Definition of "eschaton"
eschaton
noun
plural eschatons or eschata
(Christianity, theology) The apocalypse; the arrival and the era of God’s reign immediately preceding the end of the world; a conception of or circumstance pertaining to this era.
Quotations
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 , Karl Rahner, “The Hermeneutics of Eschatological Associations”, in Karl Rahner, translated by Kevin Smyth, Theological Investigations, volume 4, page 336
(by extension) An end or fulfilment of history in general.
Quotations
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, page 825
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, page 152
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, page 10