Abstract

One of the most important issues which has long attracted the attention of most thinkers is the relation of man's voluntary acts to Almighty God.The belief in the Unity of Divine Acts indicates that the world of being has only a single real agent and the effusion of existence and independent influence are restricted to the Holy Essence of the Almighty Truth.Various theories have been propounded in this regard. On the one hand, a group of theologians, by acknowledging the Unity of Divine Acts, totally denied the influence of intermediary causes and, by negating causality, introduced the Almighty God as the direct agent of each phenomenon. On the other hand, another group of theologians accepted some kind of independence in influence, particularly, concerning the above-mentioned voluntary agents and rejected the attribution of man's voluntary acts to the Almighty. They denied the Unity of Divine Acts.There were also some philosophers who agreed with the indirect dependence of all phenomena, even man's voluntary acts, on vertical activity. Finally, Mulla Sadra explained and analyzed causality as self-manifestation or self-disclosure. He also explained creative activity and, on the basis of the principle of basit al-haqiqah, demonstrated that Almighty God is always with His Manifestations. He also stipulated that intermediary causes are the self-manifestations of the Almighty. Accordingly, the effusion of existence in its real sense of the word is limited to God, and the other causes, which enjoy different levels, function as the channels of effusion of existence. In fact, this analysis entails the same content as that of the famous statement, 'There is no influence in existence but God'. In other words, independent influence and effusion of existence are specifically for Almighty God.