Anagoge (ἀναγωγή), sometimes spelled anagogy, is a Greek word suggesting a climb or ascent upwards. The anagogical is a method of

mystical Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute, but may refer to any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning. It may also refer to the attainment of insight ...

or spiritual interpretation of statements or events, especially scriptural

exegesis Exegesis ( ; from the Ancient Greek, Greek , from , "to lead out") is a critical explanation or interpretation (philosophy), interpretation of a text. The term is traditionally applied to the interpretation of Bible, Biblical works. In modern us ...

, that detects allusions to the afterlife. Certain medieval theologians describe four methods of interpreting the scriptures: literal/historical, tropological/moral, allegorical/typological, and anagogical. The four methods of interpretation point in four different directions: The literal/historical backwards to the past, the allegoric forwards to the future, the tropological downwards to the moral/human, and the anagogic upwards to the spiritual/heavenly. The Gazan ascetics Barsanuphius, John the Prophet and Dorotheus of Gaza considered the Bible anagogical in nature by considering it to have its purpose to lead people to Christ. In their view, it was not simply a moral-teaching manual that could be roughly paraphrased with a rough equivalent, but the pedagogical sense of Scripture was dependent on its anagogical capacity to lead to faith in Christ. Hugh of Saint Victor, in ''De scripturis et scriptoribus sacris'', distinguishes anagoge from simple allegory as a kind of allegory. He differentiates in the following way: in a simple allegory, an invisible action is (simply) ''signified'' or ''represented'' by a visible action; anagoge is that "reasoning upwards" (''sursum ductio''), when, from the visible, the invisible action is ''disclosed'' or ''revealed''. In a letter to his patron Can Grande della Scala, the poet

Dante Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...

explains that his ''

Divine Comedy The ''Divine Comedy'' (, ) is an Italian narrative poetry, narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun and completed around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of ...

'' could be read both literally and allegorically; and that the allegorical meaning could be subdivided into the moral and the anagogical.

References

Biblical exegesis {{biblical-studies-stub

See also

References