In my article, "Infinite Regress and the Cosmological Argument" (International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 1971, pp. 246-249), I argue that no defender of an argument to God as a first cause can consistently object to the possibility of an infinite past on the grounds that an infinite time cannot elapse. For upon creation of the first event, an infinite time etapses. This conclusion can be avoided only by presuming that an uncaused cause comes into being uncaused.
William Craig, in a response to my paper entitled "Julian Wolfe and Infinite Time" (International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 1980, pp. 133-135), attacks me on two grounds:
(1) it doesn't follow that if an uncaused cause has always existed, it has existed for an infinite time. Hence it doesn't follow that upon creation of the first event, an infinite time elapses.
Craig tells us that prior to the first event, there was no time: apart from the uncaused cause, there was nothing. This strikes me as wrong, for the notion of priority is itself temporal. To assert that prior to Y, there was only X entails that X temporally antedated Y.
(2) an uncaused cause as the source of the first event would have to be changeless and hence timeless. Since it does not exist in time, it does not exist throughout an infinite time.
My response is simple. If Craig's reasoning is sound, no uncaused cause can be cause of the first event! To cause the first event would require acting in time, for the occurrence of the first event is datable. But a timeless being would be one to whom temporal predicates would be inapplicable.