 According to Craig, it is intuitively clear that creation and conservation are distinct actions since conservation has a patient (or object) and creation does not. To conserve a thing in being is to act on that thing. In contrast, to create a thing is not to act on it or on any other thing, but to bring it into existence from nothing. Thus the “circumstantial” distinction between creation and conservation (i.e., causing the existence of something that did not exist earlier vs. causing the existence of something that did exist earlier) requires a deeper distinction between the natures of the actions themselves (Craig 1998, 183). We may call this an agent-patient theory of conservation (Miller 2009). Craig finds this intuitive distinction expressed in Scotus, though Timothy Miller disputes this interpretation (2009, 475).