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

who believes in this possibility, because the contrary would imply a denial
of God’s power, this argument is valid, for this spatial possibility is just as
much a purely rational concept as the possibility of temporal anteriority
according to the philosophers. Therefore, he who believes in the temporal
creation of the world and affirms that all body is in space, is bound to
admit that before the creation of the world there was space, either
occupied by body, in which the production of the world could occur, or
empty, for it is necessary that space should precede what is produced.’
The man who denies empty space and affirms the finiteness of body-like
certain later Ash’arites who, however, separated themselves from the
principles of the theologians; but I have not read it in their books and it
was told to me by some who studied their doctrines-cannot admit the
temporal production of the world. If the fact of this extension which
measures movement and which stands in relation to it as its measurement
were indeed the work of an illusion-like the representation of a world
bigger or smaller than it really is-time would not exist, for time is nothing
but what the mind perceives of this extension which measures movement.
And if it is self-evident that time exists, then the act of the mind must
necessarily be a veracious one, embodying reason, not one embodying
illusion.
Ghazali says:
I say
It has been objected: we declare that what is not possible
is what cannot be done and increase or decrease in the size
of the world is impossible, and therefore could not be
brought about .
This is the answer to the objection of the Ash’arites that to admit that
God could not have made the world bigger or smaller is to charge Him
with impotence, but they have thereby compromised themselves, for
impotence is not inability to do the impossible, but inability to do what can
be done.
Ghazali, opposing this, says:
This excuse is invalid for three reasons: The first is that it
is an affront to reason, for when reason regards it as
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