ABSTRACT
What is the messianic? Where does it come from? And why speak of the messianic now? It is, on the face of it, difficult to imagine anything less contemporary — more untimely — than talk of Messiahs, redeemers, chosen peoples, last judgements. On the one hand, it inevitably summons up the ghost of something deeply, even scandalously, retrogressive: a premodern, theological dogmatism, apocalypticism or fundamentalism. On the other, it is in itself an appeal to, or hope for, an unrealized future: a renunciation, judgement or salvation that is still to take place. For many readers of this special issue, whatever their theological or philosophical persuasion, the very idea of the messianic “now” will thus seem almost like a contradiction in terms: the advent of the Messiah is simultaneously too early and too late for liberal modernity. Yet, paradoxically, it might be precisely this radical sense of untimeliness — of ever becoming “timely” or happening “now” — that represents the messianic's greatest value to our time, to “now-time”. If the messianic is almost unthinkable within the order of the present, it might be this — violent, scandalous, absolute — resistance to the values, belief systems and institutions of liberal modernity that enables it to better put that modernity to the test. In other words, the messianic now might actually be something that enables us to think, write and perhaps even judge our “now” otherwise.
