A. Term and subject matter
The term eschatology (from the Greek ἔσχατος/éschatos, ‘last’), initially a term for the ‘doctrine of last things’(tà éschata sc. prágmata) as the final part of all theological outlines of Christian dogma, is to be found first in the 17th cent. as a neologism coined by Protestant theologians (Ph. H. Friedlieb, 1644; A. Calow, 1655-1677), and after D. F. Schleiermacher it replaced the older title De …