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

through the medium of a being eternal in its essence but generable and
corruptible in its particular movements, not, however, in its universal
circular movement, or through the medium of what is generically eternali.e.
has neither beginning nor end-in its acts.
Ghazali answers in the name of the philosophers:
The philosophers may say, ‘we do not consider it
impossible that any temporal being, whatever it may be,
should proceed from an eternal being, but we regard it as
impossible that the first temporal should proceed from the
eternal, as the mode of its procession does not differ from
that which precedes it, either in a greater inclination towards
existence or through the presence of some particular time, or
through an instrument, condition, nature, accident, or any
cause whatever which might produce a new mode. If this
therefore is not the first temporal, it will be possible that it
should proceed from the eternal, when another thing
proceeds from it, because of the disposition of the receiving
substratum, or because the time was propitious or for any
other reason.
Having given this reply on the part of the philosophers, Ghazali answers
it:
I say:
This question about the actualization of the disposition,
whether of the time and of any new condition which arises in
it, still holds good, and we must either come to an infinite
regress or arrive at an eternal being out of which a first
temporal being proceeds.
This question is the same question all over again as he asked the
philosophers first,’ and this is the same kind of conclusion as he made
them draw then, namely that a temporal proceeds from an eternal, and
having given as their answer something which does not correspond with
the question, i.e. that it is possible that a temporal being should proceed
from the Eternal without there being a first temporal being, he turns the
same question against them again. The correct answer to this question
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