What is human action? According to Mises, it is the use of means to attain ends (Mises, Human Action). One acts towards these ends in order to gain utility, or to somehow improve one’s lot, however that looks for the particular person. This unfortunately runs into problems with the idea of the almighty, as Mises also points out (Human Action, Chapter 2). If God is already the ultimate good and furthermore does not change through history, what does it mean for God to act?

Creation therefore cannot be an act of God, as we think of acting. God did not use means to attain ends in the creation of the world, nor was redemption, or any intervention of God on the part of creation, an “act” in this sense. All ends are God’s already, and as a being of static perfection – Himself the goal and end of creation – we cannot say that God “acts” in creation. This would require God to have need or desire of something, which in turn requires the He lacks something – a quality that is the antithesis of the Almighty.

But God is definitely manifest in creation – not only in the fact that creation exists, but in redemption, and the countless miracles recorded in the Bible. This is why it is important that creation is the result and not the cause of the glory of God. Creation exists because of the glory of God, and not for the glory of God. God cannot be less glorious at the beginning of creation than the end. Leibniz, the co-inventor of calculus, said regarding history, “we live in the best of all possible worlds”. Though it’s become cliche stripped of its context, this is actually a very deep statement: Creation as it exists through history is necessarily the only perfect demonstration of the glory of God, and the manifestations of God therein are not the tinkerings or interventions of God in a creation separate from and acting independently of Himself, but a direct display of glory hidden within the wider indirect display.

This allows us also to conceive of the human will not as nonexistent nor as completely arbitrary, but as a subset of the will of God with regard to creation. We have wills of our own, but it is not possible to act outside of or against the will of God as manifest in the outcome of history. God will be glorified in creation, and we cannot exist except for that purpose, whether we want to or not.