Who Made God?

The short answer: Nobody. The question assumes God is the kind of thing that has a beginning, but the God of the Bible never began; He has always existed. Everything that begins needs a cause. God didn’t begin.

It’s one of the oldest questions there is. Little children ask it at bedtime, and sceptics ask it as a knockout punch: “You say everything needs a maker. So who made God? And if nobody made God, why does the universe need a maker either?”

It’s a good question. But it rests on a misunderstanding of what Christians actually claim.

The hidden assumption

Christians don’t say “everything needs a maker”. They say that everything which begins to exist needs a cause. A bike, a baby, a mountain, a star: each one came to be, so something brought it about. The universe, as far as science can tell, also had a beginning. So it’s fair to ask what caused it.

But the God of the Bible didn’t come to be. He has no starting point. Asking “Who made God?” is a bit like asking “What’s north of the North Pole?” or “Who is that bachelor’s wife?” The question sounds sensible, but once you understand the words, it falls apart. If God had a maker, He wouldn’t be God. He’d be one more thing in the chain, and you’d have to ask about His maker instead.

Something has always been there

Here’s the fascinating part. Everybody, atheist or believer, has to believe that something has always existed. Think about it. If there was ever a moment when there was absolutely nothing, no space, no energy, no laws of physics, no God, then there would be nothing now, because nothing can’t produce anything. Since there is something now, something must never have had a beginning.

So the real question isn’t “Is there something uncaused?” Everyone agrees there is. The question is what it is. Is it a universe of matter and energy, which appears to have had a beginning and is running down like a battery? Or is it a living, eternal Mind who chose to make a world? Christians think the second answer fits the evidence far better.

What the Bible says about God

The Bible never tries to explain where God came from. Its first sentence simply finds Him already there: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Before anything else existed, God was.

Moses wrote, “from everlasting to everlasting You are God” (Psalm 90:2). When Moses asked God His name at the burning bush, God answered, “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14). Notice that He doesn’t say “I became” or “I was made”. Everything else in the universe borrows its existence. God simply is.

John’s Gospel says the same about Jesus, the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). And then: “Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3). God is not the first link in the chain. He is the One holding the whole chain.

God doesn’t need anything

There’s something freeing here. Because nobody made God, nobody keeps Him going either. Paul told the thinkers of Athens that God is not “served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because He Himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else” (Acts 17:25).

That means God doesn’t need you. He wasn’t lonely or bored before He made the world. And yet He made you, and He wants you. His love isn’t a hungry love that uses people. It’s pure gift.

It’s all right if your head hurts

If thinking about a God with no beginning makes your brain ache, that’s normal. We live inside time. Everything we know has a “before”. Trying to picture Someone outside all that is like a character in a book trying to picture the author. Isaiah says of God, “His understanding is beyond searching out” (Isaiah 40:28).

Honestly, that’s how it should be. A God small enough to fit neatly inside your head wouldn’t be big enough to have made the universe, or to be worth worshipping.

Think about it: If something has always existed, which seems more likely to you: a universe of matter and energy, or a living Mind? Why?

Go deeper: The Key Teachings of A. W. Tozer — Tozer starts from the name God gave Moses at the burning bush and shows that God alone has no origin and needs nothing, which is why His love for us is pure gift rather than self-interest. Start with chapter 6, “The Infinite God”.