Student Question
Define the anagogical/eschatological sense of the Scripture and provide examples.
Quick answer:
The anagogical sense of Scripture refers to a spiritual interpretation that "leads upward," focusing on the heavenly or eternal significance of biblical events, such as viewing manna as spiritual sustenance. The eschatological sense involves readings related to the end times, the Last Judgement, and the Second Coming, often found in prophetic books like Revelation. It includes interpretations that predict future events, such as aligning biblical prophecies with historical occurrences to foresee the millennium.
A common concept in Christian hermeneutics is the notion that every line in
the Bible can be read in both a literal and non-literal sense. Two possible
non-literal types of reading are “anagogical” and “eschatological.”
Eschatology is the science pertaining to the end, or, in Christianity to the
Last Judgement and Second Coming. The eschatological readings of the prophets
and Revelation are ones focussed on interpretation as making specific
predictions. One particularly common subclass of this interpretation focusses
on trying to match up Biblical prophecy with actual events and predicting the
precise time of the millennium.
Anagogy means “leading upward” and refers to a spiritual rather than a literal
interpretation, e.g. seeing manna from heaven as the soul receiving spiritual
sustenance from faith rather than just as a description of literal food.
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