Your argument that a creator can do as it pleases is meaningless in this context, as it clearly cannot create change in its state (you assertion/assumption posed as axiomatic to the definition you want to refute) without having time tracing the change in the state of the creator (you complete the circle so your mind does not have to contemplate the obverse)
I am not asserting The Creator has create change in His state, you are. And it is upon that horn that you hang the rest of your refutation. You nor I can conceive of an entire physical universe being created without diminishing --or if you prefer, changing-- the Creator of this 'thing'. But I offer that loving does not diminish one, though because the act of loving takes place in time and space it does change one. But The Creator is not in time and space as Creator. As Jesus, God is in time and space. As Holy Spirit, God is interacting with time and space. But you assume this means The Creator is changed when Creating, and it is with that very assertion that I differ: Change to you and me is a temporally limited quality, but The Creator Created the temporal limits from a 'position' outside of dimension time.
If you start with the assumption that a cause must have a cause or it is not nor ever has been, what are you immediately doing? ... You are setting the definitional limits using temporal qualification which you want to be in order to reject that which you do not want to accept.
You believe creation to have a finite origin. Agree?
If so, there was a moment when the said creation didn’t exist, followed by the period when the creation gets within the realms of existence. Note the transition.
If you claim a creator as the source, then this creator created at a particular moment. What does this imply? It implies that the creator’s existence experienced the following:
1. The portion until the moment of initiation of creation by the creator, in order to maintain the claim that creation had a finite origin.
2. The portion at the moment, and after the act of creation has been performed.
These are clear transitions that the creator will undergo simply by the process of causing a finite creation. In other words, a sharp transition has occurred in the state of the player (from not having done something, to having done it), to allow the change that makes possible the realisation of the act of creation.
Put simply, change requires time, as that is the nature of change in its elements.
The paradox clearly remains unresolved.
I've presented no "circular argument" here, and have explained my argument in detail, in my earlier reply.
The only acknowledgment that is yet to be made, is on your part in accepting that your "solution" has a paradoxical problem that it cannot resolve, and instead attempts to conceal, necessitating faith to "resolve" it.