In the beginning, God created…
Genesis 1:1
I AM THAT I AM
Exodus 3:14
The first verse contains a subject and an action. Before there is a verb, Genesis naming it as “created,” there cannot be a beginning. A beginning demands first an event. This says something remarkable about God that we, as creatures, simply cannot fathom.
There was no space.
There was no beginning.
There was no time.
There was no energy.
There was no matter.
There was no darkness.
No light.
No evening and morning.
No times or seasons.
No hot or cold.
No descriptors.
There was only: God.
Ontology is the philosophical discussion of being. What does it mean to “be”? There is a more foundational question, for even “being” is something that is a description in our own terms. We simply do not have any information about what it “looks like” for God to exist.
God is as He is in Himself.
Our language to describe God, or even the language that He uses, are all contingent upon imagery and actions that we can comprehend. Every description is exactly that: a description. That isn’t to say those descriptions are false. It is, however, to say that God as Father only makes sense as one facet of God to explain Himself to us.
God’s descriptions, images, metaphors, actions, attributes, manifestations, revelations, and titles are all fundamentally simplified renditions of who and what God is in Himself.
Before there is light, God is light.
Before there is darkness, God clothes Himself in darkness.
Before there is “created,” God is creator.
Before there is a Lamb slain, God is the Lamb slain before the foundations of the earth.
How is this possible?
The things that these images and actions of God that are used to describe something true about God are always true. The truth revealed still exists regardless of whether that description exists.
God is creator.
God is Spirit.
God hovers.
God speaks.
God is Word.
God reveals.
God orders.
God separates.
God blesses.
God is light.
God is father.
God is son.
God is lamb.
All of these things are true. They are all expressions of the very Divine personhood as God is. Whether there is “father” before a father ever exists in history is irrelevant. That which God as father expresses and defines is the ontological claim of who God is regardless of creation.
I don’t want to take Exodus and divorce it of the context, as if “I AM” is exegetically understood to mean uncreated, timeless, eternal, etc. That isn’t what the verse is explaining in the context of Exodus 3. There is, however, a way of helping name the phenomenon that many of us have attempted to explain.
While we cannot understand this intimately, for we are of a different vantage point, we are left with descriptions that help us to understand the one who Scripture first calls “God.”
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