Who created God?

Questions of Faith

One question which often ruminates in the minds of those exploring the Faith is ‘Who created God?’ This theological question is so perplexing in that everything around us that we see and feel has a cause. The watch that we wear was made by a watchmaker and the houses we live in were constructed by builders. Given this fact, doesn’t it mean that God also has a cause, and if so, what or who was it?

Sometimes this question is greeted with complete bafflement, resulting in the concession that God is a mystery and the answer is ultimately unknowable. However, there is a long theological and philosophical tradition which has attempted to explain the origins of God, and with great success.

The first hurdle to jump over in answering this question is understanding that not everything that exists has a cause. Instead, everything that begins to exist has a cause. If something came into existence at a certain point in time, like an object, then there needs to be a cause or explanation of how it came to be.

Eternity

Catholics, however, believe that God wasn’t created but has existed for eternity, and therefore didn’t begin to exist. As a result, God doesn’t need a cause. This theological belief is sometimes referred to as divine aseity which holds that God contains within himself the cause of himself, or rather is simply uncaused.

One way to understand this idea better is by recognising that there must be a primary cause or first mover which set everything else in motion. This can also be expressed by stating that all material things are contingent (dependent on something else), so there must be an ultimate cause upon which their existence rests.

But what does this cause look like? Well firstly, it must be incredibly powerful if it is responsible for creating the universe that we see around us today. It must be eternal, because only created things have a beginning. It must be changeless because changes only take place in time, and this cause existed before time. It must be immaterial because material things only exist in space, and this cause existed before space.

Finally, it must be personal as the only things which transcend space and time would either be an abstract object like a number or a disembodied mind. Given that numbers are only descriptive and can’t cause or create anything, then the first cause must be a mind.

With all of these properties combined, we can see that the first cause is incredibly powerful, eternal, changeless, immaterial and personal – much like the God that Christians worship.

“Not everything that exists has a cause”

One common response to this argument is to suggest that perhaps the universe is infinite, and so we don’t actually need a first cause to explain the origins of existence. Firstly, most scientists are in agreement today that the universe did have an absolute beginning. Secondly, there are plenty of philosophical objections to the suggestion that the universe is infinite. For example, it would be impossible for us to be here in the year 2019, as it would take an infinite number of steps to get to this point.

It seems more logically coherent to conclude that the universe was created by an unmoved mover – what Christians refer to as God.