S2E0: God before Gensis

What was God doing before creating the Cosmos? This seemingly esoteric question reveals a key aspect of the idea of God. We can only know God who speaks. And God first speaks in Genesis.              
              -
00:22 -  Returning to previous unanswered questions       .
05:24 -  Difficulty of thinking about God before Genesis        .
12:19 -  Transcendence and Ultimate Reality        .
19:58 -  God is "like" the Author of the Story       .             

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Transcript

What was God doing… before Genesis? 

[ Short music ]

Welcome to “What do you mean God speaks?” I’m Paul Seungoh Chung, and this is the sixth post-season extra episode, “God before Genesis”

[ Short music ]

There’re always things I leave out in more or less every episode of this series--relevant topics, issues, or questions that I couldn’t get to. And you’d know this, since there are times when I’d mention a topic, or bring up a question, and then say something like “but, that’s for another episode.” And sometimes I don’t even bring up such a topic, because doing so would push the episode off the tangent, or make the episode too long, or too complicated. So, I leave it aside, with a plan to bring it up sometime in the future. 

I mean, take the previous extra episode. There, I began by exploring how throughout history, humanity has often resorted to the use of power and even violence, to advance their truths or ideals. But, the motivations that I described during that episode, for seizing and using that kind of power, was our initial desire to realize our ideals, or to defend our truths against our foes, real or imagined. What I didn’t really cover was the role of much darker motivations--of vengefulness, greed, contempt, or sheer malice--which can use our cherished beliefs or values as pretext to seize power or resort to violence. Now, I did briefly mention these darker motivations in the main season’s eleventh episode, and I will delve into them more from the next season and onward. 

But, there is one more reason I leave some questions aside for future episode. And that is, I’m still in the process of exploring these questions myself. The description of this podcast states that this is “a series for the skeptics who want to understand religion, Christians with questions about their own beliefs, and everyone in between.” But, that’s also… me. I am a Christian with questions about my beliefs, and a significant part of me is still in a sense a skeptic who wants to understand. I said before that this series seeks to correct some confusions and misunderstandings regarding Christian beliefs, and to reframe or reconstrue the Christian worldview for those with non-Christian or skeptical perspectives. But, I am doing that because I myself am exploring these issues as a Christian with a skeptical side. And what you’re hearing in each episode is the questions I’ve raised for myself, along with the conclusions I’ve come to so far, and the things I’m still thinking through. And there are some things that I’m still thinking about, still trying to understand, and put into words. So, I leave those for appropriate future episodes. 

So, I meant those exact words in the 1st season trailer when I said, “I invite you to explore with me,” the world that Christianity presents. 

Now, I’ve brought all this up because there was one issue I’ve left out in the very first episode of this series. And it was mostly because going into it then would’ve made the episode longer, more complicated, and push it off the tangent. But, part of it is because it’s a difficult topic to… put into words. You’ll see what I mean later.

Back in that episode, I raised this point that we misunderstand what we mean by God, when we think of God simply as just another entity beside others, except one that’s all-powerful and all-knowing. I said that living in our largely secularized perspective, we’ve forgotten the larger framework that would have made better sense of the idea of God, so that we now need a… translation of a sort. So…, I suggested that, for us, a word that comes closest to what the Jewish and Christian traditions have understood as “God,”--God with a capital “G”--is “Reality.” 

God is not an entity in our Reality; God is Reality. 

But, then I added that by this, I do not mean that God is the universe. That would be yet another wrong understanding. But, what’s the difference? Well, I gave an initial answer that the term, “Reality” is more immediate, and more… encompassing than the term, the “universe,” and then went on to explain how. But, why does this distinction matter? 

Well, let’s take some time to delve into that more here. Why? Because the real issue here was: the question of the difference between God, as the Creator, and everything else, as Creation. And understanding that difference would grant us a helpful framework for the upcoming season--the book of Genesis, which begins with the account of the Creation of the Cosmos.

[ pendulum ]

So, we return to the question, what was God doing… before Genesis? What was God doing in all that time before creating the Cosmos? Because y’see, if we can answer that, it would help us distinguish “God,” from God’s Creation. 

Now, there’s a story told about St. Augustine, a Christian philosopher and theologian who lived more than sixteen hundred years ago--I've mentioned him a few times before. He was once asked this very question, what God was doing for all that time before creating the Cosmos. And he is said to have jokingly replied, “God was creating hell for people who ask such questions.” Now, whether you find his answer amusing or not, this story, as with so many other popular stories told about Christianity nowadays, is false.

His actual answer is found in one of his most famous works, the Confessions. In its 11th book--by the way, the entire Confessions is about the length of a novel, and each book, is more like a chapter--there, Augustine brings up the question of what God was doing before creating the world, and he mentions how there are people who answer this question by making jokes like the one with God creating hell. He then comments that he’d rather say he doesn’t know, than to give such a flippant answer to someone who’s asking a serious question—just for some laughs. Augustine does have an answer though. There is no “before” Genesis; God created time when He created the Cosmos. So, there was no time, before Genesis. 

Augustine observed that time is a measure of change; and change require things that change, even if say, it’s just a single elementary particle that decays--and yes, that last bit is modern particle physics, not Augustine. By the way, Augustine’s reflections on time is surprisingly well-liked by modern physicists, because of how they resonate with their understanding of time and the Big Bang cosmology. Anyway, Augustine’s point was, “before” the creation of the cosmos, with all those things in it that can, well, change, there was no such thing as time. Well, even that’s not quite the right way of saying it, since, there is no “before” the creation of the cosmos. After all, “before” is used to describe positions in time. Or as modern physicists like to say about questions on what was happening before the Big Bang, that is “like asking what is south, of the South Pole.” (And, no, there is no south, of the South Pole)

So, if we’ve been thinking that God was spending an unimaginable amount of time before one day, deciding to create the world, we’d be wrong. God created time… and space also, by the way. And so, God Himself… is beyond time and space. That is what is meant by saying that God is eternal, by the way; not merely that God exists through infinitely long time, but that God is timeless. If you have a hard time grasping that idea, an example of timeless truths is mathematics. So, 1 + 1 is 2. It isn’t that 1 + 1 was 2, and will be 2--that would be an odd way of saying it. Rather, 1 + 1 is 2, always, and unaffected by time. It is truth is timeless. Likewise, God is timeless. That probably helped only a tiny bit though… because what’s it like being timeless anyway?

And besides, all that still doesn’t quite answer our first question. So, there was no time before God created the cosmos. And God is beyond time and space. Ok. But, still, we want to ask what God was doing, when--no, that’s also a word for time—umm, what was God doing, when-but-not-when, whatever-you-know, not creating the Cosmos? What was God doing? Or if God is beyond time, is God, like frozen in time… but, wait,  there would be no time to be frozen in. Ok. Anyway, what is God like, outside--no, that’s a word for space--umm, God outside-but-not-outside, you know, Creation? What is God like there? No, “there” is a word for “space” again. Umm. What’s God like apart from Creation? No, “apart” is also spatial! But, you know what I mean… am I the only one having trouble here trying to ask the question? 

And if you get the frustration that I’m going through in being unable to put into words, the question we want to ask, you’ve encountered an aspect of the idea of God, which the theologians have termed, the “transcendence” of God. This means that God “transcends,” or is beyond, every created thing, and every possible concept. 

The problem is that every word, every term, every concept, that is available to us is from our world--that is, the world that God created, which means they are all things that God transcends. So, none of these terms truly apply to God. And this includes things like space and time…, which are so fundamental to our thinking, that when Albert Einstein showed--merely--that space and time were physical things that can bend, and contract, and stretch, it blew our minds. And we’re trying to figure out what is like when time does not exist at all, Or, consider my point that God is not an entity; or as traditional Christian theology puts it, that God is not a being, but rather, Being itself. And we have a hard time making sense of that, because everything we know, are entities.

We are created beings; we are entities; and we live in time and space. We think in these terms. But, if none of these terms truly apply to God, and God is beyond all these things, what can we actually say about God? More, is there anything we can even believe or think in regard to God…? And if there aren’t, does it even make sense to say we believe in something when that something cannot even be thought of?

But, these questions are missing the other side of the idea. What I mean is: the idea that God is transcendent, didn’t just come out of nowhere. We arrived at the idea, after thinking through, and wrestling with our conception of… Reality. Reality, all around us.

[ pendulum ]

Too many of us nowadays seem to have this notion that the idea of God came about when religious people spontaneously thought of this character, and gave Him some attributes, like how say, comic book writers give their superhero superpowers. As if they said, “Let’s give our god the power to do everything, and let’s call it ‘omnipotence,’ cauz that sounds awesome.” “Ooh, ooh, let’s also make him transcendent. So, He’s like beyond everything.”

But, that’s not really how it happened historically. At the very least, we know that’s not what happened in regard to the general idea of God, “with the capital-G,” because we have the records of the prophets, priests, and later the theologians and philosophers who were wrestling with the idea for millennia.  

Here’s a heavily simplified summary. If it gets too technical for you though, you can skip to the next section, where I’ll be using a simpler analogy of the Author of a Story; you can check where the next section begins from the episode description. 

So, since our earliest days, we’ve observed that things come into being; things around us come from somewhere; they are caused by something, or are born, and so on. And there are also forces and powers in the world, changing things around us, and making things happen. But, what is the origin of all of these things? Well, one answer is the widely held belief found in many different peoples and cultures, which is that there is a god that created this world and everything in it. And this is a very old idea, predating any written records, and likely as old as, well, humanity itself. Another answer that emerged much later though is a more philosophical idea of a universal or ultimate principle of all things; there is a structure to the world, a principle underlying how all things behave, change, and come to be, from the stars in the heavens, to creatures on earth. The idea of the Logos and its variants in Greek philosophy such as the Platonic Forms is an example of this. 

Now, the two answers aren’t mutually exclusive. Often, the philosophical idea emerged from thinking about the creator god. And in most cases, this ultimate principle usually was identified with the Creator deity in some way. This is what happened, for example, in the Hindu Vedanta traditions, and likewise in Greek philosophy with schools like Stoicism and Platonism. And of course it happened in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam when they incorporated Greek philosophy into their belief systems. 

But then, this raised a question. What is this creator deity, or the ultimate principle, like in themselves? We know what it is that they bring about in our world--which is, basically, everything. But, what are they, in themselves? And that’s when the answer became very elusive. Because that’s the point when we realized that the ultimate cause of everything, cannot be like anything else. For a rather simplistic example, if a certain god created rocks and water and fire, then it stands to reason that there were no rocks, water, nor fire before this god created them. And if so, the creator can’t be, for example, made out of those things. And what if this god created everything in the world? Not just inert things, like rocks, but forces of nature? Or Life itself? Or Space, and time?

It’s pretty much the same issue with the more philosophical idea of the ultimate principle. The ultimate principle in itself is unlike anything else that this principle brings into being. Plato describes the “Good,” the supreme form, in almost mystical ways, as beyond time and space, eternal and timeless. Centuries later, Plotinus, Neo-Platonist philosopher in the Roman Empire, concluded that the ultimate principle of things, which he called “the One,” was beyond understanding. I’ve already mentioned how in ancient China, Lao Tze said the Dao is such that though it brings forth everything that is, and guides everything that happens, the Dao itself cannot be described or truly named. In Hindu philosophical traditions, the ultimate principle and reality, Brahman is ineffable and inexpressible, so that in one prominent school, the search for that level of reality is described as “neti, neti,” which is, “not this, nor that.” That no concept nor term applies.

Modern science is no different in this particular regard, by the way. Say, science one day discovers the ultimate laws of nature--the full set of laws, or perhaps even a single principle, that govern how the universe, life, and everything came to be, from the Big Bang and onward. This, by the way, for Christianity, would be the Logos of God, so if we discover the full set of such Laws, well, that’d be in that sense, discovery of an aspect of God, as far as Christianity is concerned. But, still, the same problem I’ve been describing would arise if we were to ask what these laws of Nature are, in themselves. I mean, we can know what the Laws are in the sense of we know what it is they govern, or do, or at least describe: how the universe comes into being. But, what are the laws in themselves? For example, are these Laws real? I mean, we’d assume they would be. They can’t just be in our heads. But, real in what sense? Are they real, like rocks are real? That doesn’t sound quite right. They aren’t physical things. Do these laws exist in space or time? That can’t be true, since they govern how space or time emerges, for lack of better words. So, if they are real, and they exist, so to speak, in what way? And so on. And this problem applies, really, to any laws of Nature that we know already. And science does not answer these questions. It’s not meant to. 

And this is what the idea of the transcendence of God was trying to convey. We will encounter a limit when we try to get to the origin of everything around us--to seek the ultimate level of our Reality. Whether this is the Creator, or the ultimate principle, or the Laws of Nature, or all of the above, we can describe what it does, or what it brings about in our reality, but that’s it. There is a limit on what we can say or think in regard to the ultimate level of reality--where our questions and our thoughts become silent. 

This level of Reality, the origin, the most fundamental and ultimate level, is like a horizon. It’s “there,” so to speak. And it’s real. But, that’s as far as we can go… that’s as far as we can speak of, or think about. You can’t peer beyond that.

That’s the idea of the transcendence of God.

[ pendulum ]

There’s more to be said on the topic; there’s the idea, for example, that because no word, term, or concept can be truly applied to the ultimate level of Reality, i.e. “God,” this opens a particularly unique way--what is called the “negative” way, of speaking about God. And you can find versions of this idea across vastly different philosophical and religious traditions, from Greek and Hellenistic philosophy, Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Neo-Confucianism, and of course, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.

But, I’ll stop here. I wanted to move to something I’ve mentioned in the first season’s episode six, “What to remember when you’re speaking about God.” The main point I covered there was that everything we say of God, for Christianity, is analogical.  What we say of God, is the best that we can say, within the limit of our language and thoughts, and because of that, they are in the form of analogies.

So, here’s an analogy I found to be especially helpful for me, and one that I used in the first episode. 

God is like a story-teller. The story God speaks, is all of Reality.

Well, in the first season, I repeatedly pointed out that at the most general level, Reality is like a speech, in that Reality communicates. That is why our thoughts and language can describe the laws of Nature, or define justice, or evoke beauty. But, it is more than that. Reality unfolds a narrative. The history of the universe is a story; our lives are stories; when we talk about them, describe them, they come out as stories. 

So, a good analogy again, is that Reality, as it unfolds through time, is like a story. And God is like the author of the story. This will then help us understand in what sense God is outside, at least, our time and reality. 

The author of a story is beyond the time and space inside that story. For example, in the story, Hamlet, the author, Shakespeare is not bound to any point in time or location inside the world in which Hamlet live. For Shakespeare, every event in Hamlet’s story, every moment, and every location, will be equally present to him. And if we were to ask what was Shakespeare doing when, say, Hamlet found that Ophelia had died in the story, there’d be two answers. First would be that Shakespeare is outside the passage of time in Hamlet’s world, so the question cannot be asked; we cannot connect a point in Hamlet’s time to any point in Shakespeare’s time. But, second answer is that if we must answer that question somehow, closest connection between the point in time inside the story when Hamlet learns of Ophelia’s death, to Shakespeare’s life, would be when Shakespeare is writing out that scene. 

God is like an author of the story.

But, there is a limit to this analogy. “Outside” the story of Hamlet, Shakespeare also lives inside his own world, inside another story--presumably real one--in which he is a member. God does not though. Or, to put it differently, there is no outside to God’s story. God is not beyond the space and time of just our universe, but beyond all space and time, of every possible universe. If there are indeed so-called other universes, God would be the author of those too. That is what makes God, God, with the capital, “G.” 

At this point, some of us may object, saying: ok, let’s grant for now that Reality is like a story; why should we believe there being a story-teller? An author? Especially when there is no “outside” of God’s story? Then, what’s the point of talking about an author of a story that encompasses, well, everything?

Well, when we distinguish between a story and the author of the story, we do so mainly for two reasons. First is that they are people like us, with physical bodies, and live outside their stories. The first reason obviously doesn’t apply to God, so we’ll leave it aside. The second reason is that the author is more than that one story she tells. She may tell many other stories, and she could have told different ones had she chose; Jane Austin authored Pride and Prejudice, but, she also authored Emma. And if she wanted, she could have written completely different stories, made up completely different worlds. Pride and Prejudice is indeed Jane Austin’s story, but Jane Austin as an author is more than just Pride and Prejudice.

Reality is like a story--and always keep in mind the analogical nature of what we’re saying, and their limits. And if Reality is like a story, God is like the author; God could have told a different story, or perhaps spoken many other stories, infinitely more, for all we know. Or to put it in another way, the universe could have been different than it is, or could have not existed at all, or perhaps there are other universes. Some cosmologists think there are other universes, though they would have come into being through same set of ultimate laws of nature that govern that process. Same Logos. 

This is why God is not the universe. The Christian idea of God is more… fundamental and comprehensive than that. To be precise, I believe my words in the first episode was, “God is Reality at the most fundamental, and most comprehensive level, with its infinite variations and possibilities.”

That is God before Genesis. 

But, we cannot relate to such God. Like it or not, according to Christianity, all of us are already living within a particular story that God is speaking. Our Reality, its structures, laws, time and space, and everything around us, is God speaking. And God that we can relate to, is God that is speaking that story. Now, unlike the stories that we humans tell, characters in the story God speaks--namely, us--are more real, and are able direct our own stories within the larger story of God. We participate in the story, and that is how we relate to Reality, to God.

All this is why the question of asking what God was doing before Genesis was in the end, unanswerable. Because for Christianity, anything that is real to us, anything that can be said, anything that can even be thought of, is God speaking. And speaking the particular story of our Reality in which we live. So, trying to think about God beyond all of that, “God before Genesis” is like trying to say what God is saying, when He is not speaking.

And God first speaks in the opening of Genesis.

That began the story.

 And then, there was something to talk about.

[ Short music ]

So please stay tuned for the upcoming season of What do you mean God Speaks?

Genesis.