Is God eternally creating or did he, in his eternity, not always create? If you believe the latter, which is the First Cause argument, then the we have the paradox that an unchanging God would have had to change in order to begin creating!
On the other hand, if the ever-changing universe existed forever, then nothing had to change for the universe to exist and repeat itself eternally.
ping
Exactly.
It is easier to grasp the fundamental truth that change implies time than it is to assign arbitrary starting points that mark dramatic change, and then say that the processes that lead to it were independent of change (time).
I think we run into the same problem here as before when using eternal to mean "neverending" instead of "outside time."
The argument for the cause of time being outside time means words such as "always" are nonsensical. If there is no time, there's no notions such as always or the contrary "for a limited period of time."
On the other hand, if the ever-changing universe existed forever
It surprises me to see you refer to this theory since the current scientific evidence is against it. This was the view prior. The debate now is over a closed versus open universe, with the current - not to be confused with firmly proven - view that it is open; the end state therefore being something akin to a Big Freeze.