Course XXXI - Teaching 9: The Creational Divinity

Masters of Theology have divided the concept of Creation into two great theories, since certain Masters teach that the Universe co-exists with God and is eternal as God; and others teach that the Universe has been created by God, not from the Eternity, but in tempore, in the time.
God did not create the Universe ab aeterno because Creation always involves a beginning and, since the Non-Manifested One cannot be known at all, the existence of the Universe ab aeterno is impossible.
A creation existing ab aeterno would be opposite to the concept of the Non-Manifested One that is not created or uncreated.
Even Creation is not determined by a factor of capricious time because such concept would admit lack of reflection in the Creation; also it would be something different from God, apart from God.
So, Creation is eternal taken manifestation; the Unknowable God potentially has in Se any determining factor of Creation. So, this Creation is potentially eternal.
But, it is not eternal as expression of God, but is in a period of duration: it begins and ends; it is like an immense luminous beam going out of the bosom of God and returning to the bosom of God.
The Divine Creation of the Universe is potentially eternal; it is in the Unknowable God, and actively made by Knowable God in certain time.
Now, did God make the Universe from the Nothing, or did God emanate this Universe from Himself through His selfsame Divine Substance?
God could not take His Very Substance from Himself to make the Universe because His Substance, which is eternally simple, does not admit compounds. Even he could not make this Universe from the Nothing, since this Nothing would admit an extant state a priori, and entirely different from God. These words, ex nihilo, according to the Aristotelian concept, express the immense God’s void or His potential state, and this is the only way to express this eternal theological truth that has been revealed.
God made the Universe from His Nothing, which is unintelligible by the human man; and from that unknowable state out of the mind’s reach, He created something eternally free, previously uncreated, genially new, and absolutely unique.
The Divine Creation is free because is made with compounds derived from God that is Divine Simplicity. It is new because never existed before.
It is unique because only He who possesses in se an integral knowledge of the existence, can express it, but at the same time it is not Himself, or His very emanation, but something different, expressed in an analogical way.
Let us define this: God created the Universe potentially ab aeterno, but in the time established by the Divine Law. He created it from the Immense Potential Void of Himself through His Selfsame Differentiated Substance.
Periodically, God creates the Universe through His Manifestation; but this Universe is always other. God never creates the same, and what has been created never stops or stopped being.
“Ab aeterno fecit, in tempore fecit, ex nihilo omnia fecit” (“He was since the eternity, he made it in time, and he made all from the nothing”).