Plotinus...

The phrase ‘He was good’ (used by Plato of the Demiurge) refers to a conception of the All (i.e., to the Intelligible Universe);

the past tense is used simply to signify the absence of any origin in Time:

so that also this Universe has had no temporal beginning;

and if we speak of something ‘before’ it, that is only in the sense of the Cause from which it takes its Eternal Existence.

Plato used the word (‘was’) merely for the convenience of exposition,

and later corrects it as inappropriate to the order vested with the Eternity he conceives and affirms.



-- Enneads, III.7.6
Plotinus