 Malebranche here is assuming that in the case of creation ex nihilo God is the cause of not only the being or esse of a creature but also its modes—presumably because no other possible cause actually exists prior to the act of creation ex nihilo. So by taking God’s conserving activity to be qualitatively identical to his activity as creator ex nihilo, Malebranche appears to arguing that even in cases where the creatures are conserved, God is the unique cause of both their esse and modes. Since the modes of a creature cannot in principle have been causally overdetermined in the case of creation ex nihilo—for creation ex nihilo suggests that no cause exists prior to the act of creation—if the creature’s dependence on God in instances of conservation is identical to the instance of creation ex nihilo, then there can be no overdetermination in the production of modes in cases of conservation. Now the concurrentist might reply at this point that concurrentists deny overdetermining creaturely causes as well, since their point is that the creature is a concurring cause of the modes of the creature: the causal contribution of neither God nor the creature are redundant, since both are necessary in some manner. But notice that if it is indeed the case that the act of creation ex nihilo should be understood to imply that God is the unique cause of both the esse and modes of the creature, and if conservation is qualitatively identical to continuous creation ex nihilo in causally relevant respects, then the concurrentist would have to either reject the CCC thesis or suggest a different account of what is going on at creation ex  nihilo.[29]  For if this way of understanding continuous creation rules out overdetermining causes, it also rules out concurring causes. 