NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works - Holy Bible Institute

In the Beginning God made the Heaven and the Earth.wisdom,” 1385 that is to say that piety is, as it were, the groundwork and foundation of perfection.Art is also the beginning of the works of artists, the skill of Bezaleel began the adornmentof the tabernacle. 1386 Often even the good which is the final cause is the beginningof actions. Thus the approbation of God is the beginning of almsgiving, and the end laidup for us in the promises the beginning of all virtuous efforts.6. Such being the different senses of the word beginning, see if we have not all themeanings here. You may know the epoch when the formation of this world began, it, ascendinginto the past, you endeavour to discover the first day. You will thus find what wasthe first movement of time; then that the creation of the heavens and of the earth were likethe foundation and the groundwork, and afterwards that an intelligent reason, as the wordbeginning indicates, presided in the order of visible things. 1387 You will finally discoverthat the world was not conceived by chance and without reason, but for an useful end andfor the great advantage of all beings, since it is really the school where reasonable souls exercisethemselves, the training ground where they learn to know God; since by the sight ofvisible and sensible things the mind is led, as by a hand, to the contemplation of invisiblethings. “For,” as the Apostle says, “the invisible things of him from the creation of the worldare clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.” 1388 Perhaps these words“In the beginning God created” signify the rapid and imperceptible moment of creation.The beginning, in effect, is indivisible and instantaneous. The beginning of the road is notyet the road, and that of the house is not yet the house; so the beginning of time is not yettime and not even the least particle of it. If some objector tell us that the beginning is a time,he ought then, as he knows well, to submit it to the division of time—a beginning, a middleand an end. Now it is ridiculous to imagine a beginning of a beginning. Further, if we dividethe beginning into two, we make two instead of one, or rather make several, we really makean infinity, for all that which is divided is divisible to the infinite. 1389 Thus then, if it is said,1385 Prov. ix. 10.1386 cf. Arist., Met. iv. 1. ῎Αρχη ἡ μὲν λέγεται ὅθεν ἄν τι τοῦ πράγματος κινηθείη πρῶτον· οἱον τοῦ μήκους,καὶ ὁδοῦ…ἡ δὲ ὅθεν ἂν κάλλιστα ἕκαστον γένοιτο· οἷον καὶ μαθήσεως, οὐκ ἀπὸ τοῦ πρώτου καὶ τῆς τοῦπράγματος ἀρχῆς ἐνίοτε ἀρκτέον, ἀλλ᾽ ὅθεν ρᾷστ᾽ ἂν μάθοι, ἡ δὲ, ὅθεν πρῶτον γινεται ἐνυπάρχοντος· οἷον ὡςπλοίου τρόπις, καὶ οἰκίας θεμέλιος.1387 In the Homily of Origen extant in the Latin of Rufinus (Migne Pat. Gr. xii. 146) ἀρχή is used of the DivineWord, “In principio. Quod est omnium principium nisi Dominus noster Christus Iesus?…In hoc ergo principio,hoc est in Verbo suo, Deus cœlum et terram fecit.” An interpretation of John viii. 25, τὴν ἀρχὴν ὅτι καὶ λαλῶὑμιν widely prevalent at all events in the Latin church, was “Initium quod et loquor vobis;” “I am the Beginning,that which I am even saying to you.” See note to Sp. Comment. on John viii. ad fin.1388 Rom. i. 20.1389 On the inconceivability either of an absolute minimum of space or of its infinite divisibility, cf. Sir Wm.Hamilton, Met. ii. 371.258