The Unmoved Mover
Most of us think of the creation of God as that particular moment in time the Bible calls “the beginning” in Genesis 1: the moment time began, physical reality came into existence, and everything we know that defines our universe began to be. When God spoke and things were.
The other sense in which we use the term “creation” is in regards to physical reality itself. Not so much the act or the moment in time, but everything that exists as a part of reality that is not God Himself. This is the sense of creation I want to focus on here.
Because many people have come to believe that God is a sort of watchmaker and the universe is his clock. He built the thing and got it running, but then He stepped back and let it go on its own. The mechanism worked, so the inventor was pleased to let it do its own thing while he observed from the outside.
But this is not how the Bible instructs us to think of the creative force of God.
When the apostle Paul visited Athens and preached in the Aeropagus, he proclaimed to his Greek audience that, “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything,” (Acts 17:24-25). Notice the word “gives”. Not “gave”. God made the world (in the past) and gives (in the present) to all mankind their very life and breath. Paul continued to say, quoting from the Greeks’ own philosophy, that, “in Him we live and move and have our being,” (17:28). According to the apostle, all humanity exists in Him – that is, we all owe our existence to His creative will.
Later, Paul would write a letter to a church in the ancient city of Colassae in which he would point out that Jesus Christ is “the image of the invisible God,” and that, “by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together,” (Colossians 1:15-17). Equating Jesus Christ with God the Father, Paul teaches that Yahweh God not only created all things, but is holding everything together.
The writer of the book of Hebrews agrees, stating that “[Christ] is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power,” in Hebrews 1:3 (my emphasis).
God didn’t just make the universe. God is holding the universe together. Every moment of every single day, we exist because God wants us to.
The philosopher Thomas Aquinas, who lived in the thirteenth century and is generally regarded as the great philosophical mind of the Middle Ages, established five logical argument proofs (what he called “ways”) for the existence of God. The first is what he called the argument from motion and it basically goes like this:
1. Our senses prove that things are in motion.
(And by “motion”, Aquinas meant a state of change, whether that be a change of location, change of action, change of quantity, or change of quality.)
2. Things move when potential motion becomes actual motion.
(All things within physical existence have both potential and actual properties – liquid water has the potential to become ice; a match has the potential to light on fire; my fingers have the potential to type these letters out on this keyboard, which has the potential to relay the information to the computer, etc.)
3. Only an actual motion can convert a potential motion into an actual motion.
(For something potential to become actual – for liquid water to become ice, for instance – it must be acted upon by an outside actual force – in this case, colder air.)
4. Nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality in the same respect (i.e., if both actual and potential, it is actual in one respect and potential in another).
5. Therefore nothing can move itself.
6. Therefore each thing in motion is moved by something else.
7. The sequence of motion cannot extend ad infinitum.
8. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.
Aquinas labeled God the Unmoved Mover. He does not have potential to be anything other than what He is (Hebrews 13:8; James 1:17; Malachi 3:6). He is pure actuality (Exodus 3:13-14). And from Him flows all of the motion, change, and movement of physical existence.
In short, God is existence.
So, as you find yourself reading this blog post, you are able to see the words because of the function of your eyes. You are able to understand what the words mean because your eyes relay the information to your brain. And your brain is able to translate the shapes into meaning because of the function of your cerebrum, which is dependent on your neurons, which are dependent on the function of the subatomic particles within the hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen that form them, and on and on and on. All the way down the casual change of dependencies that are required for every single action that takes place at every moment in time within the entire realm of physical reality. All the way down to the Unmoved Mover, who is holding all things together by the word of His power and the sheer force of His will.
You are reading this because He is wanting you to, allowing you to, and enabling you to.
So, while the creation of the universe did take place at a certain moment, God is not so much a watchmaker who made a functioning machine and then left it to run on its own. His creation is more like that of music, which is created by the constant intention and action of a musician, and which ceases to exist should the musician ever stop playing.
Job recognized that the “life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind” were held in the hand of God (Job 12:10). As we have seen, the very nature of reality demands His existence. We exist because He does. Everything exists because He does. He is Pure Actuality, the Unmoved Mover. He is I AM. And because He is, you are.
~
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. - Revelation 22:13
Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel
and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts:
“I am the first and I am the last;
besides me there is no god.
Who is like me? Let him proclaim it.
Let him declare and set it before me,
since I appointed an ancient people.
Let them declare what is to come, and what will happen.
Fear not, nor be afraid;
have I not told you from of old and declared it?
And you are my witnesses!
Is there a God besides me?
There is no Rock; I know not any.
- Isaiah 44:6-8