Plenitude

Plenitude–one thing comprised of an ultimate variety of things.
Does this describe God?

I would be tempted to say that such describes the universe, not the cause of it.

So, did God create the universe “ex nihilo” or from His own plenitude? It is difficult for me to believe something came from nothing.

God?
Why always ruin good queries with that alldestroyerword…

Plenitude exist because existence is made of difference.
Different from vacuum to begin with.

This makes perfect sense for a pantheist. For a pantheist, the notion that God created the universe can only make sense if God created the universe from himself. God may be timeless, thereby reconciling the scientific idea that the Big Bang represents the beginning of time (i.e. no time before it), but it would also mean that He created time within himself, which means at least a part of God is time-bound (it also hints at the notion of an end-of-time).

Another question: is there such a thing as infinite plenitude? Or in my words: infinite qualitative diversity. Would it make sense to suppose that there could be more plenitude (in principle) than all the plenitude that exists? In other words, could the universe by necessity constitute maximal plenitude? Or could we say that because the universe is “of God” (if pantheism is right), there may be more plenitude in God than in the universe? After all, if we’re saying that time exists within God, and that God created time along with the rest of the universe, then that implies that there is more in God (atemporal things at the very least) than exists in the time-bound physical universe.

But if more exists in God than the time-bound physical universe, would it still count as more plenitude if that extra stuff that exists in God is just more physical time-bound stuff (perhaps bound to a different timeline, a different universe)? I don’t think so because plenitude seems to imply more than just “more” (greater quantity) but “different” (greater quality, or diversity thereof). This is why I think of “infinite plenitude” as “infinite qualitative diversity.” The greater the number of different qualities, and the greater the difference between those qualities, the more plenitude I would say there is (though I would still say that a nest of 3 eggs constitutes more plenitude than a nest of 2 eggs). Infinite qualitative diversity describes, in my opinion, God’s mind.

I’ve personally thought of the physical time-bound universe that we all experience as representative of God’s mind. As a representation, it may be a “dumbed down” version of God himself; perhaps like a string of 1s and 0s is a representation inside a computer of some real world phenomenon. With nothing but 1s and 0s, we can easily say that there is more plenitude in the real world phenomenon than in the binary representation had by the computer. If God has chosen to represent the plenitude of his mind to us in the form of matter and space, then we can think of matter and space as like the 1s and 0s in a computer representation of a real world phenomenon. And just as a computer can’t imagine anything over and above 1s and 0s (we can say real world phenomena are “inconceivable” to computers), we might not be able to imagine anything over and above matter and space, implying that God’s mind is inconceivable.

F. C. God is just another name for the Whole of all that exists.
Gib, As a pantheist, I believe in creation “ex Deus”. That all existing in the Whole that is timeless would answer the question of what came before the big bang. I like your computer analogy and tend to believe that’s the way it is. There may be infinite plenitude in the Whole of which 'we see in part". I also believe that human senses are “dumbed down” so as to limit our responses to what is necessary for eating and procreation; however, a few saints and seers have seen beyond these limitations. We are fine tuned for survival.