Written by R.C. Sproul |
Friday, December 31, 2021
A kairotic moment is a moment that shapes the history of everything that comes after it. In the Old Testament, for example, the exodus was a kairotic moment. In the New Testament, the birth of Jesus, the cross, and the resurrection are all kairotic moments. The closest word we have to this in English is the word historic. Every event that takes place in history is historical, but not every event that takes place in history is deemed historic. To be historic it has to have special significance and special impact on life. So the Bible is the record of God’s historic works of redemption within the context of space and time. 

“Once upon a time . . .” These words signal the beginning of a fairy tale, a story of make believe, not an account of sober history. Unlike beginning with the words “once upon a time,” the Bible begins with the words, “In the beginning God….” This statement, at the front end of the entire Bible, introduces the Pentateuch or the first five books of the Old Testament, and it sets the stage for God’s activity in linear history. From the opening chapters of Genesis to the end of the book of Revelation, the entire dynamic of redemption takes place within the broader setting of real space and time, of concrete history.
The historical character of Judeo-Christianity is what markedly distinguishes it from all forms of mythology. A myth finds its value in its moral or spiritual application, while its historical reality remains insignificant. Fairy tales can help our mood swings, but they do little to give us confidence in ultimate reality. The twentieth century witnessed a crisis in the historical dimension of biblical Christianity. German theologians made a crucial distinction between ordinary history and what they called “salvation history,” or sometimes “redemptive history.” This distinction was based in the first instance on the obvious character of sacred Scripture, namely, that it is not only a record of the ordinary events of men and nations. It is not a mere chronicle of human activity but includes within it the revelation of God’s activity in the midst of history. Because the Bible differs from ordinary history and was called “salvation history,” it was a short step from there to ripping the biblical revelation out of its historical context altogether. No one was more important in the snatching of the Gospels out of history than the German theologian Rudolf Bultmann. Bultmann devised a new theology that he called “a theology of timelessness.” This theology of timelessness is not interested in the past or in the future as categories of reality. What counts according to Bultmann is the hic et nunc, the “here and now,” or the present moment. Salvation doesn’t take place on the horizontal plane of history, but it takes place vertically in the present moment or what others called “the existential moment.”
We might ask the question: How long does a moment last? There is a parallel between Descartes’ concept of the “point” and the existentialist’s concept of the “moment.”
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Since the debut of Darwin’s work in America, views in the church have been diverse; there has never truly been one single perspective that could be described as “the American Christian position” on evolutionary theory and the proper interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative.

In the decades leading up to the 1859 publication of Darwin’s magnum opus The Origin of Species, much of the scientific community in the United States (which included numerous sincere Christians) had already embraced the idea that the earth’s history involved long geologic ages during which many biological species had appeared and later become extinct. Geologists cited the patterns in the fossil record as evidence for long epochs punctuated by sudden changes in the earth’s flora and fauna. Some Christian geologists interpreted these relatively abrupt transitions as markers of divine intervention by which God had specially created new species following population collapses caused by ice ages and cataclysmic floods. Leading academics, such as geologists James Dana at Yale and Edward Hitchcock at Amherst College, believed that Christian teachings on creation could be harmonized with the scientific data by interpreting the “days” of Genesis 1 as representing long ages (the so-called “day/age theory”) or by assuming that there was a long period of time between God’s initial creative act recorded in Genesis 1:1 and the divine activity described in Genesis 1:2 and beyond (the “gap theory”). These ideas contrasted sharply with Irish Bishop James Ussher’s seventeenth-century calculation of the earth’s age—roughly 6,000 years—which was based upon a literalistic understanding of the biblical genealogical records. Thus, prior to the rise of Darwinism in American scientific circles, a diversity of views already existed about how to best understand the early chapters of Genesis in light of scientific evidence.
When the British printing of Darwin’s Origin made its debut in America in late 1859, the majority of scientists had yet to embrace any theory of biological evolution, even though such ideas had been discussed in academic circles for quite some time. It should be noted that skepticism toward evolutionary thought was not always connected to religious convictions. In fact, some devout Christians in the scientific community readily embraced it. Darwin’s greatest American champion, Harvard botanist Asa Gray, was a deeply devoted Presbyterian who disagreed with the claim that the theory of evolution by natural selection was inherently atheistic. Gray, who had corresponded with Darwin on scientific matters since 1855 and went on to facilitate the American publication of the Origin in 1860, argued that natural biological mechanisms of evolutionary change exhibit God’s design just as much, if not more than, instantaneous acts of creation. He used the analogy of cloth woven by hand compared to cloth made by a power loom; both are obviously the product of mindful design, and the latter is even more impressive because of the level of intelligent contrivance involved. Creation is all the more impressive, Gray explained, if God engineered an evolutionary mechanism to accomplish it.
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We interpret and apply Scripture based on the words of the text as well as on the inescapable principles and necessary applications of the text. This is one of the most important hermeneutical principles for Christian life and doctrine, and it is precisely how we see Jesus Christ and the biblical authors approaching Scripture. 

One of the most important yet often most neglected fields of study in the church is hermeneutics, or the study of the interpretation of literary texts. As Christians, we are focused especially on the proper interpretation of sacred Scripture, for the lack of a sound, consistently applied hermeneutic results in poor interpretations and applications of Scripture. Many people in the church today base their hermeneutics on their feelings or impressions. As an example of this, small-group Bible studies often ask, “What does this verse mean to you?” rather than the more appropriate question, “What does the author of this verse mean?”
Hermeneutics must be based on established principles, not pragmatics or emotions. To that end, the pastors who drafted the Westminster Standards provided the church with the most concise and helpful summary of Scripture and its interpretation ever formulated. Chapter 1 of the Westminster Confession of Faith is perhaps the most important.
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