[^13] See William Lane Craig...

[^13] See William Lane Craig, The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz (London, Macmillan, 1980). [^14] Al-Ghazali, Incoherence of the Philosophers, [^27]: For a contemporary defense of the kalam cosmological argument, see William Lane Craig, “”The Finitude of the Past and the Existence of God,” in William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993) 3-76.

[^15] For a clear example of the concept of causality in Islamic philosophy, see Michael E. Marmura, “The Metaphysics of Efficient Causality in Avincenna,” in Michael E. Marmura (ed.), Islamic Theology and Philosophy: Studies in Honor of George F.

Hourani (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1984) 172-[^187]: Marmura states that while rooted in Aristotelian discussions of efficient causality, Ibn Sina’s theory of efficient causality has been modified and expanded with a Neoplatonic flavor, since it occurs in his very un-Aristotelian theory of emanation. For Ibn Sina, divine efficient causality is based in the otherness of the divine, for it is a cause that bestows existence on that which differs from itself.

It is broader than simply a motion from potentiality to actuality, which is secondary causality, for it is a cause coming from something other than itself. Ibn Sina’s theory of divine efficient causality, therefore, is contingent on his emanation doctrine, in which the heavens are moved by their souls and the souls are moved by their reflection on the divine. Thus, God becomes the supreme cause, being that it is from God that the first emanation occurs.

When emanation occurs in the sub-lunar world, it achieves a level of plurality unseen in other emanations. Al-Ghazali’s problem with emanation, and thereby with an infinitely temporal universe, is the assertion that within this scheme of emanation, cause and effect are co-existent and co-eternal. God, therefore, is prior to the universe only in the sense that his essence is prior to the essences that emanated from him.

[^16] Fakhry, “Classic Islamic Argument” [^136]: [^17] Craig, The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz, [^98]: [^18] The Mu‘tazilah and Ash‘arite were two schools of theologians in the history of Islam, the former held primacy in early Islam and the latter held primacy from the eighth century until the present. Al-Ghazali was an Ash‘arite, a school committed to the divine sovereignty of God.