The invisible creation and the meanings of 'beginning'

In that world the Creator and Maker of all things brought his works to completion: an intelligible light suited to the blessedness of those who love the Lord, the rational and invisible natures, and the whole ordering of the intelligible realm, all that surpasses our understanding, whose very names we cannot discover. These things fill up the substance of the invisible world, as Paul teaches us when he says, “For in him all things were created, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities or powers, whether angelic hosts or archangelic ministries” (Colossians 1:16). But when it was time for this world also to be introduced among the things that exist, it was first of all a school and training place of human souls, and then also a dwelling place suited to all things in generation and corruption. The course of time, then, came into being as something natural to the world and to the animals and plants within it, always pressing forward and flowing past, never pausing in its race. Is time not exactly this: the past has vanished, the future is not yet here, and the present slips away from our perception before it can be known? The nature of things that come to be is like this too: always either growing or wasting away, with no evident fixedness or stability. It was fitting, therefore, that the bodies of animals and plants, bound as if by necessity to some stream and held fast by the movement that leads them toward generation or corruption, should be contained by the nature of time, which possesses a property akin to the things that change. For this reason the one who wisely teaches us the origin of the world fittingly began his account of it by saying, “In the beginning God made”—that is, in this beginning according to time. For he does not say it came to be in the beginning, testifying that it precedes all created things in age; rather, after the invisible and intelligible realities, he recounts the beginning of the existence of these visible things that are grasped by the senses. “Beginning” is also used of first movement, as in, “The beginning of a good way is to do what is right” (Proverbs 16:5 LXX). For it is from righteous actions that we are first moved toward the blessed life. “Beginning” is also used of that from which something comes, as the foundation is in a house and the keel in a ship, according to what is said: “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord” (Proverbs 1:7; cf. Psalm 111:10 LXX). For reverence is like a base and a pedestal for perfection. The beginning of works of craft is the craft itself, as the wisdom of Bezalel was the beginning of the adornment of the tabernacle. And the beginning of actions is often the useful end of what comes to be, as the acceptance from God is the beginning of almsgiving, and the end stored up in the promises is the beginning of every activity according to virtue. Since “beginning” is used in so many ways, consider whether the present word does not fit all its meanings. You can learn from what time the constitution of this world began, if you go back from the present into the past and earnestly seek to find the first day of the world's origin. For in this way you will discover whence time received its first movement, and then that heaven and earth were laid down beforehand like foundations and bases, and then that there is some craftsmanlike reason that guided the ordering of the visible things, as the word “beginning” indicates to you. And you will discover that the world was not devised at random or in vain, but for some useful end and to contribute great benefit to the things that exist, if indeed it is truly a school for rational souls and a training place for the knowledge of God, providing guidance by the hand to the mind through visible and perceptible things toward the contemplation of the invisible, as the apostle says: “His invisible attributes, understood through the things that have been made since the creation of the world, are clearly seen” (Romans 1:20).