Who Created God? What Judaism, Christianity, and Islam Teach

Judaism's answer is unambiguous: no one created God. God is the uncreated Creator, the ultimate source of all existence. The very first verse of the Torah establishes this posture — God acts; God is not acted upon Genesis 1:1. The Hebrew word bara (created) is used exclusively of divine creative activity in the Hebrew Bible, never of anything done to God.

Isaiah reinforces this with striking directness. God declares through the prophet that He formed the earth, established it, and created it purposefully — and then identifies Himself as the LORD with no rival and no predecessor Isaiah 45:18. The rhetorical question in Isaiah 44 — who has formed a god? — is asked mockingly of idol-makers, implying that a truly formed or manufactured deity is no deity at all Isaiah 44:10.

Maimonides, in his Mishneh Torah (1180 CE), articulated what Jewish philosophy calls aseity — God's absolute self-existence. God doesn't derive existence from anything external. He is the Necessary Existent. This became a cornerstone of medieval Jewish rationalism and remains normative across Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism today. The question 'who created God?' is therefore not evasive but genuinely inapplicable: the category of 'creation' simply doesn't extend to the Creator.

Christianity inherits the Jewish conviction of God's eternity and adds its own theological elaboration. The Apostle Paul, preaching in Athens (c. 50 CE), declared that God made the entire world and everything in it — and that this same God, as Lord of heaven and earth, is not confined to human-made structures Acts 17:24. The implication is clear: the Maker of all things cannot Himself be made.

Genesis opens the Christian Old Testament with the same foundational claim — God creates; He is not created Genesis 1:1. Isaiah 42:5 extends this, describing God as the one who created the heavens and stretched them out, giving breath and spirit to all living things Isaiah 42:5. These texts form the scriptural backbone of the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo — creation out of nothing — which logically requires an uncreated Creator.

Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologica (1265–1274 CE), formalized the cosmological argument: everything that exists has a cause, but an infinite regress of causes is impossible, so there must be a First Cause that is itself uncaused. He called this God. Crucially, God doesn't belong to the category of 'things that exist contingently' — He exists necessarily. Modern Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga has made similar arguments in the 20th century. Disagreement exists on the fringes — process theologians like Alfred North Whitehead suggested God and the world are mutually dependent — but this remains a minority view rejected by most Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox theologians.

Islam addresses this question with perhaps its most concentrated theological statement anywhere in the Quran: Surah Al-Ikhlas (112), a four-verse chapter considered equal in weight to a third of the entire Quran according to hadith tradition. It declares that God — Allah — is Al-Samad, the Eternal Absolute, who neither begets nor was begotten, and who has no equal. The Arabic term Al-Samad carries the meaning of one who depends on nothing and on whom everything depends.

Al-Ghazali (1058–1111 CE), in his Ihya Ulum al-Din, argued that God's existence is wajib al-wujud — necessarily existent — meaning it's logically impossible for God not to exist, and equally impossible for God to have been caused or created. Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980–1037 CE) developed this into a full philosophical proof that influenced both Islamic and Christian scholasticism.

Islamic theology (kalam) is emphatic: God has no beginning, no end, and no origin. The question 'who created God?' is considered a confusion of categories — like asking what is north of the North Pole. God is not a contingent being within the universe; He is the ground of all being. This is considered one of the clearest points of tawhid (divine unity and uniqueness) in Islamic thought.

Hebrew Scripture opens by attributing the origin of all things to God: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” which places God prior to and distinct from creation Genesis 1:1. Isaiah emphasizes that the LORD created and formed the earth to be inhabited and declares His uniqueness—“I am the LORD; and there is none else”—presenting God as the sole source rather than a being with a creator Isaiah 45:18. Another Isaian passage rejects man-made deities, contrasting the LORD with fashioned gods, again underscoring that the true God is not made Isaiah 44:10.

Christian teaching follows Scripture in presenting God as the maker of all: “God that made the world and all things therein” affirms His role as Creator over heaven and earth Acts 17:24. This coheres with Genesis 1:1’s assertion that creation begins with God’s act, not God’s origin, implying that God is uncreated while everything else depends on His creative will Genesis 1:1. Isaiah likewise speaks of the LORD who “created the heavens” and formed the earth, reinforcing divine uniqueness Isaiah 42:5.

Not applicable. Concerns Islamic scripture/practice; no direct counterpart can be shown from the provided (non-Islamic) passages.