In response...

In response, al-Ghazali asked if these circular motions of the heavens are temporal or eternal themselves. For if they are eternal, “how does [this foundation] becomes a principle for the first temporal event?

If temporal, it would require another temporal event, [and so on,] regressing [ ad infinitum ].”[^43] Third, in Proof 2a, al-Ghazali assessed that when the philosophers spoke of God as prior to the universe, it was a priority of essence, not time.[^44] Being a priority of essence and not time means that the universe can exist co-eternally with its cause - God.

Similar to the movement of a ring by the hand’s movement, or the movement of the water by a boat, the cause is co-existent with the effect. For if the Creator’s priority to the world was temporal, the philosophers argue, then “God would have preceded the world by a lengthy duration.”[^45] And if one asserts a concept of finite time, then it seems contradictory to say, “before the existence of time, infinite time would have existed,” especially since time is a measure of motion.

Al-Ghazali replied that “time is originated and created, and before it there was no time at all.”[^46] Thus, God was prior to both the universe and time, meaning that the essence of the Creator existed when the essence of the world did not exist. Furthermore, there is no difference between asserting that God was and the world was not, or stating that God will be and the world will be not - the future tense, as the philosophers might uphold.

For this statement is relative, since the “future itself can become a past and be expressed in the past tense.”[^47] The problem in not seeing the timelessness of God is a problem of imagination not logic, for argument or hypothesis cannot demonstrate this argument to the “estimative faculty.”[^48] Previous…