What was God doing before he created the universe?

St. Augustine confronted this question in the fifth century. He noted that others jokingly responded that for all eternity God was making hell for people who ask questions like that. Augustine’s more serious response was that prior to the creation of the world there was no time. It makes no sense to ask what God was doing prior to the creation of the world, because the creation of the world also included the first moment of time.

Time can be a difficult thing to understand, but one common-sense view is to think of time as a measurement of change. If God existed in a changeless, perfect state without the universe, then our mental picture of a lonely God passing countless idle eons is a flawed one. God exists without time because he does not change. The Bible even says, “Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (Jas. 1:17).