1

The Kalām Cosmological Argument and the Problem of Divine Creative

Agency and Purpose
Sharif Randhawa (December 2011)

Abstract: In this article, I discuss the theological problems raised by the Kalām Cosmological
Argument that has resulted in criticisms of its utility by some Muslim philosophers and
theologians, most notably Ibn Taymiyya. I briefly describe the responses to these problems by
Ibn Sīna and two kalām sects, the Ashʿarites and the Muʿtazilites, and highlight the problems
each of them. I then contrast them with the view fervently argued by Ibn Taymiyya, but also
defend an alternative theory for those who are not willing to accept the proposition of an infinite
temporal regress in God’s actions.

Contents:
● I. The Kalām Cosmological Argument
● II. Kalām Cosmological Conundrums
● III. The Competing Theories of the Falāsifah and the Mutakallimūn
● IV. Ibn Taymiyya’s Solution
● V. An Alternative Model
● VI. Conclusion

I. The Kalām Cosmological Argument

The Kalām Cosmological Argument (KCA) is a well-known argument for the existence of God
that argues for a First Cause of the universe.1 The argument was phrased by the famous Muslim
scholastic theologian al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) as follows: “[Premise 1:] Every being which begins
has a cause for its beginning; [Premise 2:] now the world2 is a being which begins; [Conclusion:]
therefore it possesses a cause for its beginning.”3 The first premise is taken to be self-evident,
since something cannot come into being from and through nothing, but requires a cause to bring
it into existence. What is eternal, however, does not require a cause to bring it into existence.
Hence the second premise is the focus of the KCA: that the universe it not eternal, but had a
finite past. To prove this, the KCA observes that an eternal past would require an actually
infinite series of events to have occurred in time before the present could have occurred. Yet, the
argument contends, this is absurd, because an infinite series by definition cannot have come to an
end. To say that an infinite number of events had to have occurred in order to arrive at the
present is in fact to say that the present has never arrived, which is obviously false. (This is
known as the problem of “traversing the infinite” or “infinite regress.”)4 Accordingly, the
universe must have had a beginning, and therefore a cause.

1
The KCA should not be confused with another kalām argument, the argument from the temporality of accidents.
The latter was rightly censured by critics of kalām because, aside from being indecisive yet needlessly convoluted, it
led kalām theologians to negate all accidents from God’s essence and thus to the denial of certain divine attributes
indicated by the plain connotation of Scripture and Tradition.
2
i.e. the universe, or everything except God.
3
al-Ghazālī, Kitāb al-Iqtiṣād fi’l-Iʿtiqād. ed. Ibrahim Agah Cubukcu and Huseyin Atay (Ankara, 1962), pp. 15-16.
Qtd. in William Lane Craig, The Kalām Cosmological Argument (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1979),
p.44.
 2

The cause of the world must be outside of it, and therefore cannot be a natural or physical cause.
Because the only remaining type of cause is personal agent causation, or causation in terms of
the intentional act of a personal (i.e. rational) agent, the cause must be a personal agent who
could have chosen to bring the universe into existence when the universe was and could have
remained non-existent. By definition, the agent must have will and power, and moreover its
power must be significant enough to have produced the world. Additionally, it must have
knowledge in order to intentionally create, and it must be eternal and uncaused if it is to explain
to beginning of things. Some proponents of the argument also conclude that because this agent is
the cause of all matter, time, and space, it must be immaterial, timeless and spaceless. It follows
then that an agent with these properties must exist. While this does not fully necessitate the God
of traditional theism with all of his attributes of perfection, other considerations can be offered
for why he would be the best explanation for this conclusion, or the argument can be made as a
cumulative case for his existence.

II. Kalām Cosmological Conundrums

While this argument has Greek and Christian origins, it achieved the most prominence in Islamic
scholastic theology, or kalām,5 and therefore acquired the name the Kalām Cosmological
Argument. However, the reputed impossibility of an “infinite regress” of events in time, which
comprises the foundation of the argument, gave rise to a number of theological puzzles
involving, among other things, how to reconcile the infinite regress problem with the notion of
God’s eternity in the past, God’s unchanging perfection and self-sufficiency, and the cause of
God’s act of creating. Typically, Muslim and Christian proponents of the KCA assumed God to
be timeless and unchanging, at least in the absence of creation, so this did not result in problem’s
about the existence of God. Similar conundrums occur even in the absence of the God postulate,
but to considerably graver extent, since the alternative would be to postulate the world coming
into existence entirely without a cause to bring it into existence. Were this not so, the KCA
would be patently invalid. Nonetheless, these did constitute important theological questions that
demanded answers.

The most central problem was this: If the cause of creation, God, is eternal, “why did the
universe begin to exist when it did instead of existing from eternity?”6 If God willed the
existence of creation from past eternity, and whatever he wills happens without delay, how could
the effect of creation not be pre-eternal?7 On the other hand, if God only came to will it after
having not willed it, what caused this change in him? If this change in God's will occurred
without cause, it was spontaneous, random, and arbitrary. If it had a cause, then it must have had
a cause, ad infinitum, leading again to the problem of an infinite regress.
4
An endless number of events in the future is not problematic, because this does not deal with “actual infinities,”
which purport to be complete quantitative infinite series, but only a “potential infinity,” which consists of finite
numbers being added to endlessly. This also does not pose a problem for the infinite nature of God’s attributes, such
as power and knowledge, because they are simply qualitatively infinite, as opposed to being made up of an infinite
quantity of definite and discreet finite particulars. These facts have been pointed out by philosopher William Lane
Craig.
5
Kalām is sometimes alternatively called “speculative theology” or “dialectical theology.”
6
As phrased by William Lane Craig, The Kalām Cosmological Argument, p.150.
7
i.e. eternal in the past, without cause or beginning.
 3

Other, related problems emerged from this, related to God’s perfection and self-sufficiency.
First, if God is self-sufficient and perfect, and nothing existed except for him prior to creation,
what caused him to create at all? Second, if God has only attributes of perfection, then he cannot
gain or lose in those attributes. Then what change could be admitted of him to cause him to will
to create after having not willed? Moreover, did he not acquire new attributes upon creating that
he had not before? Third, if God is timeless and changeless, how do you reconcile this account
of him with Scripture, which depicts him as acting in different ways temporally: creating,
governing the world, communicating, answering prayers, and so on. On the other hand, if God is
and was not timeless but rather eternal in a state of time,8 does not the infinite regress problem
apply to his past eternity in time as well? In the following section I will analyze the answers of
several groups who diverged in their responses questions.

III. The Competing Theories of the Falāsifah and the Mutakallimūn

Three distinct groups came into intellectual conflict over the answers to these (among other)
questions. One group was the falāsifah, or philosophers. Specifically, this refers to an exclusive
movement of thinkers who embraced a thoroughly Greek-Hellenistic philosophical approach to
various philosophical questions, and embraced an ostensibly demonstrative method of
philosophical proof. They became known as the Islamic philosophers, or more precisely the
Peripatetic (Aristotelian) philosophers. The two most influential thinkers from among the
falāsifah were al-Farābī (d. 950) and Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037), known in the West as Alpharabius and
Avicenna. While considered Muslim Peripatetic philosophers, al-Farābī and especially Ibn Sīnā
embraced an outlook in metaphysics and theology that was significantly influenced by
Neoplatonism.9 On the other hand, they philosophers assigned a subordinate role to revelation.
Consequently, they propounded doctrines that elicited charges of unbelief, specifically their
views that the universe is co-eternal with God, that God knows only universals but not
particulars, and their denial of the physical resurrection. The first is what concerns us here:

…as for the eternity of the world, the philosophers claim that the emanation of the First
Intellect and other beings is the result of the necessary causality of God's essence, and
therefore the world as a whole is concomitant and coeternal with his existence... Suppose,
say the philosophers, that God created the world at a certain moment in time; that would
presuppose a change in God, which is impossible. Further, since each moment of time is
perfectly similar, it is impossible, even for God, to choose a particular moment in time for
creation.10

8
Of course, a theist who holds that God is temporally eternal maintains that God acts with his own metaphysical
time, his own universal frame of reference, rather than the relative and created time of the universe, as I will point
out again later.
9
Part of the reason for this confusion is that a number of texts that were highly influential among the “Peripatetic”
philosophers, particularly Theology of Aristotle and Liber de Causis, were attributed to Aristotle in Arabic
translations and genuinely thought to be his work. However, these were in fact the works of Neoplatonist authors.
See Ian Richard Netton (1998), “Neoplatonism in Islamic Philosophy,” Islamic Philosophy Online.
10
Kojiro Nakamura, “Al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid (1058-1111)” (1998), Islamic Philosophy Online.
 4

Ibn Sīna argued that God’s transcendent perfection entails absolute changelessness. The
questions over God’s act of bringing the world into existence from naught do not arise, because
God did not willfully create the world. Rather, the world is an eternal and necessary product of
God’s essence.

As a leading voice in the Ashʿarite school of kalām, Ghazālī devoted his almost legendary work,
Tahāfut al-Falāsifah (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), to deconstructing the arguments of
the philosophers (particularly Ibn Sīna) in order to refute their heretical conclusions and show
that their proofs are not demonstrative as they claimed. Nearly the first quarter of the work
concentrates on the aforementioned problems. Ghazālī maintained that the Neoplatonic doctrine
that the universe is a pre-eternal emanation from God’s essence undermines the notion of God as
Creator and a willing Agent. Here he offers the KCA as a proof for the creation of the universe
ex nihilo, “from nothing,” meaning without a prior material cause. He also strongly disputes
their claim that the pre-eternity of God necessitates that the universe is pre-eternal. Ghazālī
argues from the first premise of the KCA that the universe required an efficient cause to grant it
existence. In response to the philosophers’ objection, he maintains that God as a willing Agent
could have chosen to bring the world into existence by eternally intending to bring it about, even
if at a certain point in time. In accordance with the theology of the Ashʿarite school, Ghazālī
defended the argument against the some of the aforementioned problems by affirming that God
created spontaneously and arbitrarily—without cause, reason, or purpose—and that he does not
require the world for his perfection. Moreover, as an Ashʿarite, he holds that God’s essence is
timeless, unchanging, and qualified by his divine and perfect attributes independent of whether
his creation has come to exist, but his temporal actions, such as an act of speech or creation, are
external to his essence.

The notion of a God who might act without aim and wisdom, however, in any of his actions, let
alone the creation of the whole world, is obviously unsatisfactory and suffers from both
theological and Scriptural objections. Hence the competing school of kalām, the Muʿtazilites,
maintained that God does create with a purpose. However, that purpose is located not in God,
but in the potential creation itself. God creates in order to bestow graces upon his creation. This
leads into the question of theodicy—why an imperfect world has resulted from an omnipotent
and omnibenevolent God—but which we will not entertain here.11 More pertinently to our
current discussion, it does not answer the main question of “why did the universe begin to exist
when it did instead of existing from eternity?” The Muʿtazilites, like the Ashʿarites, were
resolutely averse to the suggestion that any change could occur in God’s essence or that
originated events could occur in God’s essence, even a will to do a certain action that did not
exist prior to that. They also were committed against the problem of an infinite regress. How
then to reconcile the temporal origination of the world with God’s past eternity?

IV. Ibn Taymiyya’s Response

The Muslim traditionalist theologian, Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), offered an alternative response to
these questions, combining some ideas of both the falāsifah and the mutakallimūn while

11
I have addressed this question elsewhere. See my upcoming work on the existence of God, my article “The
Problem of Evil.”
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criticizing others in order to provide a rational basis for his model. Yet, unlike the previous
groups, he also invoked clues from the Qur’ān and Prophetic Tradition.

Here, Ibn Taymiyya’s views closely resemble those of the Peripatetic philosopher Ibn Rushd (d.
1198), known in the West as Averroes, who authored a rebuttal to Ghazālī’s Tahāfut al-Falāsifah,
entitled Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (The Incoherence of Incoherence). Ibn Rushd—who, like Ibn
Taymiyya, was a strong critic of kalām, and especially the Ashʿarite school—focused on refuting
a number of the scholastic doctrines of Ghazālī. However, he was also critical of the
Islamic-‘Neoplatonic’ philosophers, while pointing out that they did not reflect the authentic
tradition of Aristotle, in order to deflect Ghazālī’s attack on Peripatetic philosophy as a whole.
However, because Ibn Taymiyya was the first traditionalist to offer a systematic reply to these
controversies, the focus of this section is on his views. We may simply note here the close
similarity with and even influence of his critique by that of Ibn Rushd. It is also worthy to note
that both thinkers’ views on this topic, including the reasoning they provide for their views,
closely resemble those of the Greek Neoplatonic philosopher Proclus (d. 485).

God as Creatively Active From Pre-Eternity

Ibn Taymiyya agrees with the Neoplatonic philosophers that the past eternity of the cause, God,
and his perfection must entail that the effect, the creation, is past eternal.12 He argues that the
Ashʿarite view defended by Ghazālī, that God eternally willed the creation to occur when it did
without any cause or reason, or an alternative view that God willed creation into existence after
having not willed it without any cause, violate the axiom of God’s acting with wise purpose as
well as the “principle of determination,” both of which define his thought on these issues. By the
latter, Ibn Taymiyya means that in any event there must be a determining cause, murajjiḥ,13 that
causes it to occur rather than its contrary. In other words, “every possibility requires a complete
[determining cause] (murajjiḥ tāmm) that tips the scales in favor of its existence over its
nonexistence.”14 While Ghazālī admitted this principle in the physical world, he did not believe
in its application as far as personal agent causation is concerned, let alone God, who in his view
could act independent of any determining cause or reason. According to Ibn Taymiyya, however,
it is a metaphysical axiom that all phenomenon are governed by this principle, hence all the more
God’s actions which must reflect his wise purpose. For him, even the free choices of willing
agents are, because the agent will choose whichever option impresses him more as that which
will be most conducive toward the end for which he intends to act. Ibn Taymiyya rejects
Ghazālī’s view because it results in the idea that “one who is powerful and choosing [determines]
one of his two possibilities over the other without a [determining cause],’”15 a notion that is
metaphysically absurd in his view. The principle of determination can be likened to the principle
of sufficient reason codified by Gottfried Liebniz (d. 1716), which states that whatever is or
whatever occurs has an explanation or reason for why it does as opposed to its contraries.

12
Only as a genus, but no individual creation is pre-eternal. See next paragraph.
13
Jon Hoover translates murajjiḥ as “preponderator” and refers to the principle as the “principle of preponderation,”
probably in order to avoid the more strict and definite connotation of the alternative translation.
14
Jon Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy of Perpetual Optimism (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2007), p. 84.
15
Qtd. in ibid., p. 85.
 6

Like Ghazālī, however, Ibn Taymiyya strongly disagreed with the philosophers that this implies
the past eternity of any created thing, regarding this as a contradiction in terms. As Ghazālī
argued in his Tahāfut, if created things were all the products of emanation from God, we should
find that nothing originates. Rather, his view was that creation as a class is pre-eternal, but no
individual creation is pre-eternal. This is because God, in his view, has been creating and acting
perpetually in time from pre-eternity, without beginning: “‘This view [of the philosophers] does
not prove the eternity of any individual thing belonging to the world, the celestial spheres and
otherwise. It proves only that [God] has been acting from eternity.’”16 Thus everything except
God is created and originated by him, but preceded and followed by other originated creations.
Ibn Taymiyya fervently defends the possibility of an infinite temporal regress of God’s creating
and acting, on rational, theological, and Scriptural grounds.17

Concerning the rational plausibility of an infinite regress, he directs his attention to the kalām
arguments which claim to prove the absurdity of actual infinities by way of illustrations that
show that mathematical operations with infinities can yield dissimilar results, similar to Hilbert’s
Hotel paradoxes. Ibn Taymiyya responds that infinities can be incommensurate without
implying contradictions because infinity should be understood as a mathematical quality, like the
quality of multiplicity, rather than as a fixed quantitative measurement.18 However, it should be
noted that Ibn Taymiyya does not regard an infinite regress of causes as possible, such that an
effect occurs only if it results from a cause that is contingent on another cause ad infinitum.
Rather, he simply considers an infinite regress of effects proceeding from the same Agent as
possible.

To defend his theory on theological grounds, Ibn Taymiyya argues that a God who is perpetually
dynamic in creating and acting is necessarily more perfect than one who is static and unmoving,
citing the Qur’ānic verse, “Then is he who creates like he who creates not? Will you not then be
reminded?” (Q 16:17). Of course, God’s essential attributes always exist in him; he does not
gain or lose them. Rather, he has continually expressed them through his actions throughout pre-
eternity. To Ibn Taymiyya, it is incoherent to suppose that God could have had the attribute
“Creator” before having ever creating, or the attribute of speech before ever speaking. For God
to eternally have had the divine attributes of perfection that characterize his essence, he must
have been expressing them through his actions from all of eternity. What does originate in God’s
essence, however, are new instances of will and action. Unlike the Ashʿarites and Muʿtazilites,
Ibn Taymiyya saw no problem in this, because this only confirmed rather than undermined God’s
unique perfection. As his view implies, Ibn Taymiyya regarded the mutakallimūn as having
stripped God of his attributes of perfection before creation. He charged them, moreover, of
maintaining that God was powerless to act or create prior to it.

Textual Arguments

16
Ibn Taymiyyah, Minhāj al-Sunnah, 1:148-9/1:36. Qtd. in ibid., p. 83.
17
Jon Hoover notes, “In the edited version of Minhāj, Ibn Taymiyya’s response to the Ashʿarite objection that wise
purpose in God’s will entails an endless chain or infinite regress takes up over 270 pages of the first volume
[specifically, Minhāj 1:146-420/1:35-117].” Ibid., p. 80.
18
Ibid., pp. 92-94.
 7

As a staunch traditionalist, Ibn Taymiyya’s goal was to defend the plain connotation of the
Qur’ān, the Prophet’s Tradition (Sunnah), and way of the Pious Predecessors (Salaf) who most
directly inherited it. Thus, he did not restrict himself to rational arguments, but adduced
justification for his proposals from each of these sources as well. First, he notes that the Qur’ān
nowhere states that the universe was created ex nihilo or that nothing preceded it. The Qur’ān
only indicates that the heavens and the earth evolved from preexisting smoke: “[God] turned to
the heaven when it was smoke and said to it and the earth, ‘Come [into being] willingly or
unwillingly. They said, ‘We come willingly’” (Q 41:11). It also suggests that the creations of
God’s throne and the water existed before them: “And he created the heavens and the earth in
six days,19 and his throne was upon the water” (Q 11:7). This is reinforced by an accredited
report of the Prophet Muhammad (ḥadīth), in which he said, “Truly, God determined the
measures of created things fifty thousand years before he created the heavens and the earth, and
his throne was on the water.”20 This indicates the existence of time and creations prior to our
universe.

Ibn Taymiyya also offers a lengthy analysis of two variations of another Prophetic report, the
ḥadīth of ʿImrān ibn Ḥuṣayn. The ḥadīth relates that a group of travelers from Yemen came to
the Prophet accepting Islām and wishing to acquire knowledge about it. The first version reads:

“We have come to ask you about this matter." The Prophet said, "First, nothing was
except God. His throne was over the water, and he wrote everything in the record, and
created the heavens and the earth."21

The second reads:

“We accept it [i.e. the tidings of Islām], for we have come to you to learn the religion. So
we ask you what the beginning of this universe was.” The Prophet said, “God was and
there was nothing before him, and his throne was over the water. And then he created the
heavens and the earth and wrote everything in the record.”22

Ibn Taymiyya undertakes a textual analysis of these reports and he concludes that the one which
states “God was and there was nothing before him” rather than “nothing except [him],” is the
more correct version.23 He then states that there are two interpretations of the ḥadīth. The first
interpretation is that it informs of the beginning of all created things, implying that the genus of
created things had a beginning that was preceded by nonexistence, and before this there was
nothing with God and he was not acting. The second interpretation is that the ḥadīth only refers
to the beginning of our universe, and does not refer to the genus of created things as a whole.
Ibn Taymiyya offers a number of reasons for second interpretation. He points out that the ḥadīth

19
The Arabic word “day,” yawm, need not signify a twenty-four hour day, but may connote an undefined period of
time.
20
Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Book 33, “The Book of Destiny,” #6416.
21
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Book 54, “The Beginning of Creation,” #414.
22
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Book 93, “The Book of Monotheism,” #514.
23
A third variation that Ibn Taymiyyah mentions and rejects says, “nothing with him,” but this is not found in any of
the major ḥadīth collections.
 8

does not make any mention of the beginning of all created things, but only the creation of the
heavens and the earth. It does not allude to the origination of the throne or the record even
though they are originated things, but states that at the time of the creation of the heavens and the
earth the they were already in existence. Hence the Prophet’s answer indicates that the
questioners were only asking about the creation of this universe. Ibn Taymiyya interprets other
reports which state the pen is the first created thing in this light, that the pen is the first created
thing of our universe, but that the throne existed prior to it.

God is Self-Sufficient But Creates with Wise Purpose

Finally, one other issue vexed Ibn Taymiyya. The mutakallimūn asserted that if God were to
create for a purpose that relates to himself, this would undermine his perfection and self-
sufficiency. As stated before, the Ashʿarites denied causality and purpose in God’s will to create.
They reasoned that if God acted for a good cause that was unfulfilled prior to his creating, this
would require him to become perfected after being imperfect, which is impossible. On the other
hand, the Muʿtazilites argued that God’s justice and omnibenevolence suggest that he did create
for a purpose. However, they located that purpose exclusively outside of God in his potential
creation. God created for the purpose of manifesting his grace upon his creatures. Nonetheless,
in their view, this has no value from God’s perspective and he does not take pleasure in it.

In response, Ibn Taymiyya unequivocally affirms that wise purpose governs all that God does
and creates, contrary to the Ashʿarite view. However, he also affirms that because of God’s
goodness, God loves his wise purpose in the creation and is pleased with it:

God has a wise purpose in everything that he creates. As he said, “The handiwork of God
who perfected everything” (Q 27:88), and he said, “Who made good everything he
created” (Q 32:7). He—Glory be to him—”is sufficient apart from the worlds” (Q 3:97,
29:6). The wise purpose includes two things. First is a wise purpose that returns to him,
which he loves and with which he is well pleased. The second [returns] to his servants,
which is a blessing for them at which they rejoice and in which they take pleasure.24

For God, there is wise purpose that he loves in the creation. For his servants, there is mercy and
blessing from which they profit. In defense of this view against the claim that this compromises
on God’s perfect independence and self-sufficiency, Ibn Taymiyya maintains that God does is not
benefited or harmed by his creatures. Rather, he is the creator of their good works and the good
results that issue from them:

When [God] is powerful over [and] the agent of everything, he does not need another in
any respect. On the contrary, the causes enacted are objects of his power and will. God
—Exalter is he—inspires his servants to invocation and he answers them. He inspires
them to repentance, and he rejoices at their repentance when they repent. He inspires
them to deeds and rewards them when they perform deeds. It will not be said that the
creature impacts the Creator or makes him act to answer, reward and rejoice as their
repentance. He—Glory be to him—is the Creator of all of that. To him is sovereignty,

24
Ibn Taymiyyah, Majmū’ al-Fatāwa, 8:35-36. Qtd. in Hoover, Theodicy, p. 97.
 9

and to him is praise. He has no associate in anything of that, and in it he has no want of
another.25

All of God’s creatures are in need of him, and he is not in need of them. However, he loves his
righteous creatures as a corollary of his love for his perfect self, because his servants earn his
love through their worship of him. And of course, in Ibn Taymiyya’s view, because all of this
activity of God is pre-eternal, God was never without the perfections of his attributes that
manifest through wise purposes in his creation.

V. An Alternative Model

God and Time

Ibn Taymiyya’s answer to the problem of creation is brilliantly argued, but relies on a very
philosophically controversial thesis: the possibility of an infinite regress of events in time. I
personally remain unconvinced of this thesis, and I know many people would be as well, not
least among the mutakallimūn. It is difficult for me to see how an infinite temporal succession
could be completed by terminating in the present, since this would require an infinite and
beginningless series to have been traversed. To say that the present could occur only after a
temporal eternity of events have passed seems logically equivalent to saying that the present
could never occur, since an eternity of time could not come to an end. On the other hand, if pre-
eternity prior to creation was timeless, as the proponents of the KCA maintain, this would not
have the same paradoxical implications, since time would have only come to a beginning with
God’s act of creation.

In this case, the question of “why did God create when he did an not earlier, or in pre-eternity?”
is not coherent. There were no moments in time prior to God’s creation. God could not have
created at an earlier time, because time came into existence with his act of creation. Accordingly,
the argument of Ibn Taymiyya and the philosophers—that the genus of creation coming into
existence after having been nonexistent would entail the absurdity of God having to choose
between equivalent moments of time without a determining cause after an eternity of moments
having passed—does not seem cogent. (I will come back to the topic of the determinant to show
another reason why this argument does not work.) As Ghazālī pointed out, the above question
only results from the “work of the Imagination”26 that causes us to suppose an earlier period of
time before time:

…all this results from the inability of the Imagination to apprehend the commencement
of a being without supposing something before it. This ‘before,’ which occurs to the
Imagination so inevitably, is assumed to be a veritable existent—viz., time. And the
inability of the Imagination in this case is like its inability to suppose a finite body, say, at
the upper level, without something above its surface. Hence its assumption that beyond
25
Ibn Taymiyyah, Minhāj al-Sunnah, 1:421. Qtd. in ibid., p. 99.

26
Ghazālī, Tahāfut al-Falāsifah (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), trans. Sabih Ahmad Kamali (Lahore:
Pakistan Philosophical Congress, 1958), p. 43. Qtd. in Craig, The Kalām Cosmological Argument, p. 48.
 10

the world there is space—i.e., either a plenum or a void. When there it is said that there
is nothing above the surface of the world or beyond its extent, the Imagination cannot
accept such a thing—just as it is unable to accept the idea that there is nothing in the
nature of a verifiable being before the existence of the world.27

Physicist Paul Davies has written similarly,

Why should [the universe] suddenly appear out of nowhere, at some particular moment in
time and at some particular location in preexisting empty space, when this event hasn’t
happened for all eternity up to that moment? What would cause it to happen, and happen
just then and there? There is no satisfactory answer.

A similar conundrum afflicted early Christian theology. “What was God doing before he
made the universe?” taunted the disbelievers. If God is perfect and unchanging, as the
theologians claimed, then there is nothing to single out a particular moment in time for
the creation of the universe from the infinity of prior moments when the same God, in the
same state, did not create the universe...A shrewd answer was provided by Augustine,
who spotted that the problem lay not with the nature of God, but with the nature of time.28

Concerning Augustine,

His considered answer to what God was doing before creating the universe was that “the
world was made with time and not in time.” Augustine’s God is a being who transcends
time, a being located outside time altogether and responsible for creating time as well as
space and matter. Thus Augustine skillfully avoided the problem of why the creation
happened at that moment rather than some other earlier moment. There were no earlier
moments.”29

Augustine was presuming that God is timeless, which I am not presuming. Scripture
unequivocally depicts him as creating and interacting with his creatures in time. What I do
propose is that while God’s essential attributes are timeless and intrinsic to him, the way he
manifests them in his actions is relational. That is to say, God’s actions relate to the creation in
some way: by creating, sustaining, speaking, commanding, judging, rewarding, punishing,
forgiving, and so on. By himself sans creation, God is alone and self-sufficient, and would have
no reason to act in the absence of creation (other than bringing creation into existence, of
course). Hence there would be no activity and he would be timeless.30 Only once he creates
27
Ghazālī, Tahāfut, p. 38. Qtd. in Craig, p. 48.

28
Paul Davies, The Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe if Just Right for Life (United States: Orion Productions,
2007), p. 66.
29
ibid., p. 69.
30
Or, alternatively, perhaps, what the Christian philosopher Alan Padgett called a state of “undifferentiated time” in
which metric units of time do not exist, because this time would have no intrinsic measure in the absence of any
events, so that there is no infinite regress of events or temporal units. William L. Craig notes, “This alternative
would require us to distinguish between time as it plays a role in physics and time as a metaphysical reality, a
distinction famously defended by Isaac Newton on the basis of God’s eternal duration independent of any physical
 11

does action commence, and therefore time. God acts in time, but it is his own metaphysical and
absolute time, rather than created time. It is the time that accompanies and measures God’s
actions. It is the universal frame of reference. However, the time of the created universe is
relative. All of this is suggested by the Qur’ān, as it says, “Truly, a day to your Lord is like a
thousand years of your reckoning” (Q 22:47).31

The Eternity of God’s Attributes

I am also not convinced that the notion of God beginning time through a first act of creation is as
theologically problematic as Ibn Taymiyya (or the philosophers) assert. It does appear that the
natural and most common tendency of most theists, including traditionalist Muslims, is a
predisposition toward the view that by God’s creative act, creation had a beginning ex nihilo—
and that very few have seen any problem in this. Perhaps this is for the reason that it is simpler
and easier to grasp than the view of God having been creating from infinity. Moreover, the
textual support Ibn Taymiyya adduced for his view from the Qur’ān and ḥadīth only shows that
the Islāmic sources allow the possibility of the latter view, since they do not decisively
pronounce that creation as a genus had a beginning. But nowhere do they clearly oblige that
view either. Rather, they do not negate either possibility but leave the question open.

In this case, then, how about Ibn Taymiyya’s theological objection—that this would imply the
prior imperfection of God? As described before, Ibn Taymiyya believed that if God was
unacting in pre-eternity prior to his first act of creation, this would require that God was not
Creator before the creation, that he was not Powerful before the creation, that he was not the
Rabb32 before the creation, and so on. From his view, a God eternally in a state of creating,
sustaining, and ruling creation is more perfect that one who was at one point inactive and static.
We must affirm every possible perfection for God, and exalt him above any imperfection.

My answer is that we must affirm that God is eternally and timelessly deserving of being
described with his perfect attributes, even as he is not manifesting them. For example, in this
present life justice is not established; it will only be established in the next life. Does this mean
God is not the Just in this world but only in the next? Certainly not, because Justice is one of his
essential attributes and he knows best how to manifest it. Simply because it may not have been
yet fully manifested in the past or even in pre-eternity does not mean God does not have it. I
wonder if in Ibn Taymiyya’s view, God has to have been judging, forgiving, punishing,
bestowing mercy, etc., to species of creatures in other worlds for all of eternity in order to have
been eternally qualified of his divine attributes of justice, forgiveness, mercy, etc. If so, there is
little indication of this in the Qur’ān or Prophetic Tradition. In fact, they seem to suggest that
one of the virtues of the human creation is that it allows God to manifest his attributes to them
measure thereof” (Craig & Sinclair 190). While I find this view appealing, it is still not clear whether it is sufficient
to resolve the problems of infinite temporal regress while still maintaining a linear view of this pre-creation time,
despite it being labeled as “undifferentiated” insofar as measurement is concerned. For more on this, see also
William Lane Craig, ReasonableFaith.com, Questions Archive, Question #232: “The Metric of Time”.
31
cf. Q 32:5 and 70:4.
32
Rabb, usually translated as “Lord,” has the full connotation of king, supreme owner and master, the one who has
fullest right to obedience, nourisher, cultivator, sustainer, guardian, and administrator. After “Allāh,” it is the most
frequently used designation for God in the Qur’ān.
 12

more fully than with all other creatures: through justice, forgiveness, companionship, providing
them special types of mercy, etc. If God does not need to have always been manifesting those
attributes in order to be qualified by them, then I would argue this applies to all of God’s
attributes of action. Even while he is not expressing an action that corresponds to a certain
divine attribute, he is still deserving of the title of that attribute. It is a matter of necessity,
however, that the reality of God attributes unfolds and fully manifests only through time.

This was the view of the traditionalist jurist and theologian al-Ṭaḥāwī (d. 935), who authored the
most widely accepted text on theology among Sunnī Muslims. He says,

(13) He has always existed with his attributes, even before the creation of the world,
which did not add anything to his attributes that were not already present. Just as he is
eternal along with his attributes, so he is everlasting along with them.

(14) It is not that case that he acquired the name Creator (al-Khāliq) only after creating,
or the name Originator (al-Bārī’) only after originating.

(15) He was qualified by Lordship (rubūbiyyah)33 even when there was nothing to lord
over. And he was the Creator even when there was nothing created.

(16) In the same way that he is the “Reviver of life to the dead,” after he has given them
life a first time, he deserves his name before bringing them to life; so, too, he deserves the
name Creator before he actually created them.

The traditionalist commentator of Ṭaḥāwī’s creed, Ibn Abī’l-ʿIzz al-Ḥanafī (d. 1390), remarked,
“From these words it appear that the author denies an infinite regression of events in the past,”34
although he disagrees with this conclusion and offers the same arguments as Ibn Taymiyya. If al-
Taḥāwī is correct, however, then the model I am defending as an alternative to God as pre-
eternally acting is correct.

One final point is that under this construction, God was timeless before his first activity.
Therefore, we should not imagine that God was inactive for an infinite amount of time before
becoming active. Rather, there was no actual time35 in which God was inactive, as time began
with his activity. The pre-eternity before God’s act was not an infinite amount of time, but there
was no time. God’s essence, obviously, has no beginning. Moreover, this does not indicate, as
Ibn Taymiyya suggested, that God was powerless before acting. It only indicates that he began
expressing his eternal power in the first instance of time, which was contingent upon his willful
act of creation.

The Eternal Purpose of Creation

33
Rubūbiyyah is God’s state of being the Rabb—therefore a much more comprehensive and profound term than the
usual rendering of “lordship.” Again, it includes his creation, sovereignty, ownership, administration, sustenance,
nourishing, and cultivating of his creation.
34
Ibn Abī’l-ʿIzz al-Ḥanafī, Commentary on the Creed of aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī, trans. Muhammad ʿAbdul-Haqq Ansari
(Riyadh: Institute of Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America, 2000), p. 57.
35
To reiterate, it is also worth considering Alan Padgett’s view that there was time, but it was undifferentiated.
 13

We might inquire, in response to one of these controversies, what was the cause of God first
acting, after having not acted? The answer would be God’s intention and purpose in creating.
This purpose would have been something timeless. As Ghazālī argued, God could have intended
to create from the (timeless) pre-eternity.36 His intention manifested as he willed, and hence time
and creation came into being. The objection to this has already been presented and responded to,
namely that there could be no delay in God’s pre-eternal will, which would preclude creation
from coming into existence at a finite time. The answer is that there was no delay in time. We
might say God timelessly intends all of his future actions, but his decisive will at a specific time
is what brings it into being. Therefore, the purpose and intention of God for the creation was
timeless, but his act of decisive will that brought it into being would mark the beginning of time.

What timeless purpose could God have for creation, since he is perfect and self-sufficient? The
answer is that because God’s attributes are essential to him, the fact that he would create a world
in which he could most perfectly express those attributes is inevitable. He has not need for the
creation, but he creates in order to manifest his perfection. Through the created world he
originates, sustains, administers, rules, cultivates, and so on. Through the creation of living
creatures, he distributes life and death, bestows mercy, and guides. Through the creation of
human beings in particular he manifests his attributes of mercy, forgiveness, judgment, justice,
honoring, debasing, expanding, contracting, opening, closing, guiding, assisting, and protecting,
more than with any other creation. The duty of human beings is to respond to his perfection and
divinity by worshiping him (Q 51:56). He does not need the creation, but all creation needs him.
Through all of this he manifests his perfection, truth, and justice, as the Qur’ān says, “God has
not created the heavens and the earth and what is between them except in truth and for a
specified term” (Q 30:8).

Divine Agency and the Problem of a Determining Cause

I have argued that the question of a determining cause (murajjiḥ) for why God created when he
did, rather than earlier or from pre-eternity, does not properly arise if time commenced from
God’s creative act. I have also answered the question of what purpose God had in creating at all.
Nonetheless, I would still like to turn to the question of a determining cause for God’s actions,
because debates over the proper solution to this problem have characterized much of the
controversy over the problem of God’s actions and creation.

Ibn Taymiyya and the philosophers have asserted that it is impossible that God, or any agent,
choose a certain action without a determining cause or reason for favoring that action over its
contraries. This also characterized Ibn Taymiyya’s views of human free will. They regarded
such a thing as an absurdity along the lines of something coming to be without a cause. On the
other hand, Ghazālī and the other Ashʿarites affirmed the principle of determination in the
created realm but denied that God required a determining cause for his actions, thus rendering his
actions spontaneous and arbitrary.

36
Although, as stated before, Ghazālī denied that God’s creation was motivated by a determining cause or purpose.
 14

I have compared this principle of determination to Liebniz’s principle of sufficient reason, which
states that every being or occurrence exists has an explanation. Just like the principle of
sufficient reason, the principle of determination is inadequately defined. Does the explanation or
determining cause have to be sufficient entail (i.e. determine or necessitate) the result? Or does
there merely have to be some explanation, but one that allows some degree of randomness within
that explanation? Ibn Taymiyya’s view was definitely the former. However, I will show why
that cannot be the case.

The first evidence for this is the contribution of quantum mechanics, a subbranch of physics that
involves the study of subatomic particles and their behavior. It is well known that virtual
particles spontaneously emerge from the radiation of quantum vacuums before vanishing back
into it, and that the direction of their movement cannot be determined. This is often misleadingly
described by physicists and antagonists of the KCA as an example of something coming out of
nothing, a violation of the first premise. This is not the case, however. The quantum vacuums
out of which these particles emerge is a structure governed by the laws of physics. It is far from
“nothing” in the literal sense of non-being. The first principle of the KCA states that out of
nothing—that is, total non-being—no thing can arise without a cause. The weakest versions of
the principle of sufficient reason indicate this as well, a fortiori the stronger ones. This is a
metaphysical principle that cannot be violated. Nothing is nothing, and has no characteristics,
least among them the potentiality for something to be produced. On the other hand, the theist
view is that the potentiality of origination ex nihilo—without a material cause—lies in God’s
power, which when enacted becomes the efficient cause. What is the case, however, according
to the predominant scientific view of physicists, is that the behavior of quantum particles is
indeterminant.37 While the physical reality of the vacuum may determine a certain range of
probabilities within which the particles must behave, within that range there are no physical
determining causes that govern when a particle will emerge or in what direction it will move.38
All possibilities within that range are therefore equally probable and causally equivalent. This
does not violate the principle of sufficient reason, either, if it is taken to mean that there must be
some explanation for a phenomenon. It only violates the strongest version, that the explanation
must entail that phenomenon. However, the behavior of these particles has a statistical
explanation that explains why they must act within a certain range of behaviors, one of those
behaviors has to occur in contrast to its opposite—emerging at a certain time or not, moving
upward or not. That is a sufficient explanation, but it is not sufficient to determine exactly what
the outcome will be. Thus, if the same situation and circumstances were repeated, different
results would occur. This is a radical shift from the Newtonian picture in which everything is
entailed by physical causes.

37
To be sure, there are indeterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics as well, which are empirically
equivalent. Moreover, like so much of physics, the details of quantum theory are tentative. Nonetheless, the mere
probable nature of physical indeterminism provides important evidence for the metaphysical plausibility of limited
indeterminism.
38
Interestingly, this opens up the possibility that God could control all physical activity by metaphysically
orchestrating how particles move at the quantum level in order to produce the results he desires, without imposing
any noticeable aberration in the physical world. See Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science,
Religion, & Naturalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 115-120.
 15

This also explains how freedom is possible in a willing agent. The will of an agent need not be
determined by external causes. There really can be a measure of randomness in the acts of an
agent.

As far as God is concerned, this means that among a range of relevantly equivalent possibilities,
God can choose one of them over the others without a determining cause. This is in fact
necessary, because there will be many creative decisions God will have to make between options
that will have the same effects. One example is the quantum particles. Because on an individual
level, a single quantum particle has so little effect, there will be many cases in which it does not
matter whether a particular quantum particle moves up or down, comes into being at one instant
or another, or even at all. Similarly, no matter how many angels God could create to praise and
glorify him at a given instant, he could always have created more of them. Therefore, it is his
decision how much to create. But within certain ranges of probability, there would be inevitable
randomness in the decision God has to make. This does not undermine his wisdom, because
wisdom is that he chooses the best decision when there is one. Given this fact, we may need to
modify the maxim that this world is the “best possible world,” held by Ghazālī, Ibn Taymiyya,
and Liebniz, to in fact be “one of the best possible worlds,” since given these considerations
there will be other possible worlds in which there is an equal amount of good as this one.39

Given these facts, a freely willing agent will be confronted with choices in which their results do
not compel him to make one choice rather than its contrary. This shows that there is a level of
freedom that is basic, while the determining cause that influence the decision are secondary to
that freedom in causal priority—just as in the quantum realm. Ghazālī attempted to show this
with the illustration of a man who is presented with two dates, one on the right and one on the
left, in which neither appears better than the other, and he has to choose one. In the absence of a
deciding factors, he will not stand before them for eternity without choosing one—he will just
choose. William Lane Craig, a well-known Christian philosopher and the leading modern
defender of the KCA, summarized this as follows:

The cause is in some sense eternal, and yet the effect which it produced is not eternal but
began to exist a finite time ago. How can this be? If the necessary and sufficient
conditions for the production of the effect are eternal, then why is not the effect eternal?
How can all the causal conditions sufficient for the production of the effect be
changelessly existent and yet the effect not also be existent along with the cause? How
can the cause exist without the effect?

On might say that the cause came to exist or changed in some way just prior to the first
event. But then the cause’s beginning or changing would be the first event, and we must
ask all over again for its cause. And this cannot go one forever, for we know that a
beginningless series of events cannot exist. There must be an absolutely first event,
before which there was no change, no previous event. We know that this first event must
39
In fact, it could also be argued that there could always be better worlds, e.g. in which there were more angels to
worship God at a given instant, or more communities of embodied moral agents to serve similar spiritual roles as
human beings in other worlds. God only creates what is best when there is a best option. This does not undermine
God’s perfection, again, because his perfection dictates that he chooses the best option when there is one. However,
he is eternally perfect by virtue of his essence and attributes.
 16

have been caused. The question is: How can a first event come to exist if the cause of
that events exists changelessly and eternally? Why is the effect not coeternal with it
cause?

The best way out of this dilemma is agent causation, whereby the agent freely brings
about some event in the absence of prior determining conditions. Because the agent is
free, he can initiate new effects by freely bringing about conditions which were not
previously present. For example, a man sitting changelessly from eternity could freely
will to stand up; thus, a temporal effect arises from an eternally existing agent. Similarly,
a finite time ago a Creator endowed with free will could have freely brought the world
into being at that moment. In this way, the Creator could exist changelessly and eternally
but choose to create the world in time. By “choice” one need not mean that the Creator
changes his mind about the decision to create but that he freely and eternally intends to
create a world with a beginning. By exercising his causal power, he therefore brings it
about that a world with a beginning comes to exist. So the cause is eternal, but the effect
is not. In this way, then, it is possible for the temporal universe to have come to exist
from an eternal cause: through the free will of a personal Creator.40

In this way, the KCA can maintain that the originator of the universe must be an eternal personal
being who can exercise free agency. Yet, can still be a timeless final cause for that being that
motivates him to create. As Ibn Taymiyya presciently observed, “The divinity [of God; his right
of worship] is the final cause [of creation], and his lordship (rubūbiyyah) is the efficient cause.
The final [cause] is that which is aimed at, and it is the efficient cause of the efficient cause.
Therefore, he made ‘You alone we worship’ precede ‘You alone we ask for help’ (Q 1:5).41

Back to the KCA

Now one final question remains: does the KCA actually work? Does it emerge as a sound
argument? The answer is that if an infinite regress is possible and Ibn Taymiyya is correct, then
the argument is unsound. As I stated before, it is difficult for me to see how this could be. On the
other hand, if an infinite regress is impossible, the model I have proposed to answer the problem
of God’s initial creative agency would be correct. In this case, the argument does work. It is up
to the interested reader to decide.

Notwithstanding, my own view is that because kalām arguments precipitate so many abstruse
theological problems (which, in the case of the KCA, I have answered here), they come into
tension with the style and intent of the Qur’ān and Prophetic Tradition, as well as way of the
early Muslim predecessors (Salaf). Thus, my objectives here have been both to show why this
argument, if carefully investigated, advances rational challenges that may not be conducive to
enhancing the faith of the average person, and also to provide acceptable answers to those
challenges.

40
William Lane Craig and James D. Sinclair, “The Kalam Cosmological Argument,” The Blackwell Companion to
Natural Theology, ed. William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland (Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 193-
194.
41
Ibn Taymiyyah, Bayān Talbīs al-Jahmiyyah, 2:454. Qtd. in Hoover, Theodicy, p. 29.
 17

VI. Conclusion

The Kalām Cosmological Argument argues for the existence of God as a first cause of the
universe from the premise that the universe requires a beginning, which is in turn argued from
the supposed impossibility of an infinite regress in time. However, this argument raises a
number of complicated theological problems about the metaphysics of God’s actions and time
prior to the creation, which were debated at length by Muslim theologians. Conscious of the
theological and religious problems involved in the theories of Muslim philosophers and kalām
theologians on this matter, Ibn Taymiyya proposed an alternative view of God as being
perpetually and willfully active in creating from pre-eternity. To support this, Ibn Taymiyya
offered a number of arguments from reason and Tradition. His most important motivation is his
belief that this consequence is entailed by God’s necessary perfection. Yet, Ibn Taymiyya’s
theory of creation is contingent upon the plausibility of an infinite regress of events in time, a
very philosophically contentious issue. Thus I have proposed an alternative model of God’s
agency and creation along the lines suggested by the Muslim scholar al-Ṭahāwī, which I
maintain resolves the theological problems inherent in Neoplatonic, Avicennian, Muʿtazilite, and
Ashʿarite schemes of God’s agency and creation, in the case that an infinite regress is actually
impossible. While the KCA does seem to emerge as sound on the model I have proposed, I have
suggested, like Ibn Taymiyya, that the complex nature of the theological problems it raises make
it contrary to the way of Tradition and probably unsuitable toward stimulating healthy faith.42

The tables below highlights these theological questions and the different responses to them
described in this article.

1. If the cause of the universe is eternal, why did the universe begin to exist when it did
instead of existing from eternity?

Ibn The universe is an eternal and necessary emanation from God’s essence. For
Sīna/Neoplatonist- God to will the origination of the universe after its nonexistence requires a
influenced change in his essence, which is impossible, because he is perfect, complete, and
philosophers changeless. Furthermore, because one time for originating the class of creation
would be no different than any other, this would require God to create at a
particular time without a determining cause, which is absurd.

mutakallimūn No change occurred in God’s essence, for his essence is perfect, complete,
timeless, and changeless. Rather, God eternally intended to create the universe
when he did, without a determining cause, ex nihilo. Prior to this there was no
time.

Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn God’s eternal perfection entails that he has been creating from pre-eternity.
Rushd Therefore, creation as a class is pre-eternal, but each individual creation is
originated in time. The Neoplatonic philosophers’ concept of an unoriginated

42
For an exposition of the Qur’ānic method of provoking belief in God’s existence, see my upcoming series on the
topic.
 18

creation is a self-contradiction. However, they are correct in maintaining that it

is absurd to suppose that God began the creation as a class in time after its
nonexistence without a determining cause.

Alternative model God eternally and timelessly intended to originate the world in time for a wise
purpose, and his act of decisive will that necessitated its existence was the first
point in time.

2. If God is perfect and self-sufficient apart from creation, what caused him to create at all?

Ibn God had no choice in creating, but creation necessarily emanates from his
Sīna/Neoplatonist- essence.
influenced
philosophers

mutakallimūn Ashʿarites: God created without a cause, reason, or purpose, as that would entail
that he was incomplete and imperfect before that cause was fulfilled.
Muʿtazilites: God created for the purpose of benefiting his creatures, but not for
any purpose that relates to his own self.

Ibn Taymiyya Creation is an expression of God’s perfect attributes. God created everything
with wise purpose which he loves, and his servants attain benefit from this
through their prescribed purpose of worship.

Alternative model Creation is an expression of God’s perfect attributes. God created everything
with wise purpose which he loves, and his servants attain benefit from this
through their prescribed purpose of worship.

3. Is God timeless and changeless, and if so, how does this allow him to act dynamically
with his creation?

Ibn God does not dynamically interact with the creation. The diversity and change
Sīna/Neoplatonist- in creation occurs through the medium of the Active Intellect.
influenced
philosophers

mutakallimūn God’s perfection entails that his essence is timeless and changeless. His actions
are external to his essence.

Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn God’s essential attributes are realized through the fact that he voluntarily and
Rushd dynamically wills and acts. New instances of will and action originate in God’s
essence from pre-eternity.
 19

Alternative model God was timeless and changeless sans creation, but voluntarily and
dynamically wills and acts after his initial act of creation.

4. Does God require the creation in order to possess the attributes of perfection?

Ibn As an emanation from God, the creation is a coeternal and necessary

Sīna/Neoplatonist- consequence of his perfect essence.
influenced
philosophers

mutakallimūn Ashʿarites: God’s essential attributes are distinct from his attributes of action,
and do not depend on them.
Muʿtazilites: God’s essence is qualified by perfection, and does not depend on
him creating or acting.

Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn God does not depend on the creation, but his perfect attributes are eternally
Rushd instantiated through his actions as he expresses them through the creation. To
claim that God had not acted prior to creation is to imply that he did not have
the attributes of perfection throughout pre-eternity.

Alternative model, God was deserving of the name “Creator” before he created, and the name
al-Ṭahāwī “Rabb” before there was anything to lord over. He deserves to be characterized
by his names and attributes even as they are not yet manifested, because of
their essentiality to his character and necessary inevitability.

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 20

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