Who Created God? Is God Outside of Time?

Who created God? Is God outside of time? Is God uncaused? Since we know the universe is not eternal, how can an eternal Creator God exist?

Who Created God?

I have had unbelievers say that if the universe was created by God then who created God? That is actually a great question and I don’t take it as an insult to my belief in God but actually as a question that rightly deserves an answer. The laws of physics demand a cause for every effect or you could put it this way: For every effect, there is a cause. It seems ridiculous to believe that the universe created itself and so it also seems ludicrous to believe that God was created. If this is so, then there must have been a creator behind the created God. Then if such a creature created God, then that creature must have also been created. Thus we are creating an infinite regression of causes and causers. Some atheists, agnostics, and evolutionists believe that life on earth was brought to the planet by some alien force or object. The object could have been – so they believe – been brought to earth by an asteroid. But then the question becomes “Then where did this life come from” and on and on again, into infinity ad nauseum. This only pushes the question of the origin of life back and back and back…

If some say that it was not God Who created man, but man who created God, then we must ask, then who created man?

If some say that it was not God Who created man, but man who created God, then we must ask, then who created man? Can a created thing question the very One Who created it? Can the clay vessel question the potter? Isaiah 29:16 states, “You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, “He did not make me”? Can the pot say of the potter, “He knows nothing”? Isaiah reiterates again, “But now, this is what the LORD says–he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine” (Isaiah 43:1). An analogy would be like our children believing that they created their parents – ludicrous at best. The question then becomes “Who created the uncreated one?”

Astrophysicists, astronomers, and physicists theorize that the universe had a beginning at a single, finite point in time and space. If you rewound the universe backwards, which at present is expanding exponentially, it would go back to a singular point in time, space and matter. What the state of the universe was before this starting point, which some say preceded the Big Bang, no one knows with certainty. At best, mankind can only speculate or postulate because there is no way to know with absoluteness.

There is some speculation that the universe is eternal and that it constantly recycles itself over and over again which is called the Steady State Theory. The major problem with this is the Laws of Thermodynamics. Think of it this way; energy is constantly being used up. Just as you can not put light back into a light bulb, you can not put all the light and energy back into an electrical outlet once it is used up. Once energy is used up, it’s not gone but it is transferred from one place into another.

How Can an Eternal Creator God Exist?

There is nothing written anywhere in the Bible that science has proven that could not have happened. The beginning as far as humans are concerned is not Genesis chapter one but John chapter one. This is truly a beginning for us but for God: He has neither beginning nor no end. The Gospel of John reads “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (v.1). So before the universe or earth existed – and before humans existed – God was. Before time, space and matter existed, God existed. You can not have time without also having matter, for there is nothing with which we can measure it with. There is not anything that existed but that God Himself caused as it says in John’s Gospel, “He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:1-2). The “He” is Jesus Christ and so the Trinity existed before earth did…before matter did and before mankind did.

Some thinkers believe – and without proof – that the universe is eternal but this doesn’t explain the origin of the universe or of matter. If God were created, then something greater than the thing created must have existed beforehand. A created thing is always lesser than that which created it. What human mind can comprehend a self-existing God that has always been and will always be? Our finite minds can not wrap itself around this. That is why He is God and we are not. A God that we can know completely would cease to be God and God can not be put into a box. Just as a painting did not create itself, so a universe could not create itself because if it did, then there would have been something or someone before that to create it. A self-created universe flies in the face of the laws of logic and physics. A painting demands a painter just as a creation demands a Creator.

What one thing in the universe did not have a cause? Everything known in the physical universe has a beginning and so everything known in the universe will have an end. A cause greater than itself had to exist prior to the universe’s existence and seeing the enormous size of the universe, the titanic amounts of energy being used and that is available and the perfect order of the universe, there must be intelligence behind the cause. How can a Creator be also created? It is a logically absurdity.

Is God Uncaused?

I believe that God is outside of time and space and existed before time and space did. God says that He is omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing), and omnipresent (everywhere at the same time). Who could argue with that? God thunders out His answer about Himself being the Creator and being called into question by mankind in Isaiah 45:9, “Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’ Does your work say, ‘He has no hands‘?” Further, Romans 9:20 says, “But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? “ Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?‘” Isaiah again says, “Yet you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand” (Isaiah 64:8). We can safely assume that since we exist and the universe exists, then something before that must have existed since an effect demands a cause. Without a preceding antecedent cause, nothing would exist. Nothing can not produce something.

Many point to Quantum Mechanics as a case in point for something coming from nothing, but the mechanics involved necessitate energy and these behaviors are macroscopic and only emerge at very low or very high energies. These energies must have existed prior to their being in existence. This theory states that some physical quantities can change only by discrete amounts but even the mechanics and physical quantities are material and did not come from nothingness.

Over 2,000 years ago Paul spoke of “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (Heb 11:3). This is what the Apostle John spoke about in saying, “He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:2-3). This can not be stated any more clearly that, “without Him nothing was made that has been made.” That sums up all matter in the universe. Since humans are composed of matter, then we are part of that which “has been made.”

Albert Einstein succinctly stated that, “There are only two ways that you can live. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is a miracle. I believe in the latter”. Mr. Einstein is right, “God does not play dice.” The universe is no random accident. It was created with a purpose. We are part of that purpose and even the heavens declare the glory of God (Psalm 19:1). “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Rom 1:20). This was known before any microscopes or subatomic atoms were even known to exist. The fact that matter at its smallest point of existence is invisible was known thousands of years before science knew about it. These “invisible qualities” leave mankind with no excuse. God does exist, He has always existed, He will always exist and there is nothing mankind can do to argue with it (Psalm 104).