Defining Crisis

The word krisis was used by the Greeks to refer to “a legal process of judgment.” Aristotle used it to refer to a legal procedure that secured civic order. In his case, it was a judgment that helped keep the city just and safe. A few hundred years later, Jesus used the same word to describe a coming day of judgment: “on the day of judgment [krisis]” (Matthew 10:15). He also used it to pronounce a future judgment that will separate the wicked from the righteous (John 5:22).

But this judicial meaning of the word stretches back even further, past the Greeks to the Hebrews. God created the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and placed it in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2). The tree served as a kind of organic courthouse, reminding its observers of right and wrong. Trees frequently serve a judicial purpose in other places in Scripture. Deborah, a Hebrew judge, sat under a tree to pass her judgments (Judges 4:4-5).

…Aristotle, Jesus, and authors of the Old Testament all used krisis to convey judgment. The apple has fallen far from the tree. In their fascinating study on the etymology of crisis, historians Reinhart Koselleck and Michaela Richter describe how the word evolved from its original meaning of “a judgment regarding right and wrong” to “a change in the course of things.” This change, they explain, is typically economic, medical, or historical in nature.

Over the centuries, crisis has been used to refer to matters that reach a boiling point, such as the coup of Napoleon III, German bankruptcies, English stock decline, and the American subprime housing crisis. This “boiling point” change in circumstances is often what comes to mind today when we hear the word crisis.

In the late twentieth century, crisis began to appear in news headlines frequently—in two hundred different contexts in 1980 alone. In 2019, we face an opioid crisis, a refugee crisis, a border crisis—and from a glance at my social media feed, a midlife crisis, a gaming crisis, a Captain Marvel crisis, and a bad hair day crisis.

Once a dense word referring to fixed moral judgments and powerful changes, crisis has devolved into a word that signifies momentary uncertainty. Will my hair turn out? Was Captain Marvel a good or bad movie? What will life be like after forty? We’ve relativized the meaning of crisis to such a degree that acceptable usage includes a tweet that reads “I’m in a parking spot crisis!”