Apocalypse Now: Preaching the Anagogical Sense of Sacred Scripture

The field of homiletics has been enriched in recent years by the rediscovery of the fourfold hermeneutical approach to Scripture, which includes the literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical senses. After widespread use for more than fifteen hundred years, this method fell out of favour, at first in the Reformation, and again during the ascendancy of the historical-critical methods. Its twentieth century recovery, however, provides a way to enrich the preacher's ability to unpack any scriptural reading, especially those texts with explicitly apocalyptic content. The last sense, the anagogical, is the most enigmatic of the four, but it is the sense that grants particular meaningfulness to difficult passages pointing to visions of the "last things." As Henri de Lubac, Paul Scott Wilson, and other scholars dealing with biblical, historical, and homiletic considerations have shown, there is an anagogical sense for any pericope, since there is an inherent telos to all Scripture, which collectively and canonically point to God's kingdom and the benevolent action of God throughout salvation history. Rather than being texts that frighten, apocalyptic passages should be part of the "good news," anticipations of God's reign. This article explores the ways in which the homilist might use all four senses while preparing a sermon, and especially explores the anagogical sense, both its "lower" and "higher" levels, in order to elaborate its particular hermeneutic function. It concludes with an application of this method, using the controversial text about the return of the Lord like a "thief in the night" (Matt 24:37–44).