Who God is?
Aristotle argues against the pagan gods, saying they are just human inventions. But, he believe in what he would call a “unmoved mover”, something that started the universe without being started itself.
Contrary to pagan gods (ex: Greeks), the Judaeo-Christian God is an uncreated being. It is not gods made in the image of man, but man made in the image of God. It’s like gravity: we didn’t invent it, it was there before us, but we discover it with time. The same happen with God: if He exists, he surely is there for eternity before us.
In Exodus, God forbade to make any visible idols or to make a graven image. God cannot be fully represented by finite things. He isn’t a being or a thing in this world, thus, nothing can fully represent Him.
“Contrary to some popular descriptions, God is not an all-powerful “super being” who peers into the cosmic fishbowl he created for his human pets. God isn’t even a being at all. He is instead, as St. Thomas Aquinas described him, ipsum esse, or the sheer act of being. God is just pure actuality, so he exists without limit, flaw, or deficiency of any kind. In the Summa Theologica, Thomas shows that God must be ipsum esse because an unchanging, infinite, immaterial, and eternal Creator is the only explanation for why a changing, finite, material, and temporal universe exists. While everything in the universe changes and depends on something else to exist, God is existence itself. Therefore, God depends on nothing to exist and is able to explain the existence of all finite beings.
Since God created all of reality, this means God is not limited by reality. As a result, God is necessary (not limited by existence), immaterial (not limited by space), and eternal (not limited by time).
For example, God doesn’t “think” or “decide” to do anything because he exists in a perfect, timeless moment where all truth is immediately known to him. “Thinking,” “deciding,” and even “reacting” are functions of creatures, not of ipsum esse. God doesn’t have a divided mind or an intellect the way we do. Instead, God is intellect, God is wisdom, and God is goodness because God contains all perfections in one undivided act of being.
God of the gaps
If we ask who created God, then we can also ask who created the universe? If the universe began to exists, it can’t be eternal like God.
Usually, this question is raised after someone acknowledge the kalam cosmological argument.
One day, at church, I got a young person who asked me: “I have a question I’ve asked my parents but they were never able to answer me.” I asked which one (thinking it would probably be one of the common objection).
She answers: “If God made everything, then who made God?“. I was smiling.
Me: “Your question presupposes that God already created the universe. If God has created the world, and he’s eternal, it becomes an infinite loop.“
Another day, a young man was discussing God’s existence with me. He told me: “… and since man created the idea of God…“. At that moment, I’ve just stopped him there. I answer: “Obviously, you should flip the idea backward: it’s not human beings who created God, it’s God who created us, but we are discovering Him daily. We didn’t invent the law of gravity, it was there before us. We just discovered the laws much later. So it’s the same with God: He existed for eternity way before the creation of humankind.” He was shocked.
You can ask yourself the question, but the answer will always be this: no one.