Can God Create Other Gods?

Question: If God is all-powerful, couldn’t He make other gods—perfect beings just like Himself? 

Answer:
That’s a good question, and the answer is no. To explain why, we need to be clear on what makes God, God.

Philosophers and theologians often describe God as a maximally great being. That’s not just worshipful language—it’s a precise definition. A maximally great being possesses every “great-making” quality to the highest possible degree, including:

• Omnipotence – the ability to do all that is logically possible.
• Omniscience – complete knowledge of all truths.
• Moral Perfection – always doing what is perfectly good.
• Necessary Existence – existing in every possible world, cannot fail to exist.

The last one—necessary existence—is crucial. It means God doesn’t just happen to exist; He must exist. He is uncaused, eternal, and independent. And that’s why the idea of “creating another God” is impossible. If a being is created, then there was a world before it began where it did not exist. This means it’s possible for it not to exist, making it, by definition, less than maximally great.

The reason God hasn’t made “other gods” isn’t that His power is limited or that he is vain or unkind, it’s that the concept itself doesn’t make sense. You can’t have a “created self-existent being” any more than you can have a married bachelor. It’s like asking if God can bake a cake that was never baked. This is logically contradictory. And as C.S. Lewis famously said, nonsense is still nonsense, even when we talk about God doing it.¹

But here’s what God can do: He can create beings a little lower than Himself—finite, but still remarkable—made in His image. That’s what we are. We are made to participate in His goodness and experience Him in all His maximal greatness. Creation was not an act of vanity, but of love. There is nothing more loving than for God to make a way for created beings to know Him. 

Even in our finiteness—and even through pain—this is still true. Our limits and struggles don’t contradict God’s goodness; they give us the very arena in which His goodness can be seen and experienced. In suffering, we discover His comfort. In weakness, we learn His strength. And in the longing for more, we are drawn toward the One who is Himself our ultimate joy.