God and the Moment of Creation (QoW #1010)

An undergraduate philosophy student presses Dr. Craig on his view that God exists timelessly without the universe but temporally once creation begins: if God can timelessly bring about a temporal effect like the beginning of time, why couldn't God perform other timeless acts with temporal consequences too? He argues the lack of an explanation for that is just an open puzzle, not a real problem for the view, and asks what actually motivates Craig's position in the first place. Craig responds by distinguishing two models of causation, the medieval idea of a cause that simply exists timelessly versus the modern idea of a cause simultaneous with its effect, and argues his own view depends on the latter: God's causal power is exercised at the very first moment of time, not before it. He grounds his motivation in the case against an infinite past, arguing that even proposals to dodge a beginning by positing "metrically amorphous" time end up looking like timelessness anyway, which is why he holds God is timeless without creation and temporal with it.