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What is meant by "an act of God"?

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1. As Creator-Emancipator of all things, God immediately and directly acts to establish the fundamental rules or "laws" of natural order, in the sense of the optimal limits of creaturely action. This means that an essential prior decision in the past of every creaturely choice is the immediate past decision of God whereby the optimal limits of all creaturely choice are reestablished. This implies, of course, that the creature's creation, involving, as it does, its own choice, is, in part, self-creation. Even so, God's part as the Other in the self-creation of every creature is decisive and is God's act alone; for that there is always some world, and that this world always has an order in which the ratio of opportunities for good to risks of evil through creaturely choices is always favorable, is due utterly and completely to the creative-emancipative act of God. On the other hand, as Consummator-Redeemer of all things, God immediately and directly acts to include all other action in God's own self-Fcreation creation as God. Thus all that comes to be through creaturely choice is a prior decision to which God responds in God's present consummative-redemptive choice to create Godself.

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