In the beginning only God existed, and he created all things by his very word. The skies, the land, the seas, plants, animals, bugs, fish, and finally humans. All of this, God did in and of himself—the Triune God working within himself to create out of nothing the whole of everything. This picture of the singular God creating all things by his word contrasts sharply with the competing creation accounts in the Israelite context. 

The Old Testament is a polemic text, written in a particular cultural context to set right the wrong views its readers held about God and humanity. Of these wrong views, perhaps none had more significant implications than the view that God was fully existent in and of himself and dependent upon no person or thing for his existence. On the flipside of that, humans do not exist except apart from the creative processes and sustaining work of Yahweh, God of heaven and earth.

God’s Counter-Cultural Aseity as Creator

The creation narrative in Genesis 1–2 lays out this distinction between God and humans clearly. I’m sure you’re familiar with the gist of the passage. In the beginning only God existed, and he created all things by his very word. The skies, the land, the seas, plants, animals, bugs, fish, and finally humans. All of this, God did in and of himself—the Triune God working within himself to create out of nothing the whole of everything. This picture of the singular God creating all things by his word contrasts sharply with the competing creation accounts in the Israelite context. Furthermore, in Genesis 1–2 humans are created by God in order to live in relationship with him. They are placed in a garden, a cosmic temple, in order to care for God’s creation and to mimic his creative work. Adam and Eve bore God’s image—they represented his rule and reign in their care over creation.

Ancient Near Eastern creation accounts present a starkly different picture of creation. For example, in the Sumerian Eridu Genesis, three gods created the Sumerian people and the land where they lived. In Egypt, several creation stories competed with one another, but all agree that the world arose out of the chaotic sea, and all agree that more than one god or goddess was at work in creating. In none of these narratives does a singular God create all things by spoken word. And in the Akkadian Atrahasis Epic, more powerful gods conscripted less powerful gods to do the hard work of creating waterways while the more powerful gods built mountains and dug out the Tigris and Euphrates. Once these lower gods became disillusioned with the hard labor placed on them, they hatched the idea to create humans to do the work they no longer wanted to do. What resulted was a battle for the ages, with one god eventually being killed and humans created from a mixture of clay and that god’s blood. Thus, humans were created and the lower gods no longer had to care for the higher gods:

I have done away with your heavy forced labor,
I have imposed your drudgery on man.
You have bestowed clamor upon mankind.
I have released the yoke, I have made restoration (Atrahasis Epic, lines 240–244).

If this is the cultural milieu in which the Israelites found themselves, then the biblical view of God’s creative work had significant implications for how God’s people viewed both themselves and their God. First, the God of the Bible is the only God. There exists in the biblical worldview no pantheon of which God is part. He alone is God, and he alone is creator and therefore ruler over all things. There was no battle in the heavens that resulted in the creation of humans or any other thing. And there were no less-powerful gods who were conscripted into forced labor. No, the God is Israel is the singular, all-powerful God who created all things.

God’s Aseity and the Creation of Man

Second, and most importantly for understanding the importance of God’s aseity, along with how radically counter-cultural such a concept was in the ancient Near East, God did not create humans because of some lack in himself. That is, since God is self-existent, he is fully complete in and of himself and relies on no other thing for his own existence. Compare this with the Atrahasis Epic, along with the broader ancient Near Eastern understanding of humanity’s relationship with their gods. In Atrahasis, people are created to do the work the gods no longer want to do—the basic work needed to provide for the gods’ needs. Likewise, the overall sacrificial system was thought to be a way to provide for the needs of the gods. That is, the gods themselves needed the people to sustain them with food and drink. This is why proper ritual and sacrifice were so important—if the gods’ needs were not met or they were angered for some reason, then they would retaliate against their worshipers by bringing some sort of calamity upon them, such as famine or military defeat.

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