
A Messiah Won’t Save Us
The messianic idea that permeates Western political thinking — that a person or technology will deliver us from the tribulations of the present — distracts us from the hard work that must be done to build a better world. BY JONATHAN BLAKE “When the Messianic idea appears as a living force in the world … it always occurs in the closest connection with apocalypticism,” Gershom Scholem observed in 1959. Scholem could state this with authority. The greatest modern scholar of messianism in Judaism, he was immersed in the study of ancient and medieval religious thought and of the messianic movements to which it … Continue reading A Messiah Won’t Save Us