Relative to the final destiny of the individual or to the end of times.
More specifically
The eschatological embraces both the ultimate fate of the person (death, judgment, salvation, beatitude or damnation) and the collective destiny of creation (consummation of history, renewal of the world, final manifestation of justice). It is not merely a future chronology, but a meaning: the direction toward which being tends, individually and cosmically.
Across religious traditions, eschatology is structured around three axes: transformation (resurrection, rebirth, transfiguration); revelation (unveiling of the hidden meaning of history); and separation (final discernment of true and false, just and unjust). The “end” is not annihilation but plenitude: the fulfillment of what was already seeded within being.
On the metaphysical level, the eschatological corresponds to the actualization of principle within existence. Individuation resolves in the recognition of Origin; potentialities converge in pure Act. What is judged is not merely a sequence of moral acts, but the becoming of the soul: its orientation, quality of being, likeness or unlikeness to its Source.
In Christian theology, classical eschatology includes four themes — death, judgment, hell, paradise — along with messianic expectation, the parousia, and the “heavenly Jerusalem” as symbol of eschatical unification. Time is oriented, and human freedom carries ontological consequences.
Finally, the eschatological concerns the present: active already in moral conscience, spiritual discernment, and the experience of grace. It is not only a “later,” but the ultimate dimension of every moment, where the relation to the Principle is decided.
Further reading:
– Plato, Phaedo
– Augustine, City of God
– Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (Supplement)
– René Guénon, The End of a World
– Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic III
– Bruno Bérard, Metaphysics for Everyone (Angelico Press), trad of Métaphysique pour tous (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2022); It. Sui sentieri della metafisica; Sp. ¿Qué es la metafísica?; De. Was ist Metaphysik?