Question: This question has bothered me for a long time and I try to understand it unsuccessfully. It’s clear to me that every creation has a creator. A table has a person who made it a person was created by G-d. This is clear to me beyond a shadow of a doubt. It’s also clear to me that He is a creator and wasn’t created because then he would be a creation and not a creator. But how is it that he always was there before everything else was created?
Your question is clear, But G-d is not man. If He were a man the question would be logical. Who created him, from where did he come? It can’t be that he always was! These are all questions when dealing with a physical being that has a body or other shape limited to form, size/amount, space and time. Then you should ask, who put it there, why this shape and how, etc.?
But G-d has no body or any physicality whatsoever, no shape, form, timeframe or space. He is the true reality. He is the infinite constant that exists behind every creation. He isn’t just another creation or being living in this world; rather He is the true existence that makes everything else exist.
Our sages stated: “G-d is the place of the world and the world is not his place. This means that G-d doesn’t live in the world, the world lives in G-d!
You correctly understood that only finite items need a limiter (to define its parameters). But it’s also necessary to understand that only something finite needs a beginning, a starting point. Why is this? Because the mere fact that something is limited means someone preceding it who established its limits. G-d as we understand is unlimited therefore there is no one to limit him or precede him. G-d today is as he always was without change, unaffected by time.
We can now understand that G-d wasn’t created from his own because he was never created. G-d has no starting point from when He appeared for G-d was always out of the framework called time. He always was. That’s why G-d is called “was, is and will be without change without a beginning and without time.
Think of it this way: Just as G-d is endless so too he has no beginning. Since He doesn’t age He also wasn’t born. Rather he is static, unchangeable and unchanged. Therefore He is constant, forever.
