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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Al-ghazali’s Argument For the Eternity of the World and the Problem of Divine Immutability and Timelessness The Remaining Question of Divine Will For al-Ghazali, all of this is to say, that the philosophers cannot affirm the eternity of the world and thereby deny the connection between an eternal will and a temporal creation.

The philosopher’s question, however, remained: what “would have differentiated a specific time from what precedes and succeeds it when it is not impossible for [any of] the prior and posterior [times] to have been willed [as the beginning of creation]?”[^49] Another instance was the theological position that an object receives whiteness or blackness from the divine will, though the object is equally open to receiving either whiteness or blackness.

What was it within the divine will that determines this object to be either white or black? How are white and black differentiated in the divine will, if the object is equally receptive to either and there is supposedly no difference between the two? Much like in the creation of the world, what differentiated one time from another, when there is no difference between periods of time or between the existence and non-existence of the world?

Craig notes that, in response, al-Ghazali used the “principle of determination,” which is found in the theology of the mutakallim .