 The claim that God is the only real substance, the “proper entity” of things, has led to accusations of pantheism. Students of Edwards have responded by insisting on a distinction in Edwards between God and creatures. The distinction is real but insufficient to refute charges of pantheism. For, historically, pantheisms do not identify the divine with nature as such but, rather, with nature's substance or essence or inner being or power. Natural phenomena aren't identical with the divine. They are its modes or properties or parts. Edwards clearly believes that God is the world's real substance. However, the sense of his assertion is very different from that of the pantheists. In claiming that God is the world's substance Edwards means that God's decrees are the only cause of an entity's being and characteristics. He isn't a pantheist because the relation between God and the world is construed as a relation between a creative volition and its immediate effects. Edwards' model is not a whole and its parts, or a substance (a bearer of properties) and its properties, or an essence and its accidents, but agent causality.