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

finite, the existence of the Creator becomes finite; if you say
infinite, a duration in which there is an infinite number of
possibilities receives its termination. We answer: Duration
and time are, according to us, created, but we shall explain
the real answer to this question when we reply to the second
proof of the philosophers.
I say:
Most people who accept a temporal creation of the world believe time
to have been created with it. Therefore his assertion that the duration of
His inactivity was either limited or unlimited is untrue. For what has no
beginning does not finish or end. And the opponent does not admit that
the inactivity has any duration at all. What one has to ask them about the
consequences of their theory is: Is it possible, when the creation of time is
admitted, that the term of its beginning may lie beyond the real time in
which we live? If they answer that it is not possible, they posit a limited
extension beyond which the Creator cannot pass, and this is, in their view,
shocking and absurd. If, however, they concede that its possible beginning
may lie beyond the moment of its created term, it may further be asked if
there may not lie another term beyond this second. If they answer in the
affirmative-and they cannot do otherwise-it will be said: Then we shall
have here a possible creation of an infinite number of durations, and you
will be forced to admit-according to your argument about the spherical
revolutions-that their termination is a condition for the real age which
exists since them. If you say what is infinite does not finish, the arguments
you use about the spherical revolutions against your opponents your
opponents will use against you on the subject of the possibility of created
durations. If it is objected that the difference between those two cases is
that these infinite possibilities belong to extensions which do not become
actual, whereas the spherical revolutions do become actual, the answer is
that the possibilities of things belong to their necessary accidents and that
it does not make any difference, according to the philosophers, if they
precede these things or are simultaneous with them, for of necessity they
are the dispositions of things. If, then, it is impossible that before the
existence of the present spherical revolution there should have been
infinite spherical revolutions, the existence of infinite possible revolutions
is equally impossible. If one wants to avoid these consequences, one can
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