Ex Nihilo or Ex Deo?

I assert that this very question is of utmost importance and the key to understanding everything else for it is a return to the quest for the foundational principle from which all things flow logically thereafter. If the foundation is right then the house can stand, else it is doomed to collapse.

The dominance of the ex nihilo viewpoint for several millenia has colored every aspect of theology and philosophy. It has created a sense of insurmountable separation between the nihilo and the deo, and between the transcendant ("the outer") and the immanent. It is this perception of separation that has spawned such doctrines as 'sin", "Hell", and "salvation". It is a perception on which the whole "Problem of Evil" lies for God alone is ultimately to blame in such a paradigm but how can such a separate God be both a good God and a creator of evil? How can the nihilo be truly responsible for anything if out of nothing it is and to nothing it shall return? And how can man ever hope to return to the deo when a huge chasm stands before him? And why should it even matter?

The antidote seems to be a return to the original perception of ex deo, a perception which leads to the collapse of separation into real, ontological oneness but a oneness that does not eliminate multiplicity - a One in the Many and a Many in the One. This returns responsibility to us as individual offshoots and replaces miraculous "salvation" with rational realization and worship and prayer with meditation and contemplation (although I am not saying there is no place for worship and prayer).

This is not a return to polytheism or pantheism necessarily but a return to Plotinus's Emanationism.

There remains the question of how does the Deo or Absolute One "give birth" to anything if it is already absolute. This is a difficult question. My personal view is that the Absolute inverts itself. As One, the inverse is Many but as an inversion it is not "outside itself" for this would be ontologically impossible. We are then in essence God inside out and all that is necessary is for us to reverse our perspective. Thus, we turn inward in order to truly understand the outward (whereas the world is attempting to do the opposite).