Messianic optics: Elective affinities between the messianisms of Walter Benjamin and Jürgen Moltmann

Abstract

This paper is a rereading of Jürgen Moltmann's theology of the cross through the messianic optics provided by Walter Benjamin's philosophy of language and aesthetic theory. This reading is a simultaneous retrieval of the apophatic dimension of Moltmann's early thought and a critique of his turn to overly positive theological language. By relying on Benjamin's conception of the transcendent which localizes the infinite in the "denied" of language, within the "speechlessness of things," the body of Christ is reconceived as a cipher of the transcendent within transience and decay. It is shown that Moltmann's Trinitarian theology originates in the concrete suffering experienced by this particular body and a retrieval of this origin is necessary to recover the messianic base of Christian predication of God.