The Ontological Analysis of Relation between God and the World: Mirdamad's Viewpoint

The question of the contingency or eternality of the cosmos is one of the most challenging issues in the history of Islamic theology and philosophy. Can we justify a temporal gap between the existences of God - who is eternal- and the cosmos –which is contingent and temporal? Similarly, can we imagine such gap between a cause (God) and its effect (the cosmos)? What is the meaning of the creation from nothing (ex-nihilo) upon which religious scriptures insist? There are some justifications related to these questions. Mirdamad's solution is based on a conception named the metatemporal contingency (al-huduth al-dahri) which is different from the temporal and the essential contingency. In this paper we will study and analysis his viewpoint.