Who created God?

from the old testament

• The book of Genesis opens with, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). By saying “in the beginning,” it is talking about the start of everything. Therefore, the Bible is clear that everything that exists—except for God—was created by God. Therefore, He is the “cause” of all that is.
• In order to create a being like God, something bigger than God would have to exist. However, God, Himself, says, “I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God” (Isaiah 45:5). Just prior to that, He also affirmed, “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god” (Isaiah 44:6). There is no other God (nothing that could potentially create Him), and He is the first and last—the source of all things and bringing all things to completion. There wasn’t a “something” that came before Him.
• More than being the first, God is eternal. There was never a time in eternity when God did not exist. When Moses asked Him what His name was, so he could tell the Israelites what God sent him to rescue them, God answered, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:14b). The statement “I AM” comes from a Hebrew state of being verb. In English, state of being verbs are the words like “am,” “is,” “are,” “was,” “were,” “be,” “being,” “been,” etc. We use them to explain a past, current, or future state. We never use them by themselves but always include a state. For example, we might say, “I am at home,” “I was there,” “I will attend,” and so forth. For us, they define a temporary state of being. God used a state of being verb as His name without any qualification, showing that He always…is. It’s a declaration of His self-existent, eternal, self-sufficient, self-directed, and unchanging nature. He always was, is, and will be.
• Isaiah says something similar in Isaiah 40:28. God’s eternal nature is connected to His inexhaustible power. Despite all that God does, He never gets tired because He is infinitely self-sustaining.
• Job challenged God to explain his suffering, demanding answers and assuming he could fully understand God’s reasons (Job 23:2–5), much like those who question, “Who created God?” by presuming human logic can fully grasp the uncreated Creator; God responded by highlighting Job’s limited understanding and authority (Job 38:2–41), showing that as finite creatures, we cannot impose created-world logic on the eternal God who exists outside creation (Isaiah 44:6; Revelation 1:8).
• God is not subject to the laws of the creation that He made. He stands outside of them. Theologians refer to God’s otherness as His transcendence. God said of creation, “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool” (Isaiah 66:1).

from the new testament

• John wrote, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1–2). The “Word” is Jesus who “became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Therefore, though Jesus was born as a human at a particular time, the “Word” is also fully divine (“the Word was God”) and, thus, uncreated.
• John continued, saying, “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3).
• Everything created “in the beginning” was made through the eternal Son of God, who is therefore transcendent and not created but the Creator of all things, as emphasized in Colossians 1:16.

implications for today

The question about who created God initially sounds logical. However, it misses the reality that there must be something or someone that has always existed for anything to exist at all. This is because if there was no first cause, then the chain of causes would extend infinitely into the past. In other words, if we say that something created God, the next question would be to figure out what created that something. Then we would need to ask what created the something that created the something that created God. In short, the logical-sounding question quickly becomes illogical. If there was not an original, eternal source to all that exists, then nothing could exist.

When we think about God, we should not think about Him through a set of logical propositions. Neither should we put God in the position of proving Himself to us. Being the transcendent God means that He is not like us. Just like Job learned, demanding Him to explain or prove Himself is the height of arrogance. We just don’t have minds that can comprehend an eternal Being.

However, God has graciously told us many things about Himself by bending down and using simple language. Everything we can know for sure about Him is in Scripture. While logic is useful, it limits us when we try understanding the source of logic, God. Therefore, our primary way to think about God is to open the Bible and read. It is there that God reveals Himself to humble men and women (Michah 6:8).

As we study God in His Word, we become more familiar with Him. One thing that is abundantly clear is that He is not at all like us. There is a distinction between the Creator and us, His creation. Therefore, as we come to know Him, questions like “Who created God?” start to fade away and are replaced by the praise for the unknowable God (Romans 11:33–36) who has made Himself known to us in His Word and through His Son, Jesus (Hebrews 1:1–2).