Secondary Causation

Secondary Causation is the philosophical proposition that all material and corporeal objects, having been created by God with their own intrinsic potentialities, are subsequently empowered to evolve independently in accordance with natural law. Traditional Christians would slightly modify this injunction to allow for the occasional miracle as well as the exercise of free will. Deists who deny any divine interference past the creation event would only accept free will exceptions. That the physical universe is consequentially well-ordered, consistent, and knowable subject to human observation and reason, was a primary theme of Scholasticism and further molded into the philosophy of the Western Tradition by Augustine and later by Aquinas.

Secondary causation has been suggested as a necessary precursor for scientific inquiry into an established order of natural laws which are not entirely predicated on the changeable whims of a supernatural Being. Nor does this create a conflict between science and religion for, given a Creator, it is not inconsistent with the paradigm of a clockwork universe. It does however remove logical contradictions concerning the unfettered expression of man’s free will which would otherwise require not just God’s acquiescence but rather His direct intervention to implement.

According to the Jewish Torah which brought down the original idea in Genesis, the phrase "free will" is a mistranslation from the Torah, rather what humans are given is "freedom to choose". Freedom to choose to do God's Will at all times even though God gave us a good inclination and a not-good inclination to use in choosing, we are told "Therefore choose life".

Occasionalism itself was derived from the earlier school of thought of “volunteerism” emanating from Al-Ash'ari who held that every particle in the universe must be constantly recreated each instant by God’s direct intervention.

According to the Kabbalah and brought down in Chasidic philosophy in the book "Tania, the Book of Intermediates" composed by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (Russia) at the beginning of the 19th century, the will and desire to create the universe is integral to the Creator's very essence & thought this being the source for all the physical and spiritual worlds.

Once the Creator has created the universe and God knows & wants the Creation as the One who created it in His very essence, God then enlivens and vivifies all parts of the universe at every moment or the physical universe & the many spiritual worlds would revert instantly to their source in the Creator from where they came. At the same time as molecules move, human cells divide the Creator must know the Creation as it was a moment ago and makes allowance for the finite Creations to grow and later slowly wither, and by the evaporation of water, the wearing down of rocks and soil, the birth, growth and weakening of the flesh of fish, animals and humans all Creations as they are built from the 4 main spiritual worlds which also break down, they have a mirror on earth of air, fire, water, dust and slowly all created beings wear down by God's constant enlivening of them until each of the 4 elements return to their spiritual source which mirror the 4 elements. This is not an independent of God activity, rather it is all controlled by God's Will.

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