In line 7 of the Creed we learned: What quality the Father has, the Son has, and the Holy Spirit has. The next several lines are going to flesh out these divine attributes that the Father, Son, and Spirit share in equal measure.

The Father is uncreated, the Son is uncreated,
the Holy Spirit is uncreated.

Athanasian Creed, Line 8

When we confess that Father, Son, and Spirit are uncreated, we are primarily confessing two divine attributes: eternity, and aseity, or self-existence.

Eternity means to transcend time, to be beyond beginning or end. Eternity means that God does not experience the unfolding succession of imperfect nows that is time. Rather, eternity, in the words of Aquinas, is simultaneously whole.

From our limited human vantage point, we would say for God, all times are now.

From the very beginning, Scripture affirms that God is eternal: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis‬ ‭1‬:‭1‬). ‭‬‬The heavens and the earth had a beginning, which means beyond the beginning, God is.

Not only that, but it says: And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day (Genesis‬ ‭1‬:‭3‬-‭5‬). God wasn’t just creating light. He was separating alternating periods of light and darkness which He named Day and night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. God did not just create light, but days. Before this there had been no days, and thus, no time. God created time at the beginning. That’s what makes it a beginning. God Himself has no beginning.

For God to create time, He must exist outside of time. Time is created. God is uncreated: Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God (Psalm‬ ‭90‬:‭2‬). In the words of finite man, from everlasting to everlasting you are is the only way we can speak of eternity. God simply is, and as far back or forward as you could peer down the halls of time, and beyond, God would be there.

Logically, if God is eternal, no one created Him. There is nothing and no one before God, because there is no before with God. He is uncreated and therefore self-existent. God exists of Himself. Moreover, He needs no one to sustain Him, to support Him. He depends on no one outside of Himself. Rather, as St. Paul says: The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, … [is not] 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).

God is Creator, uncreated, eternal and self-existent. Therefore, God said to Moses, “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14). He simply is. Behind all beginnings and beyond all ends, God is.

This, we see from Scripture, is true of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

For St. Paul says of the Father: the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ … chose us in him [that is, Christ the Son] before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:3-4). Before the beginning—before creation, before time—the Father is choosing His saints. He is, and He is exercising Sovereignty outside of time. Shortly thereafter, the Apostle calls this the Father’s eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord (Ephesians‬ ‭3‬:‭11‬).

But I am getting ahead of myself. The Creed speaks of the eternity of the Godhead explicitly in line 10. Yet, if God is uncreated, this of course implies that He is self-existent and therefore eternal.

Just here, the Creed is looking to shore up two two essential truths. First, and most immediately, to refute the Arian heresy that there was a time when the Son was not, for the Son is the first and greatest creation of the Father. In response, the Athanasian Creed declares: The Father is uncreated, the Son is uncreated, the Holy Spirit is uncreated. Second, and practical for sound theology, we confess the distinction between the Creator and the creation, between Creator and creatures.

1 Corinthians 8:6 is explicit that the Father and the Son are each involved in the creation of all things: there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist (1 Corinthians‬ ‭8‬:‭6‬). All things are from the Father and through the Son. Father and Son thus both bear the title of Creator, and as such are uncreated.

Of the Son, Scripture is again plain that He is the agent of creation. Thus, John 1:1-5: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it (John‬ ‭1‬:‭1‬-‭5‬). The Son—here, the Word—was in the beginning with God.

So, before the beginning, before time, in eternity, the Son already was. And, all things were made through him. This demands that the Son is uncreated, since all things that are, were made through him. He is called the Word because when the Father spoke: “Let there be light,” He is the creative Word by whom the Father created. The Son is the source of the light, and of life itself: in him was life—before the beginning, beyond time, the Son is. He is Creator, uncreated.

This is all confirmed elsewhere in Scripture, in rather plain language. First, Colossians 1:16-17: For by him all things were created—that is, by the Son—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. If all things in heaven, such as angels, were created by, through, and for the Son, He is Himself uncreated. Likewise, all things on earth, visible and invisible, were made by, through, and for the Son. This would include time. Time was created through the Son, who is Himself eternal and uncreated. He Himself is before all things—both in terms of preeminence and preexistence.

And it also says in him all things hold together. Thus, we see what St. Paul said of God in Acts 17 is true of the Son. He made the world and everything in it; and, In him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:24, 28). This is all specifically said, again, of the Son, through whom also [God] created the world; and who upholds the universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:2, 3).

On the word of two or three witnesses, then, it has been firmly established: the Son, as the Father, is eternal and therefore uncreated; but rather, Creator.

But what of the Holy Spirit? First, Hebrews 9:14 calls the Holy Spirit the eternal Spirit. If the Spirit is eternal, we have sufficiently established that He is uncreated.

Likewise, the opening verses of Genesis affirm the Spirit as Creator, and therefore, uncreated. For it says: In the beginning … the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters (Genesis‬ ‭1‬:‭1, 2). This is before God creates Day and Night, and therefore time. The Spirit is hovering over the wild and waste. That verb indicates a mother bird, hovering over her nest. If the Son is the Word through which the Father spoke all creation into existence, the Spirit is the power and application of the Word spoken—bringing creation into birth, as it were. The Spirit then is Creator—eternal and Himself uncreated.

This will hopefully begin to silence the objections of the critics who claim that studying the Trinity is esoteric and irrelevant. For our universe does not exist; and we ourselves do not exist; without an uncreated Father, an uncreated Son, and an uncreated Holy Spirit. The Christian doctrines of both Creation and Redemption (Redemption implies Creation, since God is redeeming what He created) depend upon the Triune God from beginning to end.