A Comparative Study of Mullā Ṣadrā’s and William Craig’s Views of Temporal Origination of the World

One of the most profound ontological problems which has occupied the minds of thinkers and philosophers is the discussion of origination or eternity of the world. In Islamic tradition, through introducing the theory of trans-substantial motion, Mullā Ṣadrā has tried to portray the renewing origination of the material world in such a way that, while enjoying consistency, it does not contradict any religious teachings. According to Mullā Ṣadrā, renewal is the same as existents’ being, and each renewal is an independent origination which ceaselessly occurs in the essence of existents in the course of time. The chain of events will never stop at a specific point due to the continuity of emanation; therefore, all components of the world are temporally originated. As a result, the world, as a mentally-posited whole, has no independent existence and is temporally originated as well. William Craig, the Christian thinker, has also based his cosmological argument on a new approach to the temporal origination of the world in the contemporary Western philosophical atmosphere. He maintains that the world and all its constituent parts, including time, have been created from nothing at a specific moment on divine free will and, since then, God, who existed prior to the creation of the world in an ethereal state, is now exposed to time because of His true relationship with temporal origination of things. The present study aims to reveal the efficiency of Mullā Ṣadrā’s interpretation of the temporal origination of the world in comparison to Craig’s new approach. The findings of this comparison indicate that Craig’s attempts at presenting this new approach deserve due attention; however, comparing to Mullā Ṣadrā’s view, it not only lacks the necessary consistency but is also in clear contrast to some of the most fundamental religious theorems including the impossibility of attributing change to God’s essence, His eternity, His everlasting simultaneity with the created, and continuity of emanation.