(When) Is the Messiah Coming?
The Alter Rebbe and Negative Eschatology
The Alter Rebbe would say, “The Messiah we are waiting for isn’t coming. The Messiah we aren’t waiting for is coming.”
The Alter Rebbe fits a constellation of thinkers who challenge the average understanding of the Messiah as a person who will arrive at a specific historical moment. His statement is a kind of negative eschatology—the Messiah is definitionally not what you have in mind.
From the Hasidic idea that each of us is a fragment of the Messiah, to the Levinasian idea that we are each messiahs to one another, to the Derridean notion that there can be “messianism without messianicity” (i.e., the form of redemption without the content of redemption), we have evidence that one can believe in and wait for the Messiah, even if it is not a single person, and even if what the Messiah brings is not an end of history.
But what are the stakes of messianism, be it classical or novel?
Gershom Scholem argues that messianism provides the basis for antinomianism, i.e., radical politics—a sense that the status quo must be and will be bucked at any moment. But Scholem’s thesis is contestable—one can sublimate the messianic idea into an inward enthusiasm that is anti-political. One can also eschew teleological messianism—the idea that history is moving progressively towards justice—and still be zealously engaged with the messianic.
If messianic thought can shore up nearly an attitude to the world—from conservative to progressive to anti-political, to some dialectical combination—why does it matter? One possible answer, besides its import in the history of culture and religion, is that messianism is a basic dimension of human thought and nature—we can’t but hope for redemption, even what we mean by it is difficult.
Perhaps when the Messiah arrives, we will know the Messiah is. Or perhaps the Messiah will arrive to remind us that even then, we cannot know it.
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