Secondary causation

Secondary causation^[1][2][3] 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.^{[citation needed]} 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 after creation 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 of Hippo and later by Thomas 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.^[4] Nor does this create a conflict between science and religion for, given a creator deity, it is not inconsistent with the paradigm of a clockwork universe. It does not 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.^{[citation needed]}