  Of course the simplest answer to the question of how God is distinguished from the rest of the universe of beings is in terms of God’s being its creator. Dietrich is careful to preserve the philosophical intention of his exposition when he refers to the creative nature of God within the context of Proclean Neoplatonism. God as the One, he says, exhibits an interior overflowing (interior transfusio). “By means of this super-blessed nature (superbenedicta natura) he overflows through his own fecundity beyond himself into the whole of being, establishing it out of nothing through creation and governance.” The whole of being then is created out of nothing by God. Dietrich is careful not to say the universe of being because he then would leave himself open to the theological error of implying that God’s being is created, albeit self-created.  Furthermore, by introducing creation into his hierarchy with respect to the One he avoids the charge of pantheism that so often plagued earlier Christian Neoplatonists such as Scotus Eriugena. Dietrich was perfectly capable of identifying God and his creatures as he does in his treatise on measurement, the De mensuris, where he writes, “…all things insofar as they are in him are God himself and he for his part is in a certain way all things…” But he is quick to point out to the reader that the way God is all things is in the mode of an essential cause (per modum causae essentialis), meaning that whatever is in the effect, even the being of the effect, is in the cause in a more eminent mode. Dietrich explains this principle in the second part of De intellectu when he tells us that “… an agent as an agent can contain in itself its own act or what is caused by it not only virtually, but also essentially, insofar as it is the same as its effect, but with a distinct existence (aliud esse).” Thus God and creatures do not enjoy the same being. God’s being is not created, but creative. And this property is unique to God.  No creatures can create because as a creature it has a non-creative being which is different from God’s being, an aliud esse.