God in and of Himself prior to creation
There is no "prior" to creation... for God. This linearity is part of the fallacious horizontality that keeps you from understanding true multi-phenomenality.
Creation had an inception, but God is not "before" creation. God is timeless. And since God is timeless, He isn't limited by time in us communing with Him. So our communion is from time into timelessness. No spatiality for God, either. That's His incommunicable attribute of Immensity.
Only His essence. By the energies OF His essence through economy of action, He may certainly be communed with in His timelessness. There would be no other communion to have with Him, since He is innately and intrinsically timeless (Eternity and Infinity attributes) and Immutable.
That is apophatic theology, and you have affirmed it...
As a vital tool. But at some point there must be cataphaticism beyond apophaticism that says nothing at all. And that cataphatic is very apophatic, by virtue of elimination.
So the question becomes: From what did God create creation?
Nothing.
And the Patristic answer is that He created creation out of nothing into something, that something being creation...
Duh. But it wasn't some random expression that created it like a sneeze. God foreknew every last plausible possibility for creation. He didn't create something He eternally knew nothing about.
You will need to ask God on that...
I already did. He answered through theosis, noesis, and those applied to hearing His Rhema in great detail.
My only question is from WHAT did God create creation?
Nothing. There was no "what" except creation, just as there was no "where/s" or "when/s"; including there being no "was" or "did", which are time terms. We must speak in time tenses and/or spatiality terms, but none are relevant to the uncreated.
Are you saying that He created creation out of His Nous???
"According to"... Not "out of". God didn't create heaven and the cosmos out of His nous as some kind of material.
If so, you run into the problem of His creation of creation out of Himself, which eo ipso divinizes all creation, which is provably false...
Creation is in no way divine. I've said nothing of any such thing. He eternally foreknew the entire omni-versity of all contingent potentialities and plausible possiblilities for creation. Creation is not some manifestation of God's mind as some material.
So is this "potentiality" something or nothing or God?
Nothing. Certainly not God. Not divine. No Pantheism.
Relative to heaven and the cosmos???
From nothing to something is a means??
Sigh. You can't profess to know anything whatsoever of any of this. It's not material or spatial, just as it is not time-based.
Do you differentiate between the agency of God's Nous, and that which that agency acts upon when God creates creation?
Yes, but not according to your concepts of linearity and horizontality. There is no "when" for creation.
They seem to be collapsing together here...
Nope.
That claim is apophatically self-immolational...
I don't care. It's the truth. I commune with God from time into His timelessness. I'm sorry the Orthodox have stiff-armed that into false mystery and futile extremes of apophaticism.
God spoke by His Son to REVEAL Himself, not conceal Himself.
I have not seen the concept "The Rent Veil of Mysterion" in the Bible... So we enter BEHIND it by our own will?
No. We enter behind the veil by being hypostatically translated into the risen, ascended, seated, and "re-sheathed" Son into the scabbard from whence the sword of the Spirit was thrust.
Grace is the action of God's Essence through His Uncreated Energies... So do you really think you OWN God's Divine Nature minus its Essence by some kind of PARTAKING?
No. I'm the one bought with a price. And I partake of the divine nature AS grace. That's the very definition of grace. The divine influence of God's nature upon our own.
It is bestowed - Indeed it is Life bestowing...
Yes, and then some. Nothing compares.
Well, that claim is subject to verification, for pre-creation
For God and His timelessness, there is no "pre-" for creation.
time is timelessness, and you thereby must know the future and the past in the eternal now that is God...
I don't have to know the past and future to commune with God from time into His timelessness. He didn't commune such to the Son, so I don't expect all of time's contents to be communed to me. You act as though timelessness is just the aggregate of all time. It's non-time, not all-time.
All we know is that we eat His Flesh and drink His Blood... And in this we seek to have His Life grow in us as we run the race... Have you experienced glorification of the body? I mean, that is WAY past MY pay grade...
Arsenios
Arsenios
I commune with God in His timelessness. The glorification of the body is relative to time. By faith, I'm already glorified. Faith transcends time.
