If, unlike George Ellis, one looks at the BIGGER picture, one arrives at a very different view of the world (i.e. the universe).
In the BIGGER picture, way before there was something describable as “physics” or time or space or matter, something moved and created categories (like energy, mass or position), something moved and created relationships between the categories (i.e. laws of nature), and something moved and created numbers and assigned the numbers to the categories.
This is what genuine causation is all about: creating the basic elements of the real-world system, e.g. creating new numbers and assigning them to existing categories, just like what happens in quantum events to this day. Genuine causation has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the action/ reaction that is due to existing laws of nature in an existing real-world system; however, George Ellis seems to think that action/ reaction is causation because he doesn't look at a bigger picture of the world.
One can claim that an external God, or something else external to the world exists (George Ellis seems to think that an external-to-the-world Platonic realm exists), and this external thing has the causal power to create the categories, relationships, and numbers, and assign the numbers to the categories.
OR, more realistically, one must consider that nothing external to the world exists, and that what actually exists is a world which is a totally self-sufficient type of thing, i.e. the world itself has the causal power to create its own categories, relationships, and numbers, and assign the numbers to the categories.
Note that this causal power to create CAN’T be explained as being due to the categories, relationships and numbers that were created by the causal power; and so a different set of symbols is required to represent causal power/ free will.