 Avicenna also recognizes an intermediate type of efficient cause: This third type gives being to an effect that does not exist after absolute nonexistence or after a specific privation in matter; rather the existence of this effect is preceded by the existence of something else, which is non-material. Avicenna mentions that there is dispute about whether an agent of this third type should be called a “creator”. He says that while some wish to reserve that term for the efficient causality of the first cause (God), he favors the opposite view: “creation” is properly said of every agent which gives being to an effect whose existence is not preceded by privation in matter. This intermediate type of efficient cause plays a role in Avicenna’s emanationist account of creation. On this account, creation occurs in a stepwise way beginning with the original creative act of God, whose immediate effect is an intellect. The first created intellect then creates three things: (i) the body of the outermost sphere, (ii) the soul which moves the outermost sphere and (iii) a second intellect. The second intellect likewise creates three things and so on. The lowest of the created intellects—namely, the Agent Intellect—creates the form and matter of the sublunary world, as well as the rational souls of individual human beings. Avicenna adapts his account of emanation from al-Fārābī (870–950), known among the philosophers as the “Second Teacher”, though his version of emanation differs from that of al-Fārābī in several ways (Davidson 1992).