Slow down Wolfgang. This is precisely what the early Church did not say. The Church Fathers made a clear distinction between the created world and the uncreated and stated that there is no similarity between the two whatsoever. This was the doctrine of the Church that drove the Neoplatonism of Clement and Origen and the eternal ideas or forms of Plato from the church forever, at least in the East. In this theology of the Church, creation is not self-revelation of God.
Furthermore, the Fathers make a distinction bewteen the uncreated essence of God and the uncreated energies or divine attributes of God. God's essense is unknowable, ineffable, inconceivable, incomprehensible. Revelation of God is only possible by means of the uncreated energy or divine grace which is His outward face to his creation.
The situation in the West was different and with St. Augustine and later the scholastics, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle enter the theological thinking of the Church. This is most likely what Wolfgang is referring to. This Platonic perspective many be true for some theologians, but it is not an indisputable fact for Christianity as a whole and certainly not at its deepest level.
You have a point. I suggest that even in Clement has a horse in your race. But allowing that Clement can be faulted for his apologetic, the word "Fathers" could be used less broadly than you propose. :)
Can I get any specific cites in support of this allegation? Such would be welcome, in the interest of the pursuit of God's everlasting truth....
"No similarity whatsoever" is a formal absurdity and is not possible.
I was hoping you would stick around and expand on this. Taliesan objected to the last clause, but this is the point that needs explaining. As to the first, you are on the money to mention this distinction between created and uncreated existence. If there is any possibility this idea of creation appears in Plato, it can only be detected as faint whisps, drafts, or some suggestive language. But did you have a passage in mind from one of the Fathers which speaks to this distinction? Vlossky might suggest some; I know Gregory of Nyssa in his books Contra Eunomium is very much involved in this distinction. Nyssan's critique is helpful because it demotes the status of language and places it in created existence and more exactly as the product of human creation. This is a very crucial issue, especially in the light of the teleological aspects of Pannenberg's scientific suggestions above. He speaks of a theology of nature (Did not Kant do this? Reason fulfills Nature?) One is obliged to distinguish how different created existence is from uncreated existence in order to fully understand whether the human person finds its end in nature or supernature. These thoughts are cursory, but hopefully you'll return to jump-start this fascinating topic.