipotent power provides him with an infinity of choices out of which he chooses to create only one set of possibilities became a governing idea among subsequent English schoolmen. Scotus also argued forcefully for the idea that each moment was open to contingent possibility, such that for any time t, the events at t were possible not to be the events at t. Contingency, traditionally assigned to the future, in Scotus’ view superseded or governed even the hypothetical necessity of the present. Ockham retreated from Scotus’ view, reassigning contingency to future events and reasserting the full force of hypothetical necessity for events in the present. However, working out the implications for philosophy and theology of a contingent world order was the central intellectual challenge for Holkot’s generation.