Appendix L

Chronos, Kairos, Aiōn, Aiōnios: The Biblical Time of the Dying Moment

What the Bible's own vocabulary of time tells us about the moment of death

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Eternity in the Human Heart

The writer of Ecclesiastes tucked a seed into a single verse. It has been growing for three thousand years.

The Hebrew word behind "eternity" here is olam (עוֹלָם). It means long duration, an age, a stretch of time beyond counting. God has placed something age-long inside us. We carry an inner resonance with what lies beyond the clock.¹

The verse sits right after the famous poem: "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven" (Eccl 3:1). That poem uses the Hebrew word et (עֵת), the appointed time, the season. Every human act has its fitting moment.² But then the writer turns a corner. God has set olam in the heart. Not just seasons, but something longer. Not just the clock, but the horizon beyond the clock.

As Garrett DeWeese notes in his study of the biblical evidence, the passage from Ecclesiastes 3 contains "something approaching a philosophical conception of time and eternity" in the Hebrew Bible. The word olam here points toward a capacity for eternity that is built into what it means to be human.³

Apply this to the dying soul. Throughout life, we carry this built-in resonance, but it stays mostly buried under clocks, calendars, and the press of daily time. At the moment of death, the body's machinery falls silent. The clock-time that ruled our waking hours lets go. And the olam that was always there opens wide. The dying soul, returning to its native temporal mode, enters the eternity it has always carried.

The Hebrew Vocabulary of Time

Before turning to the Greek New Testament, we should notice how rich and flexible the Hebrew Bible's time-words are. They resist any rigid equation of "time" with clock-time.

Olam (עוֹלָם) is the most important. Its basic sense is long duration or age. "Before the mountains were born, or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting [me-olam ad-olam] you are God" (Ps 90:2). The formula stretches backward and forward without limit.⁴ It also appears in ordinary contexts. In Genesis 6:4, the Nephilim were "the mighty men of old [olam]." The word runs along a spectrum from "long ago" to "forever," and the context decides where the pointer falls.⁵

Qedem (קֶדֶם) means "ancient times" or "the primordial." It carries a weight of deep antiquity. Et (עֵת) is the appointed time or season, the word that drives the Ecclesiastes 3 poem: a time to be born, a time to die (Eccl 3:1–8). Yom (יוֹם) is "day," but it flexes from a single calendar day all the way to an era. The "day of the Lord" in the prophets is not a twenty-four-hour stretch. It is a decisive time of God's action.⁶

The point is simple. The Hebrew Bible already refuses to reduce time to clock-time. Its vocabulary is elastic. Moments can hold more than their duration suggests. Ages can be tucked inside days.

The Greek Vocabulary: Chronos, Kairos, Aiōn, Aiōnios

When we turn to the Greek New Testament, four words do the heavy lifting. DeWeese's careful study in chapter 4 of God and the Nature of Time works through each one. His conclusions shape everything that follows here.⁷

Chronos (χρόνος) is sequential, measurable time. It appears fifty-three times in the New Testament. "Then Herod called the Magi secretly and asked them carefully the time [chronon] that the star appeared" (Matt 2:7). It is the ticking clock, the calendar, the span you can count.⁸

Kairos (καιρός) is the opportune, decisive, qualitatively loaded moment. The right time. The moment that matters not because of how long it lasts but because of what it holds. We will return to this word in depth below.

Aiōn (αἰών) is age, age-long duration, or eternity. The New Testament speaks of "this present age" and "the age to come" (Matt 12:32; Eph 1:21). God is called "the eternal [aiōniou] God" (Rom 16:26). The word can point to the whole sweep of cosmic history or to God's own unending life.⁹

Aiōnios (αἰώνιος) means "pertaining to an age" or "age-long." In many New Testament contexts, it carries the sense "of the age to come." Arndt and Gingrich note this nuance: eternal life (zōē aiōnios) is not just "life that lasts forever" but "life that belongs to the coming age."¹⁰ The word points forward, not just outward. It marks quality, not just quantity.

This matters for the moment-of-death thesis. When the dying soul meets Christ, it enters a moment that participates in aiōnios time. It touches the age to come. The clock at the bedside still ticks, but inside the encounter, the soul has crossed a threshold into God's own qualitative time.

A Methodological Caution: Cullmann, Barr, and the Limits of Word-Study

This appendix takes the Barr caution seriously. The argument here does not rest on rigid word-level claims. It rests on the theological function of these words in their biblical contexts. Whatever the pure lexical range of kairos may be, the New Testament writers use it in contexts that carry decisive, loaded meaning. The argument proceeds from the statements of Scripture, not the words alone.¹²

Craig's survey of the biblical data on divine eternity reaches a similar point from a different angle. The scriptural evidence, he concludes, does not by itself settle the question of God's relation to time. Padgett's claim that "the Bible knows nothing of a timeless divine eternity in the traditional sense" has real force, yet certain texts (Gen 1:1; Prov 8:22–23) may point toward a beginning of time at creation, and the Septuagint renders olam in Proverbs 8:23 as pro tou aiōnos, "before time."¹³ The data resist easy systematizing. What they do make clear is that biblical time is not a flat, uniform continuum. It bends. It deepens. Certain moments hold more than others.

Kairos and the Decisive Moment

Whatever the strict lexical range of kairos, the New Testament places it at the heart of God's saving action. The word appears at turning points.

"The time [kairos] is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). Jesus opens his public ministry with a kairos-announcement. The decisive moment has arrived.¹⁴

"Behold, now is the favorable time [kairos]; behold, now is the day of salvation" (2 Cor 6:2). Paul picks up the word and presses it into the present tense. Salvation is a now-event.¹⁵

"You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time [kairon]?" (Luke 12:56). Jesus rebukes the crowds for missing the decisive hour.¹⁶

"So then, as we have opportunity [kairon], let us do good to everyone" (Gal 6:10). The kairos is a window that opens. You act while it is open.¹⁷

"Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time [ton kairon]" (Eph 5:16). The kairos is the moment to be seized.¹⁸

Aiōn, Aiōnios, and the Age to Come

This appendix carries the book's full treatment of the aiōn/aiōnios word-group, per the Topical Cross-Reference Map (Appendix D). No chapter re-develops what follows here.

The New Testament divides history into two ages: "this present age" (ho aiōn houtos) and "the age to come" (ho aiōn ho mellōn). Jesus uses the language himself (Matt 12:32; Mark 10:30; Luke 18:30). Paul develops it (Eph 1:21; 1 Cor 2:6–7). The two ages are not merely sequential. They overlap. The age to come has already broken into the present through the resurrection of Christ.¹⁹

This two-age structure matters more than it first appears. In "this present age," time is marked by decay, loss, and the steady tick of the clock. In "the age to come," time is marked by God's own presence. The resurrection of Christ is the hinge. It has already planted the age to come inside the present age like a seed in soil. Every act of the risen Christ happens at the intersection of the two ages.

God himself is called "the eternal [aiōniou] God" in Romans 16:26. Paul speaks of God's purpose decreed "before the ages [pro tōn aiōnōn]" (1 Cor 2:7). In Jude 25, we read of glory and majesty belonging to God "before all time [pro pantos tou aiōnos] and now and for ever." DeWeese observes that while Plato had distinguished aiōn as timeless, ideal eternity from chronos as the time of the created world (Timaeus 37d), "there is no clear instance of the Platonic meaning of the word in the New Testament."^19b The biblical aiōn points to unending duration, not to Platonic timelessness.

Aiōnios life, then, is life that belongs to the coming age. It is not just life that goes on forever. It is life of a different quality, shaped by God's own presence. When Jesus says, "This is eternal [aiōnios] life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3), he defines it as knowledge of God. The word carries quality, not just quantity. As Craig notes, the Septuagint's use of expressions like pro chronōn aiōniōn ("before age-long time") in Titus 1:2 and 2 Timothy 1:9 shows that the New Testament writers could think of time itself as having a boundary, with God standing on the far side of it.²⁰

What does this mean for the dying soul? At the moment of death, the soul steps across the threshold between this age and the age to come. The encounter with Christ is an aiōnios event. It belongs to God's own age. The dying person meets the risen Lord not in the flat time of the clock, but in the deeper time of God's coming age. The bedside monitors record a few final seconds. Inside those seconds, the age to come has opened. The soul has touched the quality of time that belongs to God himself.

"Today": The Kairos of God's Voice

One word in Scripture ties the kairos directly to the soul's encounter with God: "today." It appears at turning points across both testaments.

The writer of Hebrews quotes Psalm 95: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts" (Heb 3:7–8, 15; 4:7; cf. Ps 95:7–8). The "today" is the kairos of God's voice. It is the moment when God speaks and the soul either opens or shuts. The writer of Hebrews repeats the word three times in two chapters. The offer has an open window. But the window is indexed to the hearer's present. It opens when God speaks, and it stays open as long as God keeps speaking.²¹

The original psalm (Ps 95:7–8) reaches back to Israel's wilderness failure. At Meribah and Massah, the people heard God's voice and hardened their hearts. They missed their "today." The warning echoes across the centuries: do not let your "today" pass the way theirs did. Every generation has its own "today." Every person has one too.^21b

"Today salvation has come to this house" (Luke 19:9). Jesus says this to Zacchaeus. The tax collector who climbed a tree found himself in a "today" he had not planned. He woke up that morning as a cheat. By evening he was giving half his goods to the poor. Salvation arrived on his ordinary afternoon. Nobody warned him it was coming.²²

Paul draws the same line: "Behold, now is the favorable time [kairos]; behold, now is the day of salvation" (2 Cor 6:2). The "now" and the "today" are the same reality. God's salvation is offered in the present tense. For the dying person, the present tense is the dying moment.²³

The logic follows naturally. If "today" is the kairos of God's saving action, and if the thief's dying day was included in that "today," then the moment of death is part of the saving "today." The biblical theology supports the moment-of-death thesis directly.²⁴

The Urgency Objection

A Thousand Years as One Day

Peter makes a claim about divine time that bears directly on the encounter.

Peter is echoing Psalm 90:4: "For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night." The psalmist grounds this in God's eternity: "from everlasting to everlasting you are God" (Ps 90:2).²⁷

R. T. Mullins presses the point helpfully. The context of 2 Peter 3 is profoundly temporal. Peter is defending the claim that Christ will return, and he answers the scoffers by pointing to God's patience. "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (2 Pet 3:9). God's patience operates on a different temporal scale from ours. A divine "day" can hold what feels like ages.²⁸

Apply this directly. If a single day on God's side can hold a thousand years of content, then a single moment of dying, on God's side, can hold what feels to the soul like a lifetime of pursuit and encounter. The principle is already in the Bible. The book's thesis simply applies it to the threshold where it matters most.²⁹

The Fullness of Time

Paul gives us one more piece. "But when the fullness of time [to plērōma tou chronou] had come, God sent forth his Son" (Gal 4:4). The Incarnation is a plērōma-event. It is a moment in which chronos itself is "filled" with redemptive meaning. The ordinary clock-time of history suddenly holds the Son of God.³⁰

The moment of death, for the dying soul, is its personal plērōma. It is the fullness of its time. All of life's chronos converges on this single moment. And in that moment, the same God who sent forth the Son into history sends the risen Christ to the bedside. The dying moment is Christmas in miniature: God entering time to meet a soul.³¹

The Threshold and the Sleep

Two additional strands of biblical imagery support the picture.

First, Jesus calls himself the threshold: "I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved" (John 10:9). Christ is not just what waits on the other side. He is the doorway itself. The dying soul does not pass through death into an empty corridor and then, somewhere later, find Jesus. It passes through Jesus. He is the door.³²

Second, the New Testament speaks of death as "sleep" (1 Thess 4:13–15; 1 Cor 15:6, 18, 20, 51; John 11:11–14). This is a statement about the body, not the soul. The body sleeps. But the soul awakens. Paul's confidence that "to depart is to be with Christ" (Phil 1:23) suggests the soul's encounter begins at the threshold, not at some later date. The body lies still while the soul meets its Lord.³³

Boros and the Terminus Viae

Ladislaus Boros, the theologian whose final-decision hypothesis undergirds much of this book's argument (see Ch. 16), called the moment of death the terminus viae, the boundary of the pilgrim state. In that moment, the soul arrives at the end of its earthly journey. It stands at the edge of everything it has known. And there it meets Christ.³⁴

Boros arrived at this insight not from biblical word-study but from Thomistic metaphysics and existentialist phenomenology. He argued that throughout life, the soul never fully possesses itself. Death strips away every limitation. The soul awakens completely and, for the first time, makes a fully free act. It is precisely this act that constitutes the final decision.

What this appendix adds to Boros's philosophical-theological category is a biblical vocabulary. The terminus viae is the personal kairos. It is the dying person's "today." It is the soul's personal plērōma, the fullness of its time. Boros built from philosophy. The biblical vocabulary builds from revelation. That the two meet at the same point is no accident. It is the kind of convergence you would expect if both are pointing at something real.³⁵

Three Lines Converge

The Hebrew vocabulary gives us olam in the heart, et as the appointed season, and yom as a day that can hold an era. The Greek vocabulary gives us kairos as the decisive opportunity, aiōn as the age to come, and aiōnios as a quality of time that belongs to God's own future. The "today" passages show that God's saving action happens in the present tense, and the thief on the cross proves that the dying day counts. The "thousand years as one day" of 2 Peter 3:8 tells us that God's time and our time do not run at the same speed. The "fullness of time" of Galatians 4:4 tells us that chronos can be filled to bursting with God's presence.

All of these converge on a single biblical theology of time. God's time is qualitatively different from clock-time. Particular moments are loaded with meaning that outstrips their duration. And the dying moment is the most loaded of all.

We can state it more sharply. The Bible does not treat time as a uniform stream. It treats time as a field with hot spots. Some moments burn brighter than others. The Incarnation was one. The crucifixion was one. The resurrection was one. Pentecost was one. And for each person, the moment of death is one. These are the moments where eternity presses closest to the surface. These are the moments where the olam in the human heart meets the aiōn of God's coming age.

This is not a foreign idea imported into Scripture from philosophy or neuroscience. It grows from the biblical soil itself. The Bible already knows that God's time and our time are not the same. The Bible already knows that a single "today" can hold a soul's entire destiny. The Bible already knows that the clock measures the wrong thing when eternity is at stake.

The book's thesis is not a novel construct grafted onto the biblical material. It is the natural reading of what the biblical theology of time has always implied: that God's kairos meets the soul in moments that clock-time cannot exhaust.³⁷

When the thief on the cross heard "today," he heard a word indexed to his dying day. Your loved one's dying day is also a today. It is the today of meeting Christ.³⁸