What's the correct way to say, in Latin, "creation within God" & "creation through God"?

Question

A great swath of Christendom has, from as early as Augustinus Hipponensis, held that God created the universe ex nihilo, "from/ out of nothing." One of the motivations behind this has been to refute or avoid the ex materia conclusion, which would presuppose that God had to have pre-existent matter out of which to fashion the universe as we now know it.

Another motivation is to avoid a blurring of the distinction between God and his creation which creatio ex deo may suggest, based on certain philosophical starting-points. There are, however, portions of the Bible (such as Colossians 1.16) which explicitly say that the cosmos was made "in God" and whose motion takes place as though a journey "through God" (see Acts 17.28).

It is in this sense that I ask how, in Latin, to express those prepositional relationships between God and the universe. In other words, which of the following would be the correct way to say, in formulations similar to creatio ex nihilo & creatio ex deo:

1. "creation [with]in God" or "creation in[side] God"
2. "creation through God"

Would they be, respectively:

1. creatio intra deo or creatio introrsum deo?
2. creatio per deo or creatio per deum,
   or perhaps, rather,
   creatio trans deo or creation trans deum?

_{(The above are the results of my GoogleTranslations of the afore-listed expressions but my grammar is nowhere good enough for me to tell if any of these is correct and if so by how much.)}

Answer 1

Here are the Vulgate versions of the two verses you mention:

Colossians 1.16:

quoniam in ipso condita sunt universa in cælis, et in terra, visibilia, et invisibilia, sive throni, sive dominationes, sive principatus, sive potestates: omnia per ipsum et in ipso creata sunt

Acts 17.28:

In ipso enim vivimus, et movemur, et sumus: sicut et quidam vestrorum poëtarum dixerunt: Ipsius enim et genus sumus

Both verses use in + ablative to mean "in", and the first also uses per + accusative to mean "through". Based on this, the phrases you're looking for would be in deo and per deum.

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"Across God" would be trans deum, and "within God" would be intra deum. (Both forms sound strange to me, though, especially the latter, because intra generally refers to enclosed spaces or regions.)

Answer 2

If I may supplement TKR's answer:

Colossians 1:16 is decidedly ambiguous. The Greek original has:

ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ ἐκτίσθη τὰ πάντα, τὰ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς καὶ τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, τὰ ὁρατὰ καὶ τὰ ἀόρατα, εἴτε θρόνοι εἴτε κυριότητες εἴτε ἀρχαὶ εἴτε ἐξουσίαι τὰ πάντα δι᾽αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἔκτισται

which the Vulgate renders as:

quoniam in ipso condita sunt universa in cælis, et in terra, visibilia, et invisibilia, sive throni, sive dominationes, sive principatus, sive potestates: omnia per ipsum, et in ipso creata sunt.

ἐν αὐτῷ is correctly rendered as “in ipso”, though it could be debated whether this means “in himself” or “in themselves” (with the singular αὐτῷ referring to the neuter plural subject of ἐκτίσθη). δι᾽αὐτοῦ means “per ipsum”, but εἰς αὐτὸν cannot really mean “in ipso”, but must mean “for him” (or literally: “towards him”).

For reference: the English KJV has:

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him.

I would think that the Biblical authority for the doctrine that God created the universe "in himself" is quite shaky.