Ask the Pastor
Let me give a simplified answer. The first thing to note is that God created everything that is not God, even if it is not listed in the Genesis 1 account. This means God created atoms and angels, and time. This is what is meant by creation out of nothing. Other ancient religions hold that God, time, and stuff are all co-eternal, but not Christianity. All that is not God, is created.
According to Christian theology, God exists outside of time and space; thus, there is no “before” in a literal sense. He is described as the Alpha and the Omega (Revelation 22:13), the beginning and the end, indicating that He transcends the temporal realm entirely. There is no before for God.
Likewise, God is different than creation (Job 38:4-7). We are the creatures, he is the creator. As the Catechism teaches us, “I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them.” Or the Augsburg Confession, “undivided, unending, of immeasurable power, wisdom, and goodness, the creator and preserver of all visible and invisible things.” We have a cause—God, but God is uncaused.
Since God is uncaused, he needs no cause (Romans 11:36). There is no infinite regression of turtles, each holding up the next. Scripture describes God as the great I Am (Exodus 3:14).
“Outside” the creation of the universe, as recounted in Genesis, God was in an eternal state of existence—fully complete, self-sufficient, and in a divine relationship within the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This internal dynamic of love and communion among the three persons of the Godhead existed before the foundation of the world (John 17:24). The act of creation was not driven by a need for companionship or fulfillment but was instead an expression of His creative will and love (Isaiah 45:18).
© Patrick K Welton