I trust Dr. Scott Hahn’s teaching is clearer.
“In The Beginning…”
What was God Doing Before He Created?
Let’s consider creation a little more closely now. We’ve considered what in general the six and seven day pattern might refer to, but let’s take a quick look at that phrase, “in the beginning.” It’s one of my favorite passages in the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Now we could tear that apart and spend I think hours and hours on it, but let me just ask you a question. This is what came to me over and over again when I used to read this: “In the beginning God created.” What was God doing before he created? Did you ever wonder that?
• How many people have ever wondered, "What was God doing with the billions and trillions and quadrillions of years that he had on his hands before he created? Just sitting around, twirling his thumbs, waiting, wondering what it would be like, planning, and so on?
It’s a hard question. Now there are two approaches to answering it. One was taken by a great reformer, a great Protestant reformer, John Calvin said that he was preparing hell for people who ask such impertinent questions. There might be a certain propriety in such a response.
But I prefer what St. Augustine said and many others as well. Augustine, I think might have been trying to be a little bit humorous. Certainly he was trying to be subtle and ironic when he said, “What was God doing before he created?” He answered, “**Nothing. He didn’t have the time.” **
Now you’ve got to think about that for a second. It kind of gives you a charley horse between the ears. What does he mean, “Nothing. He didn’t have the time.” Well, for Augustine, time and space are relative properties for creatures but not the creator.
We speak of God, for instance, as being “omnipresent,” that he is present everywhere. A corollary of that is that God cannot move. Is that because he is just some static, frozen deity? No. In order to move from here to there, you’ve got to be here but not there and then you’ve got to be there and not here. Figure it out. Can God move? No, because where isn’t he? Where could he move to that he isn’t already present? Poor God, stuck in one place, but that one place is every place! So we don’t speak of God as being spaceless, so much as filling space to overflowing. Space can’t contain the infinite glory of God.
Time is the same way. Time in a sense is a succession or duration of moments. As creatures understand time in their own finite existence whatever the conditions may be, a housefly or a human. It doesn’t matter. But time is one of the experiences of finite creatures. Just as God cannot move anywhere in the universe because he is everywhere to begin with, so for God, the past, the present and the future are one, eternal simultaneous moment, one eternal present.
Now, if you understand that, write a dissertation, publish it and make millions because few people can go much further than just to say, “Okay, for God all eternity is his experience and the past, present and future one eternal present.” I mean, we can say it but I don’t think anybody here tonight can really imagine what that’s like. You know, we can say, “Time flies when you have fun and a year can go by like a day or a week can go by like a day, or whatever,” but I mean not to the degree that God experiences time as one simultaneous present moment. He fills time like he fills space.
So what was God doing before he created? Nothing. He didn’t have the time! Time began when God created it. He created out of nothing. He didn’t use a pile of pre-existent matter that he had in the side yard. He created out of nothing. Matter is what he spoke into existence by the powerful word of God.
So likewise, time was created and space and matter. These were the things that God created when he said, “Let there be light” and he pronounced these various “fiats” as we might say in Latin, “Let there be, let there be…” He didn’t roll up his sleeves and get to work and so many hours later it was there. His word went forth and whatever he declared, by declaring it, he did it! That’s the Word of God and that Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
In the New Testament we discover that that Word is not some impersonal utterance; rather that Word is the eternal logos; the eternal Word is the Second Person, the Eternal Son of God, our Savior. So the powerful agency of God at work from the very beginning is none other than Jesus Christ himself, according to John, chapter 1 and Colossians 1, verse 15 from St. Paul’s perspective and from others as well. So we can already recognize the work of our Savior, not just some generic god, but the Blessed Trinity through Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit is at work building us a home that he will then renovate and reconstitute in the glorious new heavens and the new earth at the end of the ages.
