 One of the more important philosophical opinions of Abner was his deterministic  view.[15]  Abner devoted his book Ofrenda de Zelos (Minhat Kena’ot in the original lost Hebrew text), along with other works that have since been lost, to the question of determinism and free  will.[16]  In the beginning of this book, Abner describes the opinion of his former pupil Rabbi Isaac Pulgar, who denies God’s foreknowledge of human decisions. After the explication of this opinion and its negation, Abner explains his deterministic opinion. Abner believed that people have free will in a limited sense, but act in a determined way in the broader sense. People are free in their relation to themselves, meaning that if a person is separated from the causes that influence him or her (e.g., education, society’s influences) while debating between two options, one is then really free to choose either of the two options. In this specific case a person can then utilize his or her will and choose freely between the two options. However, if one takes into account all the causes that influence his or her will, we may conclude that these causes limits that person’s will to only one of the two options. In the opinion of Abner, people are like wax, as follows: Wax may be melted and sculpted into many different shapes. However, the person who sculpts the wax determines its present form as only one of those options. The same is true about people: In themselves, they have the ability to choose between different possibilities, but their relation to the outside world determines their choices. We can see from this example how strong the determinist view of Abner was. It is important to note that Abner defines the will of people as an accord between the attractive force and the imagination, two forces common to humans and animals.