It applies to scientific and mathematical issues as well as religious and political ones. He says that it is to be those who are appointed to that task by the sovereign. He considers the problem of determining whether a being born of a human mother but having a monstrous shape is human or not. The issue, he says, cannot be decided using Aristotle's definition of a human being as a rational animal, or by any philosopher. Hobbes's conventionalistic solution is also obviously politically motivated.
Absurdity is something else.
In De Corpore , his view is more moderate and he explains absurdities as category mistakes.