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
- Psa.90.2, … God precedes all created things and exists "from everlasting", i.e., with no beginning. (Moses's prayer.)
- Exo.3.14, "I AM WHO I AM." 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, "I am the One Who Is."
- Isa.43.10, … Explicit denial that God was "formed", there is no prior maker, and no successor.
- Isa.44.6, … Nothing precedes God (no maker) and nothing succeeds him.
- Rev.1.8, "I am the Alpha and the Omega… who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." God brackets all of time; he is not within a timeline that something else began.
- Col.1.17, … (Of Christ.) God is before all things and the One in whom they cohere, not a product within them.
- Isa.57.15, "the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity." God dwells in eternity rather than being a product of time.
- 1Ti.1.17, … 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 |
| … | 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 "God is uncreated, eternal, and self-existent" answer 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 | Exo.3.14 "I AM"; Psa.90.2; Isa.44.6 |
| Christianity | Yes | Same OT texts + Rev.1.8; Col.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.