 (3) Identity of origin. A third way to express the identity of God and nature is by reference to the thought that all things come from God, rendering them both identical with each other and with the one source from which they came. It is important in this connection to discuss the difference between such notions as emanation, expression, or instantiation and the more specifically theistic conception of creation ex nihilo, for given the plausibility of supposing that what ‘flows forth’ or ‘radiates out’ from a source is only latent within that stem, traditional theists have often insisted on creation ex nihilo precisely to drive a wedge between creator and created and thereby rule out pantheism. But although it would be tempting to contrast creation ex nihio as theistic and emanation as pantheistic, such thoughts are probably too simple. Plotinus’ universe comprises in a hierarchy of emanations from what he terms, the ‘One’; but as neither anything in the cosmos nor the sum of all things in the cosmos, as an ideal construction from which all expressions fall short, Plotinus’ God is really too transcendent for his doctrine to count as pantheism proper. Eriugena, by contrast, has an emanation-theory that is more genuinely pantheist but, given his apophatic conception of God as marked by both being and non-being, he regards this position as wholly compatible with the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. To Eriugena, God is precisely the nothing from which all things were made. Spinoza approaches the question of origin from a rather different angle. Arguing that God is the immanent cause of all things, he draws an important distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata; between the universe considered in active mode as cause and the very same universe considered in passive mode as effect (Ethics 1p29s). This is an important doctrine not least for the way in which it links with necessity. Modelled more on the way in which the theorems of geometry derive from its axioms than on the sense in which a work of art results from the free or spontaneous activity of its artist, pantheistic creation of this second type courts a determinism that threatens to rule out free will. And that has been a very common objection to pantheism.