***** Those who say that it is natural norms and the will of...

***** Those who say that it is natural norms and the will of men that create the phenomenal world, and that neither the rotation of the world nor the act of men have any connection with God, are ascribing all effects to a pole opposed to God. At the very least, they are making created things a partner with God in His creation, or setting up another creator in confrontation with God, the Creator. They unconsciously regard the essences of created things as independent of the divine essence.

The independence of a creature-be it man or other than man —entails belief in that creature being a partner with God in His acts and His independence, resulting clearly enough in a form of dualism. Man is, thus, led away from the lofty principle of divine unity and cast into the dangerous trap of polytheism.

To accept the idea of man's absolute freedom would be to withdraw from God His sovereignty in a given area, whereas, in fact, He embraces all beings, for we would be attributing to man untrammeled and indisputable sovereignty in the sphere of his volitional acts. No true believer in God's unity can accept the existence of a creativity separate from that of God, even in the limited realm of man's acts.

While recognizing the validity of natural causes and factors, we must regard God as the true cause of all occurrences and phenomena and recognize that if God wished, He could neutralize it even in the limited sphere where it operates and render it ineffective. Just as all creatures in the world lack independence in their essence, all being dependent on God, they also lack independence in causation and the production of effects.

Hence, we have the doctrine of unity of acts, meaning perception of the fact that the entire system of being, with its causes and effects, its laws and its norms, is the work of God and comes into being from His will; every factor and cause owes to Him not only the essence of its existence, but also its ability to act and produce effects.

The unity of acts does not require us to deny the principle of cause and effect and the role that it plays in the world, or to regard everything as the direct and unmediated produce of God's will, in such a way that the existence or non-existence of causational factors would make no difference. But we should not attribute independent causation to those factors, or imagine that God's relationship to the world is like that of an artist to his work—for example, that of a painter to his painting.