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

should be temporal and the other eternal. If it is meant that
God is prior to the world and to time, not essentially, but
temporally, then there was, before the existence of the world
and of time, a time in which the world was non-existent,
since non-existence preceded the world and God preceded it
during a long duration which had a final term but no initial
one, and then there was before time an infinite time, which is
self-contradictory. Therefore the assertion that time had a
beginning is absurd. And if time-which is the expression of
the measure of movement -is eternal, movement must be
eternal. And the necessity of the eternity of movement
implies the necessity of the eternity of the thing in motion,
through the duration of which time endures.
I say:
The mode of their reasoning which he reproduces does not constitute a
proof. It amounts to saying that the Creator, if He is prior to the world,
must either be prior not in time, but in causation, like the priority of a man
to his shadow, or prior in time, like a builder to a wall. If He is prior in the
same way as the man is prior to his shadow, and if the Creator is eternal,
then the world too is eternal. But if He is prior in time, then He must
precede the world by a time which has no beginning, and time will be
eternal, for if there is a time before the actual, its starting-point cannot be
imagined. And if time is eternal, movement too is eternal, for time cannot
be understood without motion. And if motion is eternal, the thing in motion
will be eternal, and its mover will necessarily be eternal too. But this proof
is unsound, for it is not of the nature of the Creator to be in time, whereas
it belongs to the nature of the world to be so; and for this very reason it is
not true that He is either simultaneous with it or prior to it in time or in
causation.
Ghazali says
The objection to this is: Time is generated and created,
and before it there was no time at all. The meaning of our
words that God is prior to the world and to time is: He
existed without the world and without time, then He existed
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