Real Time as Ontological Choice: A Comparative Inquiry into Al-Ghazālī and Lee Smolin’s Temporal Models

This article compares al-Ghazālī’s theological model of discrete, divinely renewed instants (ānāt, tajdīd al-khalq) with Lee Smolin’s law-evolving relational physics to examine the ontological reality of time. Across distinct metaphysical grounds—volitional on one side, naturalistic on the other—both frameworks reject timeless determinism and relocate order inside time. Using a non-reductive, formally analogical method, I map four axes: discreteness/succession, openness of the future, the status of laws (habit vs. historical stabilization), and directionality (chosen renewal vs. precedence/path-dependence). The comparative upshot is a thesis of “real time as ontological decision”: temporality is constituted by selection among possibilities rather than entailed by necessity. Historiographical implications follow. If regularities reflect ʿādātullāh or evolving laws, then historical explanation should privilege contingency and agency; the stability of evidence is an achievement of temporally structured record-regimes rather than a timeless given. I specify principal disanalogies to avoid overreach (volitional vs. immanent grounds; theological vs. naturalistic orientation) and outline a live dilemma for naturalism: a selection principle is still needed to explain directed becoming among equipossible futures. The result is a history-facing ontological account that bridges theology and physics while clarifying stakes for philosophy of history and the history of knowledge.