in fact, attempted to usurp philosophical traditions that used the term as “principle” or “causal origin” rather than beginning in time. Still, in his first homily on the Hexaemeron, Basil preaches that even the meaning of beginning as temporal has validity. But this presented an acute problem for early Christian theologians. Blowers asks, “How could the timeless Creator produce a time-bound world without compromising his transcendence? How could eternity and time conceivably overlap in the ‘moment’