Hi Dondi -
The distinction 'creatio ex nihilo' is specific in the sense that the cosmos was called into being from no pre-existing thing, no formless substrate that underlies all existence but that has no means of manifesting itself - there was no primoridal and formless 'stuff' that God organised into existing.
Now the question then arises is, if prior to creation, God is all there is, then how can what exists not be God, and, from another viewpoint, if all that exists is not God, then God is not God - infinite - because there is something other-than-God that exists - creation - that He isn't, and therefore limits His being.
So the pantheist argument seems to cover that off.
But it allows for certain errors - one being the assumption that creation is, by its inherent nature, divine. This is not the case, and this was and is something the Jews from the very outset were at great pains to insist - God is utterly and absolutely 'other than' anything that exists in the created order. The Divine Breath of Genesis 2:7 is something like a catalyst, which, if my chemistry-memory is correct: 'speeds up or slows down a reaction without taking any part in the reaction itself'.
The Breath of God animates man, but at his death the Breath returns to God and man returns to dust ...
So a Catholic would argue that God did not make the universe out of Himself or anything else - and particularly with your comment the spark that ignited the Big Bang was God's intrusion into the physical universe. - before God's 'Big Bang' there was no 'thing' there, no 'where' in which God could intude - there was nothing there to 'Bang' and there was no physical universe, nor, for example, is there 'time before the start of time' because that implies another order of time - negative time, or whatever ... there simply was not ... no time, no space, no being ... nothing in which a Big Bang could happen ...
God created the Cosmos as a free act of His will, it cost him nothing to do, and there was no reason to do it - some people talk of 'metaphysical necessity' it is true, but the Catholic says 'yes, but this cosmos, you, me, we are not necessary to God, we are because God wills us to be, but not because of any imperative that God is obliged to obey, God would not be lesser-than-Himself if I did not exist...'
The Cosmos and all within it subsists because god holds it in being, so it all exists in a relation to the Divine - one of utter dependency (try holding yourself in existence if you dropped off God's 'plot' as it were) - and not one of obligation or affinity - we don't exist because we are in some small degree divine, we exist because God wills it so, and that's it.
You might well agree with all this, but the point is that 'pantheism' and 'panentheism' have definitions that we cannot simply recast as suits ourselves, and there is a philosophy and a metaphysic attached to the term, and both pantheism and panentheism are 'monistic' and JudeoChristianIslamic doctrine is not monistic.
Thomas
The distinction 'creatio ex nihilo' is specific in the sense that the cosmos was called into being from no pre-existing thing, no formless substrate that underlies all existence but that has no means of manifesting itself - there was no primoridal and formless 'stuff' that God organised into existing.
Now the question then arises is, if prior to creation, God is all there is, then how can what exists not be God, and, from another viewpoint, if all that exists is not God, then God is not God - infinite - because there is something other-than-God that exists - creation - that He isn't, and therefore limits His being.
So the pantheist argument seems to cover that off.
But it allows for certain errors - one being the assumption that creation is, by its inherent nature, divine. This is not the case, and this was and is something the Jews from the very outset were at great pains to insist - God is utterly and absolutely 'other than' anything that exists in the created order. The Divine Breath of Genesis 2:7 is something like a catalyst, which, if my chemistry-memory is correct: 'speeds up or slows down a reaction without taking any part in the reaction itself'.
The Breath of God animates man, but at his death the Breath returns to God and man returns to dust ...
So a Catholic would argue that God did not make the universe out of Himself or anything else - and particularly with your comment the spark that ignited the Big Bang was God's intrusion into the physical universe. - before God's 'Big Bang' there was no 'thing' there, no 'where' in which God could intude - there was nothing there to 'Bang' and there was no physical universe, nor, for example, is there 'time before the start of time' because that implies another order of time - negative time, or whatever ... there simply was not ... no time, no space, no being ... nothing in which a Big Bang could happen ...
God created the Cosmos as a free act of His will, it cost him nothing to do, and there was no reason to do it - some people talk of 'metaphysical necessity' it is true, but the Catholic says 'yes, but this cosmos, you, me, we are not necessary to God, we are because God wills us to be, but not because of any imperative that God is obliged to obey, God would not be lesser-than-Himself if I did not exist...'
The Cosmos and all within it subsists because god holds it in being, so it all exists in a relation to the Divine - one of utter dependency (try holding yourself in existence if you dropped off God's 'plot' as it were) - and not one of obligation or affinity - we don't exist because we are in some small degree divine, we exist because God wills it so, and that's it.
You might well agree with all this, but the point is that 'pantheism' and 'panentheism' have definitions that we cannot simply recast as suits ourselves, and there is a philosophy and a metaphysic attached to the term, and both pantheism and panentheism are 'monistic' and JudeoChristianIslamic doctrine is not monistic.
Thomas
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