Understanding God’s Eternity: Why the Creator Has No Beginning

Yossi asks: "Hello. I saw that you once gave a scientific answer to the question, ‘Who created God?’ You explained that God exists outside of time, and that anything beyond time has no beginning. I tried repeating this answer to some people, but they said it was too complicated. Do you have a simpler explanation that anyone can understand?"

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Shalom Yossi, and thank you for your excellent question.

You’re correct that the scientific explanation involves concepts like the flow of time and space, which not everyone finds easy to grasp. There is also a much simpler way to explain this.

Ask your friend how we know that something must have a creator. Consider for example, a glass of water on the table. Why not say it has existed forever? Why are we certain that someone made it?

The answer is that the glass is limited. It has a specific size, shape, and weight. This proves there must be a cause — someone who determined that this glass would be this shape and this size. The same is true for the human hand: why does it have five fingers, not four or six? The very fact that we can ask the question proves that there was a decision, a design, a cause.

Anything limited must have a cause — someone who set its limits and defined it. If we can ask, “Why is it this way and not another way?” this indicates that there must be a creator behind it.

The universe is physical and limited, bound by the laws of nature. Its very limitations prove that Someone defined it, designed it, and brought it into being.

Why Can’t We Ask the Same Question About God?

God has no form. If God had a body with arms and legs, He would be limited, and then, just as we ask “Who gave us two arms and not three?” we could ask “Who gave Him His form?” However, God has no body, size, shape, or quantity. He is infinite, and that which is infinite has no limits.

As the sages said: “He is the place of the world, but the world is not His place” (Bereishit Rabbah 68). The world exists within God’s reality, not the other way around. God is the true reality, the only being without limits, and all of us exist within His existence.

Because God is not material, He has no boundaries. He is infinite and eternal, not bound by space or time. He does not change, has no beginning and no end, and therefore does not need a creator who brought Him into being.

If someone asks about the verse in Bereishit that says God created man “in His image,” thisrefers to our spiritual resemblance to Him — our ability to choose, think, and create, which makes humanity the creation that is most similar to God.