Why Did God Create the Universe – And Why Us? The Question Theology Refuses to Answer

There is perhaps no more fundamental theological question than this:

Why did God create the universe at all — and why did He create us to govern it?

Not that He did. Not how He did. But why?

And yet, with remarkable consistency, traditional theology doesn't answer this question. It asserts divine freedom, affirms divine sovereignty, gestures toward “glory” or “love,” and then retreats into mystery. The question is politely acknowledged and immediately neutralised.

God created because He willed to create. God chose because He chose. God is sovereign; therefore no further explanation is required. This is not an answer. It is a theological deflection.

If God is not arbitrary, if He is Logos rather than chaos, if He is intelligence rather than impulse, then His choices must be intelligible, even if not exhaustively knowable. To say that God “simply chose” without asking why that choice and not another is to quietly reintroduce irrationality into the heart of the divine nature.

And here is the deeper problem:

• If God could have remained alone in eternal perfection, why risk creation at all?

• If God lacked nothing, why initiate a cosmos that would entail suffering, entropy, rebellion, and death?

• If God is complete, why open the possibility of incompletion?

This is not an abstract puzzle. It goes to the heart of what God is, what the universe is, and what we are for.

And it is here that Gurdjieff — through Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson — provides something theology has largely abandoned: a cosmological reason for creation itself.

The Fatal Silence of Classical Theology

Classical Christian theology, from Augustine through Aquinas, is robust in metaphysics but curiously thin in cosmology. It affirms:

• God is pure act (actus purus).

• God is self-sufficient.

• God creates ex nihilo.

• God is under no necessity.

And then, having secured God’s freedom, it stops.

The creation of the universe is treated as a kind of gratuitous overflow — an aesthetic gesture, a display of glory, or an expression of love. These are true, but they are not explanatory. They do not answer why this universe, why this structure, why this level of risk, why beings capable of rebellion, why time, entropy, and death?

The result is an unspoken assumption: Creation has no internal necessity. It is arbitrary.

But this sits uneasily with the biblical narrative, in which creation is purposeful, teleological, and ordered — and with the very idea of God as Logos, reason, and intelligence.

If God is Reason, then His acts are not opaque. If God is Truth, then His choices are not unintelligible. If God is Love, then His creativity is not whimsical.

To say “God just chose” without asking why that choice makes sense is to hollow out the very meaning of divine wisdom.

Gurdjieff’s Radical Contribution: Creation as a Response to Cosmic Necessity

Gurdjieff does something extraordinarily rare: He treats creation not merely as an act of power, but as a cosmic solution to a problem.

In Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, the universe is not a static ornament but a dynamic system governed by law, balance, and reciprocal maintenance. Existence is not self-sustaining by default. It requires participation. It requires contribution. It requires consciousness.

One of the central insights — often missed by both casual readers and orthodox critics — is that God’s original "dwelling", the Absolute, was not one of creative fullness, but of catastrophic limitation.

Gurdjieff indicates that the Absolute existed in a state in which all possibilities were already exhausted. There was no novelty. No unfolding. No development. A closed infinity.

And a closed infinity is, paradoxically, a form of death.

In such a state, nothing new can arise. No genuine creativity is possible. No further differentiation can occur. The Absolute is complete — and therefore sterile.

This is the crux of the matter for Gurdjieff:

Creation was not an indulgence. It was a necessity.

Not because God was deficient, but because existence itself requires open possibility in order not to collapse into nothingness.

Gurdjieff’s cosmology suggests that God restructured the very laws of being so that the universe would become a relatively independent, interdependent, and evolving system — a cosmos in which novelty could arise, in which possibilities could multiply rather than diminish, and in which conscious beings could participate in the maintenance of existence itself.

Creation, in this framework, is a metaphysical engineering solution. Not an accident. Not a whim. Not a mere display. But a solution.

The Problem of Automatism and the Necessity of Conscious Agents

One of Gurdjieff’s most penetrating diagnoses is that mechanical existence consumes possibilities. Automatism exhausts the potential of systems. Repetition degrades novelty. Entropy is not merely physical — it is existential.

If the universe were left to blind mechanical law alone, it would eventually run down. Possibilities would be exhausted. Variation would cease. Existence would stagnate and collapse.

This is why Gurdjieff places such radical emphasis on consciousness and being.

Conscious beings are not simply observers of the universe. They are generators of novelty. They introduce new trajectories. They create new possibilities. They interrupt entropy.

In this light, the appearance of humanity is not an evolutionary accident. It is a cosmic necessity. Humans are not merely animals with surplus intelligence. They are three-brained beings — uniquely positioned to mediate between matter, life, and spirit.

And this is where Genesis suddenly becomes metaphysically luminous:

“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion…”

Dominion is not domination. It is participation in governance. It is cosmic responsibility.

Humanity is installed as steward of the planetary and cosmic process, not because we are morally superior, but because conscious choice is required for the universe to remain open to possibility.

We are here because the universe needs us. And more radically: God needs us. Not as equals. Not as rivals. But as co-workers in the maintenance and unfolding of being.

Beelzebub’s Tales: Humanity and the Common-Cosmic Purpose

In Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, humanity is consistently framed not in sentimental moral terms, but in functional cosmic terms. Beelzebub repeatedly refers to beings as having a “definite purpose” within the common-cosmic process. Nothing exists arbitrarily. Everything has a role. Even error has a place.

Human beings, in particular, are created with the potential to consciously serve the sustainability of existence — not through a simplistic piety, but through robust inner development. This is the crucial distinction: Religion emphasises belief. Gurdjieff emphasises being.

The problem with humanity, in his view, is not sin in the juridical sense, but sleep. Mechanicalness. Identification. Absence of real I. The loss of conscious participation.

When humans function mechanically, they consume cosmic resources without contributing to cosmic harmony. They become parasites rather than partners. The universe bleeds possibility through them instead of gaining it.

This is not moralism. It is metaphysics. And suddenly, the biblical narrative takes on terrifying coherence:

• The Fall is not merely disobedience — it is loss of conscious function.

• Sin is not only transgression — it is failure of participation.

• Redemption is not merely forgiveness — it is restoration of cosmic function.

Why God Chose This Trajectory

To answer the question theology avoids: Why did God choose to create the universe — and why did He choose humans to govern it? It is because:

• a closed, static, self-contained perfection collapses into sterility.

• existence requires openness.

• possibility must be generated or it dies.

• consciousness is the only mechanism capable of generating genuine novelty.

• without co-creative beings, the universe would eventually exhaust itself.

In this context, God did not create because He was lonely or bored or needed to be worship. God created because existence itself required a new architecture in order to remain alive.

Creation is not a stage. It is a salvific intervention at the level of being itself. And humanity is not a side project. We are the mechanism through which the universe remains open.

This is why Christ is not an afterthought. This is why the Logos enters creation and why redemption is not merely moral but ontological.

Christ is the restoration of conscious participation in the cosmic process. Not just forgiveness. Not just salvation. But reintegration.

The Scandal of This Vision

This vision is offensive to modern Christianity because it shatters sentimentality. It tells us that we are not central because we are special but because we are necessary. We are not saved to go to heaven but saved to function. It tells us that faith without transformation is useless. That belief without being is empty and religion without inner work is cosmic negligence.

And it tells us something even more disturbing:

If we refuse our function, the universe suffers.

This is why Gurdjieff is so merciless; why Christ is so severe; and why the Gospel is not therapeutic. The stakes are not personal happiness but cosmic viability.

Creation as the Great Risk

So why did God create the universe? Because:

• not to create would have been to allow existence to close in on itself;

• the Absolute chose openness over stasis;

• God chose risk over sterility;

• He chose relationship over isolation; and

• He chose becoming over static being.

And why did He create us? Because only:

• conscious beings can keep the universe alive;

• agents can generate possibility; and

• awakened humans can serve as bridges between worlds.

This is not a comfortable theology. It is not a tame Christianity. It is not a safe Gospel.

It is a terrifying, exhilarating, and devastatingly serious vision of existence.

God did not create the universe as a display. He created it as a solution. And He created us as His co-workers.

Which means the real question is not Why did God create us? But, Why are we refusing to become what we were created to be?