Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?

Philosophers have debated this question for millennia: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Christians have an answer, indeed the only answer that I believe satisfies both the mind and the heart.

In the distant past there was only God. The ineffable and eternal God, existing in the triune fellowship of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He was/is a God of eternal love. God is a triune fellowship of selfless, perfect, other-centered love. Further, there is no conscious life outside of God, the Father-Son-Spirit. God alone constitutes the complete whole of reality.

This is what we confess in the Creed and this really is central to Christian faith: “I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.”

But in God there was never anything lacking. The picture is perfect. It is one of a ceaseless peace and joy flowing in love within the circle of the three persons in the divine trinity. God did not, simply put, create everything that is because he lacked anything or needed you or me. He created us out of a desire to love others. This is especially true with regard to beings “made in his image.”

We should not say that God “needed” to create us. This would wrongly imply that God lacked something essential to his being. We can say, reverently and wisely, that he “wanted” (desired) to create us in order to share the love that God had within his own being. One has suggested, rightly I believe, that God’s desire for us actually places a higher value on his love of us than if he somehow needed us.

Can we say that God’s creation of us was inevitable? I think the answer, reverently understood, must be yes. Why? Because “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). Because God is love, and God is creator, then his loving creation was genuinely inevitable because of who he is and how he loves.

The nature of love is to focus on someone outside of myself. God loved perfectly without there being a creation but his desire was to share his trinitarian love so he created a massive universe and placed various objects of his love within that universe. So far as the Scripture reveals God to us God made us, human persons, because of who he is as God. He made us because of his love!