Dictionary

eschaton en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /-tɒn/ (UK)
• (US) audio
• ĕs'kə-tŏn
• /ˈɛs.kə.tɑn/ (General-American)

Etymology

Borrowed from Ancient Greek ἔσχατον (éskhaton, “last thing”), from the neuter singular of ἔσχατος (éskhatos, “last”).

Meanings

1. The apocalypse; the approach of Christ’s reign immediately preceding the end of the world; a conception of or circumstance pertaining to this era.
   • Without these sayings, the textual basis for saying Jesus expected an imminent eschaton becomes very slender. 1994, Marcus J. Borg, Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship, →ISBN, page 86:
   • And this is also true of the revelation of the eschata: they do not reach us in a discourse about the future still to come, but in an action, in which God has already really begun them in us. 1966 [1962], Karl Rahner, “The Hermeneutics of Eschatological Associations”, in Karl Rahner, translated by Kevin Smyth, Theological Investigations, volume 4, page 336:
   • Only in the eschaton will God’s purpose gain its final fulfilment, a fulfilment, be it noted, which may still include some form of movement within a time-series. 1953, F. W. Dillistone, “The Church and Time”, in Scottish Journal of Theology, volume 6, page 163:
   • Near-synonyms: Revelation, Armageddon
2. (broadly) An end or fulfilment of history in general.
   • The most major of these eschatons involves the 65-million-year Cenozoic era, which began with the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event that decimated the dinosaurs and is now closing with another mass extinction event. 2011, Darrin Drda, The Four Global Truths: Awakening to the Peril and Promise of Our Times, →ISBN, page 152:
   • He, too, constructs a philosophical history towards an eschaton. In a peculiarly inverted manner he is among the believers in progress—the goal being the undoing of the things done. 1949 December, Helmut Kuhn, “[Review of Karl Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History]”, in The Journal of Philosophy, volume 46, number 25, →JSTOR, page 825:
   • immanentize the eschaton
   • From predictions of an imminent technological eschaton to theologically inflected ideas of human perfectibility achieved through technological means, there is ample warrant to see transhumanism as culturally other. 2016, J. Benjamin Hurlbut, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, “Introduction: Technology, Utopianism and Eschatology”, in J. Benjamin Hurlbut, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, editors, Perfecting Human Futures: Transhuman Visions and Technological Imaginations, →ISBN, page 10:
   • And I think there is this eschaton that they [Silicon Valley's technologists] want to bring about in which the world ends in something like 2027. And they don’t have a great vision beyond 2027. 2025 September 4, Ross Douthat, quoting Dan Wang, “This Is Why America Is Losing to China”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:

Forms

Coordinates

New Age · millennium · new age · Millennium · millennium · Millennium

Relateds

revelator · eschatology · immanentize · revelation

Synonyms

end of days · Armageddon · Revelation · end of history · end times

wikidata: Q13218530 · wikidata: Q185985