If then...

If then, time, which is an expression of the measure of motion, is necessarily pre-eternal, motion is necessarily pre-eternal, and that which is motion and through duration time endure is necessarily eternal.[^71] Al-Ghazali responded by saying that “time is originated and created and before it there was no time at all.”[^72] Interestingly, al-Ghazali, again, as Michael Marmura has pointed out, follows an Aristotelian understanding of time being a measurement of motion.[^73] Therefore, God was prior to both the universe and time, neither existed until they were created.

This was a natural conclusion from al-Ghazali’s affirmation of the temporally finite creation and the immutability of God. Brian Leftow comments, “God’s being immutable would entail God’s being timeless,”[^74] as seen in the following diagram: 1- Necessarily, if anything is God, it acts. 2- Necessarily, every temporal act is of finite duration. Therefore… 3- Necessarily, every temporal agent changes in every act from acting to not acting or vice-versa.

Therefore… 4- Necessarily, if God does not change, God is not temporal. Therefore… 5- Necessarily, if God cannot change, God cannot be temporal.[^75] Therefore, “if God is not located in time, it follows that God does not change. In fact, as whatever is timeless is necessarily so, if God is timeless, God cannot change.”[^76] To assert God as timeless would force a theologian to additionally assert that God was immutable.

For, as Garrett DeWisse has pointed out, a timeless being would be immaterial, necessary and immutable.[^77] If, then, al-Ghazali held to a doctrine of divine timelessness, his theory that God eternally willed the creation to occur could be sound. For any immutable being would be bound by its past choices and could do no other than what this being has intended to do from the beginning. The problem of God’s immutability, however, remains even with the doctrine of timelessness.

As Leftow indicates, the classical doctrine of God in Judeo-Christian-Islamic theology holds that God is also omnipresent. Since the world and time were created at the same moment, space, like time, would be temporally finite. Thus, how can God be omnipresent when space is not existent? Change in the divine, therefore, would have to have taken place when the universe was created.[^78] Furthermore, “no immutable being can be aware of change occurring.