Tahafut_al-Tahafut-transl-Engl-van-den-Bergh

of the water, for this happens after its non-being and
therefore it can be an act, and it is immaterial whether this
act be posterior to the agent or simultaneous with him. It is
only an eternal act that we consider impossible, for to call an
act that which does not come into being out of not-being is
pure metaphor and does not conform to reality. As to the
simultaneity of cause and effect, cause and effect can be
either both temporal or both eternal, in the way in which it
may be said that the eternal knowledge is the cause of the
fact that the Eternal is knowing; we are not discussing this,
but only what is called an act. For the effect of a cause is not
called the act of a cause, except metaphorically. It can only
be called an act on condition that it comes into being out of
non-being. And if a man thinks he may describe the
everlasting Eternal metaphorically as acting on something,
what he thinks possible is only the use of a metaphor. And
your argument, philosophers-that if we suppose the
movement of the water to be eternal and everlasting with the
movement of the finger, this does not prevent the movement
of the water from being an act-rests on a confusion, for the
finger has no act, the agent is simply the man to whom the
finger belongs, that is the man who wills the movement; and,
if we suppose him to be eternal, then the movement of the
finger is his act, because every part of this movement comes
out of not-beings and in this sense it is an act. So far as the
motion of the water is concerned, we do not say that it
occurs through the act of this man-it is simply an act of God.
In any case, it is only an act in so far as it has come to be,
and if its coming to be is everlasting, it is still an act, because
it has come to be.
Then Ghazali gives the philosophers’ answer:
The philosophers may say: ‘If you acknowledge that the
relation of the act to the agent, in so far as this act is an
existent, is like the relation of effect and cause and you
admit that the causal relation may be everlasting, we affirm
that we do not understand anything else by the expression
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