final cause of all things.”18 As such, the divine causality is mediated through his essence. The divine ideas are located in the divine essence, whereby God knows himself and wills himself in a simple and pure act. By locating the divine ideas in the simple essence of God, classical theology does not envisage a fall from this unity but God’s freely making proper room for creation. Creation is thus God’s act of his essence and its attributes: knowledge and will. It is not an act mediated through the