Question: How could time not have existed before God made creation when going from uncreated to created requires a time frame?
Answered by: Carl Gobelman, who has been serving on our Q&A Answer Team since June 2006.
Answer: Greetings and thank you for your question. A relatively simple question that is treading into some deep theological and philosophical waters. Let’s see if we can come up with a satisfactory answer.
Most Christians ought to agree that God is infinite, eternal, and immutable (unchangeable). Scripture bears this out. God is infinite (1 Kings 8:27; Psalm 147:5; Isaiah 44:6; Jeremiah 23:24), eternal (Deuteronomy 33:27; Isaiah 40:28), and immutable (Psalm 102:27; Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8; James 1:17). Many Christian traditions have codified this in written confessions of faith. One such confession of faith is the Belgic Confession of Faith (1561), which is a confession of faith from the reformed churches in the Netherlands during the time of the Reformation. In article 1, it states: “We believe with the heart and confess with the mouth that there is one only simple and spiritual Being, which we call God; and that He is eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, immutable, infinite, almighty, perfectly wise, just, good, and the overflowing fountain of all good.” Most confessions (or statements) of faith for churches or denominations will have something like that as their description of God and His nature.
Now, God being eternal means He has no beginning or end. God being immutable means He does not change. God has always existed as the Triune God for all eternity in unchangeable glory and perfection. The created universe, on the other hand, has a beginning. There was a time when the universe was not. There will come a time when the universe will no longer be. The universe (the entire created order) is not eternal. It is not unchangeable.
If we can agree on this, then we can move on to a discussion of time. What is time? Many answers can (and have) been given. For me, the best answer to that question I’ve heard is that time measures change in the created order. What does the fact that I’m currently 58 years old mean? It means you can measure the changes I have undergone by the passage of time. I’ve grown. I’ve gained wisdom. My hair is turning gray. All of this change is expressed in time. If you look at pictures of me in 1975, 1985, 1995, 2005, 2015, and now in 2024, you will note how I’ve changed through the passage of time. Therefore, before there was a created order, there was no time. Why? Because the only thing that exists prior to creation is God, and He doesn’t change. Time is a meaningless concept to an eternal, infinite, and unchanging Being.
So, to say that moving from “uncreated to created requires a time frame,” I would say that’s not entirely accurate. Moving from uncreated to created is the creation of time itself. Time began when God said “Let there be light.” The clock doesn’t start ticking until Genesis 1:1. In fact the words of Genesis 1:1 are quite telling. “In the beginning.” The beginning of what, we might ask? The beginning of everything. The beginning of time and space. So, I would say that time itself began when God spoke the universe into existence.
I hope this helps.
