Question
"Who created God?", Where did God come from? If everything has a cause, what caused God?
Analysis
The question is a category question, not a causal one
"Everything has a cause" is true of created, contingent things, things that began to exist. The classical-theism claim is that God is not in that category. God is the necessary, uncaused ground of everything that is contingent. So the question "what caused the uncaused?" is self-cancelling: whatever was caused is, by definition, not the uncaused First Cause that the word "God" denotes.
| Term | Meaning | Why it answers the question |
|---|---|---|
| Aseity (self-existence) | God exists from himself; depends on nothing else for existence | A being that depended on a prior cause would not be God but a creature |
| Eternality | No beginning and no end; not brought into being | "Created God" is a contradiction, creation marks a beginning |
| Necessary being | God cannot not-exist; exists in every possible state of affairs | Contingent things need a cause; a necessary being does not |
| Immutability | God does not change in essence | What is brought into being changes from non-existence to existence; God does not |
This is drawn from the incommunicable-attributes treatment in (self-existence/aseity, eternity, immutability) and.
The biblical texts
- Psalms 90:2, "Before the mountains were brought forth, Or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." (ASV) God precedes all created things and exists "from everlasting", i.e., with no beginning. (Moses's prayer.)
- Exodus 3:14, "I AM WHO I AM." (BSB) God's self-naming at the burning bush. The divine name (YHWH, H3068) is built on the verb "to be", God identifies himself as the self-existent One who simply IS, not one who was made or became. The LXX renders it egō eimi ho ōn, which Brenton's 1851 English translation gives as "I am THE BEING" (Brenton).
- Isaiah 43:10, "Before Me no god was formed, and after Me none will come." (BSB) Explicit denial that God was "formed", there is no prior maker, and no successor.
- Isaiah 44:6, "I am the first, and I am the last; and besides me there is no God." (WEB) Nothing precedes God (no maker) and nothing succeeds him.
- Revelation 1:8, "I am the Alpha and the Omega… who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." (WEB) God brackets all of time; he is not within a timeline that something else began.
- Colossians 1:17, "He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." (BSB) (Of Christ.) God is before all things and the One in whom they cohere, not a product within them.
- Isaiah 57:15, "the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity." (BSB) God dwells in eternity rather than being a product of time.
- 1 Timothy 1:17, "to the King eternal, immortal, and invisible, the only God" (BSB). God is immortal, without the beginning-and-end that created things have.
Why "who created God?" is the wrong question, restated
| If you say… | Then… |
|---|---|
| Something created God | That something would be more ultimate than God, so it would be what we mean by "God," and the question just regresses |
| God created himself | Incoherent, a thing would have to exist before itself to cause itself |
| No one created God; God is eternal and uncaused | The classical-theism position: the causal chain terminates in a necessary, self-existent being |
The third option is the only one that avoids both infinite regress and self-causation. Classical theism's claim is that this terminus is exactly what the word "God" names.
A shared monotheistic answer (stated factually)
The answer that God is uncreated, eternal, and self-existent is not distinctively Christian, it is the common ground of classical monotheism across traditions, each grounding it in its own scriptures:
| Tradition | Holds God is uncreated/eternal/self-existent | Representative grounding |
|---|---|---|
| Judaism | Yes | Exodus 3:14 "I AM"; Psalms 90:2; Isaiah 44:6 |
| Christianity | Yes | Same OT texts and Revelation 1:8; Colossians 1:17 (Trinitarian) |
| Islam | Yes | Qur'anic "al-Awwal" (the First) / "al-Samad" (the Self-Sufficient, Eternal); God neither begets nor is begotten |
This reference notes this as a factual point of convergence in the philosophy of God; it does not adjudicate the differences among these traditions on God's identity (e.g., the Trinity, which Christianity affirms and the others do not).
Philosophical framing (brief, multi-view)
The reasoning above echoes classical "cosmological" argumentation (a First Cause / necessary being). This reference presents this as the historic rationale, not a proof it endorses:
| View | Position |
|---|---|
| Classical theism | A necessary, uncaused, self-existent God is the rational terminus of the chain of contingent causes; "who made God" mis-applies a rule meant for contingent things |
| Some modern critics | If God can be uncaused, perhaps the universe itself could be the brute uncaused fact, no God needed |
| Theistic reply | The universe is contingent/changing (it began, per much modern cosmology) and so is the kind of thing that needs a cause; a necessary being is not |
This reference states the classical answer as the one Scripture presents; the wider philosophical debate is noted without endorsement.