  Traditional theists held––and present-day theists still do hold––that God is the “author” or cause of everything in the cosmos in at least three different respects, so discussions of the holiness problem often branch off in three correspondingly different directions. First, God is regarded as the creative cause of everything in the cosmos. Everything that exists contingently is brought into existence by means of the creative activity of God. Second, it is held that God is the conserving cause of everything that exists. So God not only creates every created being, but every created being that continues to exist does so in virtue of God's continuously maintaining it in existence. Third, every action caused by a created being requires direct divine activity as concurrent cause.  So every whack of a hammer, every strike of my fingertip on the keyboard, every tug of a magnet on a piece of iron, requires not only that the created being act, but also that the creator act concurrently with the created being in order to bring about the particular effect of the cause in question.  [For a classic exposition of these various modes of divine causal involvement see St. Thomas Aquinas, Disputationes de Potentia Dei, Q.3, a.7, resp.]