What is Eschatology?

What is eschatology?

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Answer

Eschatology is a fancy theological term that comes from two Greek words, eschatos, meaning "last," and logos, meaning "word," So, it's the study of the last things. And there's a strict way of speaking about it and then a broad way of speaking about it. The strict way is simply to talk about what will happen at the end of time when Jesus returns, what will that look like and so on and so forth. But the broader way to think about it is what actually does the New Testament in particular and the Bible as a whole say about how the end affects life now? So, for example, the fact that we are living in an inaugurated eschatology, an overlap of the old and the new means that actually we can talk about eschatology and how it affects our life now. It's not simply things off in the distant future that will happen one day but actually something that has broken into our currently life and experience now.

Answer by Dr. Constantine R. Campbell

Dr. Constantine R. Campbell is Associate Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School