INTRODUCTION

One important consequence of the idea that God creates the world “out of nothing” is that no finite entity or event falls outside the scope of God's action and purpose. Jews, Christians and Muslims, each in their own context, affirm that God is at work in all things. There are of course many questions raised by this claim, including the deep challenge presented by suffering and evil. I want to focus here on an underlying issue that has implications for a wide range of theological concerns: How should we understand the relation of God's creative action and the activity of creatures? In working out a response to this question, theological discussion has given rise to the idea of “double agency,” i.e., the idea that a single event can simultaneously be ascribed to the activity both of God and of a created cause or finite intentional agent. The origins of this concept lie deep in the doctrine of creation, and so we begin our exploration there.

CREATION AND DIVINE ACTION

The concept of creation has been developed in a variety of ways across its long history in multiple religious and philosophical contexts. There are, however, three key elements in what came to be the dominant formulation of this idea in Jewish, Islamic and Christian thought.

First, God's creative act accounts for the very being of the creature, and apart from this act there would be nothing other than God.