but Him alone, periods of time are distinguished by His knowledge and His action, according to those Muslims who hold this view, with no need for anything other than Him.

The third response is that this is countered by the precedence of some parts of time over others.

The fourth response is that we can conceive of precedence and succession without considering any existent time, and our knowledge of this is self-evident.

Likewise, their statement—“If the Creator’s precedence over the world were temporal, it would follow that the Creator, exalted is He, is temporal and that time is temporal, both of which are impossible. The former is impossible because time is a concomitant of change, which is impossible for the Creator, glorified and exalted is He; the latter, because an infinite regress is impossible”—can be answered in four ways.

First, time, as we have explained it, need not be something existent. Accordingly, there would be no impossibility in describing the Creator as temporal.

Second, even if it were assumed to be something existent, what exists here is Allah