Apologetics: Who Made God?

An apologetic is a reasoned or reasonable answer to a question posed to those outside of Christendom to offer a valid explanation. It is derived from 1 Peter 3:15, which states, “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.”

The apologist is to first sanctify God in his heart. That is, separate God from earthly matters. God is separate and infinitely more important than my human affairs. The apologist must have this in mind when we endeavor to give that reason to someone outside the church. This is for God’s glory; and what would be more fitting for God to be glorified in my words and conduct, than to use my argument to save the person questioning. Our interest should be in the spiritual welfare of those around us. We answer, but with meekness and fear; we are not God, and we are not all knowing in terms of Theology. I have sadly been privy to more than a few people whose answers are proud, antagonistic, condescending, and seemingly void of the loving mercy and grace the Father would desire us to have when reaching out to a lost world. If this is us, then we have developed ancient Israel’s mindset where they tried to keep the God of Israel in a box to themselves and did not want the filthy Gentiles coming near. But praise be to God Almighty, He wanted us filthy Gentiles to come near. So when we answer, do so with an eye to the Lord, and another eye to the spiritual welfare of the person inquiring.

I was listening to a debate weeks ago about this very question. The question–who made God?--was supposed to be the unanswerable riddle Christians would stumble over and be silenced by. At first blush perhaps the answer does seem elusive. Being creatures of space and time we view and assess all things by the time we spend upon this earth. Everything has a beginning, a duration of some length, and an end. So, from an earthly perspective, we may reasonably say that things (including people) have a beginning, have a lifespan, and then have reach a conclusion. They were not on this earth, and then they were. They lived some time and then were no more. Every person on earth can account for their beginning. Biology explains that a mother and father unite sexually for the explicit purpose of procreation. Biology also explains that the body ages, begins to wear, and finally can no longer viably function, resulting in death. Of course other factors may become involved, but this is a very simplified definition of human life to clarify a point.

But if this is how humanity reproduces and enters into life on earth, did God have parents? Where did God come from? Bear in mind these questions are spoken from a certain ignorance, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. We are all ignorant of so many things in life, and only through inquiry and research can we banish ignorance and replace it with genuine knowledge and understanding. So, who made God?

The longer argument that this small question is a part of goes like this: All things are created and come from somewhere. Even the universe did not create itself, as modern science largely concedes. If this is so, then who or what created God? First, as far as observational adroitness is concerned, yes we must agree that from an earthly perspective all things that are seen have come from another source. If you subscribe to Darwinian Evolution, then I also suspect that you subscribe to the Big Bang Theory or some corollary. But we are not talking about material causation. What I mean by causation is that there is something or someone behind a process that affects its inception. The Bible does not posit material causation for the universe. Genesis begins with the fundamentals, stating that, “In the beginning God,” alone existed, Genesis 1:1. Before time/space/matter existed. Before men or angels or any form of life or energy, there was simply God. God is a self-existent being. He has no origin; that is, He does not have a beginning like you or I do. He is what we might call the uncaused causation of all existence. God alone, as Scripture states, is immortal and eternal, 1 Timothy 6:16. Paul wrote this to differentiate between God and everything else. All of existence in the universe, including the spiritual existence of angels, originates from one source. God is unlike His creation; He exists outside of it, created the laws that govern it, and as such is outside of their influence. He is infinitely wise, and intelligent beyond understanding. He demonstrates power that the human mind can scarcely grasp, being able to conceive and then create space, planets, energy, biological life, time, spiritual life, et al.

The only two competitive alternatives to God from a human viewpoint would be spontaneous generation or an eternal universe. Both of course begin with a closed system: that is, no outside influence or interference causing something to happen. But in a closed system spontaneous generation has been thoroughly discredited as a viable scientific possibility. In other words, the universe suddenly springing from literally nothing into something is not tenable from any current scientific understanding we possess today. The laws that govern our universe would prohibit this from actually happening since this goes beyond the normative processes of uniformitarianism into the realm of the fantastic or miraculous, and most certainly in the realm of the wildly speculative. Matter and energy need to come from someplace; in the case of spontaneous generation there is only specious and highly charged speculative imagining involved. As for an eternal universe, whether one believes in Darwin’s theory or God, thermodynamics have demonstrated that any closed system will consistently degrade until it reaches universal entropy. In short, the useful energy in the universe loses its functionality until it can no longer do so, resulting in universal death. So if the universe has existed forever, it would be doing so in a lifeless void, bereft of anyone to speculate about its origins. Thus far no mechanism or theory I have heard of could offset this reality, so we know that the eternal universe theory is not tenable.

But if an outside, independent agent chose to act and began existence as a deliberate choice, all of what we see in existence suddenly makes sense. The laws that govern nature and planetary or galaxial function were placed there with a purpose. Life is designed with reason, not randomness. No matter how fantastical we want to think it, this leaves the idea of a Creator God as the singular most coherent explanation for the universe’s existence. The universe functions, and human life functions with the appearance of design because it was designed. People have said that no one can think of anything truly original. When someone creates a monster, for instance, it is a pastiche of known ideas strewn together to create the grotesque. All ideas are founded in what humans experience and know. God is not something people have simply fabricated out of desire or necessity to explain (or explain away) certain aspects of life; God endures in human thought because fundamentally we know that we are not accidents in a larger catastrophe heading toward uncertain disaster. God has objectively revealed His presence and person through the Bible and His Son, Jesus Christ.

We are created, crafted, and loved. We are made by God, but God Himself is. He explained to Moses that His name is I AM, or the self existent One, Exodus 3:14. God exists outside of time; man measures all things by the rule of time. God is transcendent; He is outside of time’s influence and is everywhere through time. He is yesterday, today and tomorrow. He sees the beginning of a thing and its end as though it was already accomplished. This is why the prophets could speak of things hundreds or even thousands of years before their accomplishment. To answer the question of who made God? He was not made and cannot be unmade because He is eternal and immortal in the truest sense of the word. Being made in His image, we will likewise have no end. We began, and our bodies will perish, but our souls will survive death, and what we think of God and His Son Jesus Christ will determine where our personal eternity will be spent. God is the uncreated cause of all that we see and know. The universe did not evolve; it is not eternally old; God chose to create, and we are His creation. I hope this brief consideration proves to be helpful to anyone seeking answers. God bless.