By Vladimir Lossky
In Genesis we read that the heavens and the earth, the universe in its entirety in fact, was created "in the beginning". St. Basil saw this as the beginning of time; but "as the beginning of a road is not yet the road, and the beginning of a house is not yet a house, so the beginning of time is not yet time, not even the smallest part of it."1 If the divine will created "in the beginning", it means that "its action was instantaneous and outside of time"; but with the universe time also begins. According to St. Maximus it is motion, the change which is proper to created things whose very origin was in change, which is also the origin of time, the form of sensible being (τα αισθητά).