Emanations of Creation

“All the emanations from the Father, therefore, are Pleromas, and all his emanations have their roots in the one who caused them all to grow from himself.” The Nag Hammadi Library 

What does the word emanate mean?

1831. ἐξέρχομαι exerchomai ex-er’-khom-ahee; from 1537 and 2064; to issue (literally or figuratively): —  come (forth, out), depart (out of), escape, get out, go (abroad, away, forth, out, thence), proceed (forth), spread abroad.

1831 εξερχομαι exerchomai ex-er’-khom-ahee

from 1537 and 2064; TDNT-2:678,257; v

AV-go out 60, come 34, depart 28, go 25, go forth 25, come out 23, come forth 9, misc 18; 222

1) to go or come forth of
1a) with mention of the place out of which one goes, or the point from which he departs
1a1) of those who leave a place of their own accord
1a2) of those who are expelled or cast out
2) metaph.
2a) to go out of an assembly, i.e. forsake it
2b) to come forth from physically, arise from, to be born of
2c) to go forth from one’s power, escape from it in safety
2d) to come forth (from privacy) into the world, before the public, (of those who by novelty of opinion attract attention)
2e) of things
2e1) of reports, rumours, messages, precepts
2e2) to be made known, declared
2e3) to be spread, to be proclaimed
2e4) to come forth
2e4a) emitted as from the heart or the mouth
2e4b) to flow forth from the body
2e4c) to emanate, issue
2e4c1) used of a sudden flash of lightning
2e4c2) used of a thing vanishing
2e4c3) used of a hope which has disappeared


2064. ἔρχομαι erchomai er’-khom-ahee; middle voice of a primary verb (used only in the present and imperfect tenses, the others being supplied by a kindred [middle voice] ελευθομαι eleuthomai el-yoo’-thom-ahee; or [active] ελθω eltho el’-tho; which do not otherwise occur); to come or go (in a great variety of applications, literally and figuratively): —  accompany, appear, bring, come, enter, fall out, go, grow, X light, X next, pass, resort, be set.

2064 ερχομαι erchomai er’-khom-ahee

middle voice of a primary verb (used only in the present and imperfect tenses, the others being supplied by a kindred [middle voice] ελευθομαι eleuthomai el-yoo’-thom-ahee, or [active] ελθω eltho el’-tho, which do not otherwise occur); TDNT-2:666,257; v

AV-come 616, go 13, misc 13, vr come 1; 643

1) to come
1a) of persons
1a1) to come from one place to another, and used both of persons arriving and of those returning
1a2) to appear, make one’s appearance, come before the public
2) metaph.
2a) to come into being, arise, come forth, show itself, find place or influence
2b) be established, become known, to come (fall) into or unto
3) to go, to follow one

Grk#:1831  / ex-er-khom-ahee (verb): Go out
Freq:&222
Heb#:3318 יצא / ya-tsa (verb): Go out—To go, come or
issue forth.


03318. יצא yatsa’ yaw-tsaw’; a primitive root; to go (causatively, bring) out, in a great variety of applications, literally and figuratively, direct and proxim.: —  X after, appear, X assuredly, bear out, X begotten, break out, bring forth (out, up), carry out, come (abroad, out, thereat, without), + be condemned, depart(-ing,  — ure), draw forth, in the end, escape, exact, fail, fall (out), fetch forth (out), get away (forth, hence, out), (able to, cause to, let) go abroad (forth, on, out), going out, grow, have forth (out), issue out, lay (lie) out, lead out, pluck out, proceed, pull out, put away, be risen, X scarce, send with commandment, shoot forth, spread, spring out, stand out, X still, X surely, take forth (out), at any time, X to [and fro], utter.

03318 יצא yatsa’ yaw-tsaw’

a primitive root; v; [BDB-422a] {See TWOT on 893 }

AV- … .out 518,  … .forth 411, bring 24, come 24, proceed 16, go 13, depart 10, misc 53; 1069

1) to go out, come out, exit, go forth
1a) (Qal)
1a1) to go or come out or forth, depart
1a2) to go forth (to a place)
1a3) to go forward, proceed to (to or toward something)
1a4) to come or go forth (with purpose or for result)
1a5) to come out of
1b) (Hiphil)
1b1) to cause to go or come out, bring out, lead out
1b2) to bring out of
1b3) to lead out
1b4) to deliver
1c) (Hophal) to be brought out or forth

Ge 1:12  And the earth brought forth <03318> grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Ge 1:24  And God said, Let the earth bring forth <03318> the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

Ge 2:10  And a river went out <03318> of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.

Hebrews 11:3  Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

1cor 8:6  but to us one God the Father, out of whom the all things, and we for him; and one Lord, Jesus Anointed, through whom the all things, and we through him.


Absolute power, from whose incorruptible substance or hypostasis spirit radiates, is before all existing things. This self-existing incorruptible substance is essentially spirit—spirit substance—a concentration and condensation into ONE BODY of all the attributes, intellectual, moral and physical, of omnipotence—all things are out of Deity (1 Cor. 8:6). All things being out of Deity, they were not made out of nothing. The sun, moon and stars, together with all things pertaining to each, were made out of something, and that something was the radiant effluence of His substance, or spirit-power, which pervades unbounded space. By his spirit-power, all created things are connected with the centre of the universe, which is light that no man can approach unto, so that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without the Father, who is not far from every one of us. The formation of the first man of the earth was the expression by spirit of the peculiar divine idea or mental image. The spirit-developed form, styled man, was the result of power divinely exercised upon the dust of the ground. Electricity, divinely manipulated and incorporated with the dust (itself an electrical product) assumed the form of the divine image and likeness and stood erect, a living, natural body, or man.”

The subject is indeed great, for God is great; and when we come to contemplate it aright, we are led with the apostle to exclaim: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who knows the mind of the Lord? Or who becomes His counsellor? Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed to Him again? For out of Him, (ex autou) and through Him, and for Him are all things. To Him be the glory for the Aions. Amen" (Rom. 11: 33-36).

We proceed to remark that Paul, as well as Moses, declares, "there is no other God but one"; and having so said, proceeds to remark: "For though there be that are called gods, whether in the heaven, or upon the earth (as there are gods many, and lords many), but to us there is one God the Father, out of whom (ex ou) all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Anointed, on account of whom (di'ou) all things, and we through Him. Howbeit the knowledge is not in all. (1 Cor. 8:4-7).

The source or fountain of power in the universe is one. It is a unit. Therefore, everything which exists is ex autou out of Him. Hence the Creator did not "make all things out of nothing." This is the teaching of theology, the "orthodox theology" of the Old Man of the Flesh; and which leads many of his children to affirm that "matter is God," understanding by "matter" that which is cognizable by the five senses. Hence the sun, the moon, and the stars, and all the things they can see, taste, feel, smell, and hear upon earth, are God. They confound that which "is of Him" with the "Him" out of whom all things proceed. On the other hand, other children of the Old Man affirm that "God is immaterial"; by which they mean that He is not matter, or substance, or body; but an inconceivable something they call "spirit," an incorporeal, unsubstantial, immaterial spirit, which is as near to nothing as words can express. Nothing making all things out of nothing is the Old Man's theology concerning God and the fountain of all things, reduced to its simplest terms. But the Scripture declares that pneuma ho Theos esti literally, Spirit is the Theos. I say simply theos, because we shall yet have to ascertain the New Testament sense of Theos. "Spirit," then, is the Theos commonly called God. But more than this, this Spirit is the Father; that is, the One ex autou, out of whom are all things. This appears from what is affirmed of "Spirit" and of "Father." Jesus says in John 5:21: "The Father raises up the dead and quickeneth," or makes the grave-emergent dead incorruptibly living: and in chapt. 6:63, he says: "It is the Spirit that quickeneth," or makes alive. The Father and the Spirit are, therefore, the same; nevertheless, the word "spirit" is often used in other senses. It is the "Father-Spirit" that Paul refers to in 1 Tim. 6:16, whom no man hath seen in His unveiled splendour. Veiled in flesh, "the Vail o[ the Covering" (Exodus 35:12): he that discerneth him who spoke to Philip, "saw the Father" (John 14:9; 12:45). But, veiled or unveiled, the Father-Spirit is substantial. Speaking of the Unveiled Father-Spirit, Paul says in Heb. 1:2, 3, that the Son is the Character of his Hypostasis, rendered, in the common version, "express image of his person."

The Son is the character or exact representation, and the Father is the hypostasis. In reference to the former, the Father says, in Zech 3:9: "Upon One Stone there shall be Seven Eyes; behold I will engrave the graving thereof (that is, of the stone), saith He who shall be hosts." The graving engraved on the stone is termed, in Greek, character, an impress wrought into a substance after some archetype or pattern. The archetype is the hypostasis, so that hypostasis is the basis or foundation of character; wherefore the same apostle in Col. 1:15, styles the character engraved the "Image" of Theos the Invisible (eikon tou Theou tou aoratou).

The Father-Spirit is embodied power. Paternal power implies offspring or children, children or SONS OF POWER. Son-power is also embodied power. It is power emanating from the Father, corporealized in one or a multitude, but never separated or detached from the focal centre. The Son-power is, therefore, the Father-power, multitudinously expressed, manifested through many bodies. This is illustrated in the science of arithmetic. Arithmetic is the scence of numbers. The hypostasis or basis of this science is the multitudinous expression of one, a multiplication of number one. Let there be no numerical power called one, and there could be no five, fifty, or any other combination of one. One is the great power of the arithmetical universe; and all the other powers resulting from the multiplication of one combined, cannot exclude one therefrom, without annihilating themselves, and expunging the system. This is true of Son-power, individually or multitudinously expressed, in relation to the One Father-power. Hence Jesus was led to remark, "The Son can do nothing of himself," and again, "I can of mine own self do nothing" (John 5:19,30). "The flesh," said he, "profits nothing." As son of Mary, he pretended to no power, wisdom or superiority. Mary's son was "the Vail of the Covering" to be rent. The Vail in which the Father-power was veiled, the Flesh-medium of Power-manifestation.

That which connects the Focal Power of the universe with the embodied sons of power, and indeed with all created things, is also "spirit" -- styled in Scripture "holy spirit". It is free or uncombined in space, and fills immensity as the water fills the basin of the seas. The atoms of all material things are elemental condensations of spirit, connecting the orbs of heaven and all they contain, with the Great Central Focal power of the Universe. It is the principle of cohesion, attraction, form; penetrating and pervading everything. To this universality the Psalmist alludes, when he enquires of Yahweh, "Whither shall I go from Thy spirit? And whither from Thy face shall I flee? If I shall ascend the heavens, Thou art there: though I shall spread down in sheol (the grave) behold Thee! I will take the wings of the dawn; I will dwell in the utmost end of the sea --moreover, there Thy hand (or power) shall lead me, and Thy right hand shall take hold of me. And I said, surely darkness shall cover me; but the night was light about me. Moreover, darkness will not conceal from Thee; but the night as the day will shine; as the darkness so is the light" (139:7-12). All this is equivalent to saying that the Father-Power is omnipresent by His Spirit. Hence, He needs not to be locomotive to see what passes in the sun, moon, earth and stars. His all-pervading spirit places Him in contemporary juxtaposition with them all; so that at one and the same instant, He knows the fall of a sparrow on earth, and any other event, small or great, on the sun. In this way it is that, as Paul told the Athenian idolators: "He is not far from every one of us" (Acts 17:27). We are out of Him, and through Him, and in Him as physical beings. This is equally true of all flesh that breathes. Hence Moses styles the Father-Power Ail Elohai haruchoth l'kol-bashar, power, powers of the spirits, for all flesh (Num. 16:22). Here is power as the cause of life, called Ail; and powers as distributed to each living thing, and therefore styled Elohim. A dozen creatures have life. This life is Ail's spirit in them all. It is not, however, a dozen separate and independent Ailim; but one and the same Ail multiplied by twelve. Ail is life absolute; for as Paul says: "He only hath deathlessness." Life radiating from His hypostasis or substance, is spirit-life Eloahh ruach, power of spirit. Formative of a creature, and sustaining it in life, it is power of spirit, or spirit-power for that creature. Twelve such Eloahh ruach become Elohim ruchoth, spirit-powers of the twelve. Hence, these Elohim are son-powers, or emanations from Ail, the great "paternal power." He is therefore the Ail of all flesh, as well as Elohim for all flesh. "The ruach or spirit of Ail has made me, and the nishmath or breath of the Shaddai, or Mighty Ones, hath given me life" (Job. 33:4). Here is the Spirit of Ail through the breath of Shaddai that gives life to men. This withdrawn and they die. Hence it is written: "If He gather unto himself His spirit and His breath, all flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn unto dust" (34:14).

In this elaboration, then, we have Father-Power, Son-Power, or emanation, and Free Spirit. Moses and the prophets teach this, as we have seen. The Father-Power is One; the Son-Power is the One Father-Power in plural manifestation; and the manifestation is developed by his Spirit-force emanation from the Father Power. This is not only Scriptural but reasonable; and right reason and Scripture always go together.