It seems to me the paradox goes away when one stops making God subject to time.
A human creator creates in time, which is sensed as an irreversible series of moments past, present, to future. The past slips away, the future is not yet, and even the present is not really "present" — for as Alamo-Girl has pointed out, there is a lag time between the original perception and its sensory processing before the processed data can be made available to the mind as a cognition. But because this is the way things work for humans "in time," we cannot say that this "model" pertains to God, Who is not in time.
Plus I want to know in what way is the human changed by his creative act? If I knit a sweater, say, in what way am I "changed?" Sure, I had to work with changes in pattern — alternating knit stitches and purls as the pattern requires. But in what way am I changed by this?
If a human is not so changed, then why would you say that God is changed by His creative act?
I think you are trying to apply "human rules" to God, rules of time to the timeless. No wonder you come up with a "huge paradox!"
You wrote that "Time is a scalar quantity." Again, as my dearest sister Alamo-Girl has pointed out, it certainly was thought to be so by Aristotle. An exercise in simple counting demonstrates his point. But Aristotle has been roundly criticized by persons of Pythagorean persuasion, for not seeing that numbers are not merely a countable series, but also possess individual "magnitude." This observation "opens up" time, from a scalar, linear series of passing moments, to time conceived as a volume. Indeed, it seems to me time has to be "volumetric" in order to accommodate the expression of numerical magnitude.
Just look at the critturs on the number line — some of them point to infinite extension; some are even called transcendental numbers. Like pi, for instance. Now that's what I call "magnitude!" Plus check out the primes and perfects — certainly they have a very special character that is not exhausted by their utility as counting numbers.
As ever, our notions about time constrain what we find in the world of experience and what we can know and say about it. If our understanding is faulty, then our knowledge will be faulty and/or incomplete.... And paradoxes will spring up.
Or so it seems to me. Just some thoughts, FWIW.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights into this problem, James C. Bennett!
Everything people say about God (forgives, loves, cares, wants, regrets, is jealous, etc.) is applying "human rules" to God. Who decides when these rules don't apply?
Yes, God has chosen to step inside the bubble as The Word made flesh Who dwelt among us. And yes, even spirits will have some where/when 'arrangement' since they are also created 'things'. So the seeming paradox becomes, God is non-local because He exists outside the bubble of spacetime which He created, but God is also 'all-local' as His Spirit sustains the extremely delicate balance of it all, and as He has chosen to take flesh and dwell among us.
[Shhhh, whatever you do, don't show this to certain geniuses wishing to diminish God rather than exalt God.]
Time is part of the creation, not a property of - or restriction on - the Creator of it.
God is not thingly. And man is not the measure of God.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!