What is human action? According to Mises, it is the use of means to attain ends. 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, 2.11):
Scholastic philosophers and theologians and likewise Theists and Deists of the Age of Reason conceived an absolute and perfect being, unchangeable, omnipotent, and omniscient, and yet planning and acting, aiming at ends and employing means for the attainment of these ends. But action can only be imputed to a discontented being, and repeated action only to a being who lacks the power to remove his uneasiness once and for all at one stroke. An acting being is discontented and therefore not almighty. If he were contented, he would not act, and if he were almighty, he would have long since radically removed his discontent. For an all-powerful being there is no pressure to choose between various states of uneasiness; he is not under the necessity of acquiescing in the lesser evil. Omnipotence would mean the power to achieve everything and to enjoy full satisfaction without being restrained by any limitations. But this is incompatible with the very concept of action. For an almighty being the categories of ends and means do not exist.
If God is already the ultimate good and furthermore does not change through history, what does it mean for God to act? Augustine wondered similarly in the Confessions (11.10), how can an eternal and changeless God have an impulse to act at one time and not at another?
Surely those are still in their ancient error who say to us: “What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?” If, they say, he was at rest and doing nothing, why did he not continue to do nothing for ever after as for ever before? If it was a new movement and a new will in God to create something he had never created before, how could that be a true eternity in which a will should arise which did not exist before? For the will of God is not a creature: it is prior to every creature, since nothing would be created unless the will of the Creator first so willed. The will of God belongs to the very substance of God. Now if something arose in the substance of God which was not there before, that substance could not rightly be called eternal; but if God’s will that creatures should be is from eternity, why are creatures not from eternity?
Augustine’s answer to his own question puts us on the right track: time itself is a creation. Eternity sees all of time at once, so to speak. “What is meant by the question ‘What were you doing then [before heaven and earth were made]?’ If there was not any time, there was not any then. . . . You are before all the past by the eminence of your ever-present eternity.”(Confessions, 11.13) Indeed, as Mises also points out, “It is acting that provides man with the notion of time and makes him aware of the flux of time. The idea of time is a praxeological category.” (Human Action, 5.2) That is, action is as inextricably connected with time as it is with imperfection. There can be no action without time, nor without imperfection, for change is at the heart of all of them.
Creation therefore cannot be an act of God, as we think of acting. He did not use means to attain ends in the creation of the world, as anything conceivable as an end belongs to him already. Nor could he conceivably dissatisfied in himself such that he would posses an impulse at one instant which was not there before, to act in order to relieve that dissatisfaction. No intervention of God in of creation is an “act” in the sense that the word is typically used.
But God is definitely manifest in creation – not only in the fact that creation exists, but in redemption and present sanctification, not to mention 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.
Gottfried 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 profound assertion: Creation as it exists through history is necessarily the only perfect demonstration of the glory of God. His manifestations therein are not the tinkerings or interventions in a creation separate from and acting independently of Himself, but a direct inbreaking of glory to 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.
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