Who made God?

God & the TrinityIn theological review

The short answer

No one made God. Scripture presents God as uncreated and self-existent, existing from everlasting to everlasting, while everything else was made by him. The question assumes God is a made thing, and the Bible places him in a category of his own.

The fuller answer

No one made God. That is the Bible's direct answer, and it is what sets God apart from everything else that exists. Everything in creation had a beginning and a cause outside itself. God, in Scripture, is presented as the one being who has life in himself, who was there before anything was made, and who depends on nothing and no one in order to exist. Theologians call this aseity, meaning God is self-existent, but the idea itself comes straight from the texts themselves. The question is a fair one to ask about everything else in the universe, which is exactly why it misfires when it is aimed at God himself.

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

Exodus 3:14 (BSB)

At the burning bush Moses asks for God's name, and God answers with a name built on being itself: I AM. The name does not point back to someone who produced him or something that sustains him. It declares that God simply is, present and self-sufficient. When Moses had earlier asked who he was to go, the answer was not a family history for God but a promise of God's own presence with his people.

Before the mountains were born or You brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting You are God.

Psalm 90:2 (BSB)

Psalm 90, a prayer of Moses, puts a timescale on the point. Before the mountains were born, before the earth and the world were brought forth, God already was, from everlasting to everlasting. Mountains feel permanent to us, yet they had a birthday. God did not. Isaiah makes the same contrast with creation itself: the Creator of the ends of the earth does not grow tired or weary, unlike everything he has made.

Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary; His understanding is beyond searching out.

Isaiah 40:28 (BSB)

So the question who made God quietly assumes God belongs in the category of made things. Scripture places him in a category of his own: unmade, uncaused, and the source of everything else. That is not an evasion. It is the reason anything else exists at all, because a chain of made things still needs an unmade maker at its head, and the Bible names that maker as the God who revealed himself to Moses, to Israel, and finally in Jesus Christ. Asking who made the unmade is not a discovery about God at all, but a category mistake that the Bible anticipated long before philosophers gave it a name.

Sources

Berean Standard Bible (BSB)

Review status: in-theological-review. Every Contend page passes a human theological review against the Statement of Faith before it is published as approved teaching. This section is in that queue.

Dig deeper

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Does God exist?Yes. Christians do not believe in God as a guess to fill a gap. We believe because the world he made shows his power and nature, and because he has spoken, first through the prophets and then in his Son. The question is not really whether there is evidence, but whether we will treat the evidence as what it is.What is God like?God is spirit, eternal, unchanging, all powerful, holy, just, good, and true. And he is love. Scripture gives his character in his own words and deeds rather than in our guesses: he is the I AM who always is, the Maker who never tires, and the Father who so loved the world that he gave his Son.Why does God call himself 'I AM'?God calls himself I AM to declare that he exists in himself, unchanging and dependent on nothing, and to promise Moses his faithful presence. Jesus later applied the same absolute name to himself in John 8:58, a claim his hearers understood as a claim to be God.How can God be three and one at the same time?God is three and one in different senses, so there is no contradiction: one in essence, one single God, and three in persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Scripture holds both together, confessing that the LORD is one while baptising in the one name of the Father, Son, and Spirit.Bible Character: MosesThe prophet who led Israel out of slavery in Egypt, received the Law on Mount Sinai, and brought the people to the edge of Canaan.On the map: SinaiSinai is the wilderness and mountain region south of Canaan where Israel camped after leaving Egypt. God gives the law here and Moses numbers the people here.Lesson: I believe in God, the Father almightyThe Creed opens by naming who God is before it says anything about us. Take the first line apart, word by word, with the Scripture under each word.