“God distinguishes Himself from all false “gods” because He alone is the Creator. False gods, which are only “so-called gods” (1 Cor. 8:5), are all created in a twofold sense.

On the one hand, these so-called gods are mere idols, and “an idol has no real existence” (1 Cor. 8:4). Idols are mere artifacts made by human craftsmen.

For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,
but the LORD made the heavens. (Ps. 96:5)

An idol! A craftsman casts it,
and a goldsmith overlays it with gold
and casts for it silver chains. (Isa. 40:19)

On the other hand, idols represent something real and sinister, for these so-called gods are really demons. “What pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God” (1 Cor. 10:20; cf. Ps. 106:37). Therefore, idolatry involves the worship of what are “no gods” (Deut. 32:17) but mere creatures (Rom. 1:25).

Creation out of nothing highlights what is implicit in Scripture’s polemic against idolatry: There is the one Creator and there are many creatures, but there is nothing in between. Creation out of nothing therefore confronts us with the relentless distinction between God and creation.

We must register this truth in all its force by speaking of the infinite, qualitative distinction between the Creator and the creature.

God differs infinitely. Normal distinctions draw boundaries around things to show how they are not identical, but the distinction between God and creation is not like this. God is not limited by anything, even by the distinction between Creator and creature.

God is not identical to creation, but neither is he cordoned off from it. He is at once transcendent and immanent, removed from all things and present to their innermost being. “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

God also differs qualitatively. Quantitative differences are measured in terms of bigger and smaller or more and less, but God’s distinction from creation is not measurable in this way.

This means that the world adds nothing to God, that “God plus the world” is not something bigger and better than “God Himself.” God measures the world, but not vice versa (Isa. 40:12–17).

God would be no less good or glorious without creation than he is with it, because God cannot be part of something else. Furthermore, His qualitative distinction from all things means that God is not even one “kind” of being alongside other kinds.

There is no general classification scheme embracing both God and creatures, as two instances of something more general, that would explain them both.

God is only like Himself. (Isa. 40:25; 46:5)”

–Tyler R. Wittman, Creation: An Introduction, ed. Graham A. Cole and Oren R. Martin, Short Studies in Systematic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2025), 70-71.