www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Kairos

Can someone explain to me how to understand this?
Is this eternal time? How can eternity have time?

it is probably impossible to wrap one's mind around eternity, but how is this described in Eastern Christendom?

thx

It sure is impossible for ME but than again, I have trouble even sending emails. Apparently I don't have the same problem with inane posts on this forum!Pax et bonum.

Isn't this the problem that led to Calvin's doctrine of predestination. Predestination only makes sense if there exists a linear time in eternity. If God sees time as we do, linearly, and knows the future then obviously He would create people who He knew were going to go to Hell and there is, quite literally no free will, and God is a cruel tyrant who creates creatures for his own entertainment. If there is no linear time in eternity, then there is no past and no future. All time is now. Therefore, at the instance of creation no one is condemned since their "future" doesn't exist at the moment of creation. God wants every person created to be with Him but because we have a free will in linear time we make choices that determine our fate.

I think of it this way:

Chronos is measurable clock time, and kairos is the time outside measurable time. Kairos is God’s time, the Eternal Now. The liturgy begins with the words Kairos tou poiesai to Kyrio (“It is time [kairos] for the Lord to act”): In the divine liturgy chronos and kairos intersect.

We live in chronos, in the human now. When we can allow ourselves to be in kairos, in the Eternal Now, we can remember that we are forever and always a part of the Divine.

I’ve seen it described as an “event” rather than a “chronology”. Can someone flesh that out more?

It is difficult to know something that is outside of chronos time, since that is the only experience that we have on Earth.

Even the liturgy; we experience it in time, even though it is an eternal event. Does anyone else have a hard time processing that?

No difficulty at all! When someone says, "Your church services last forEVER," I just grin and say, "No, they don't. They last an eternity!"

At the very least, "Unto Ages of Ages".

But that response works only with someone who is familiar with the liturgy; it makes no sense to a casual guest or someone who hears how long the services are on any given Sunday.

NOW is the favorable time. TODAY is the day of salvation.

That's Kairos.


June 2nd, 2011. That's Chronos.


Shalom,
Memo

Memo is right. Chronos is time that enslaves, that just flows and we can do nothing about it. Kairos is the correct moment of breaking chronos into eternity, a participation of chronos in eternity (like, for example, the Incarnation). It is something different than eternity itself.