Review of: Jacob Taubes. The Political Theology of the Apostle Paul. Papers Read at the Research Center of the Evangelical Educational Community in Heidelberg on February 23–27, 1987. 2025. 255 p.

Abstract

In February 1987, a few weeks before his death, Jacob Taubes was a famous German philosopher, sociologist of religion and researcher of Islamic law.- Daism, who came from an old rabbinical family, gave 4 lectures to a small group of listeners about St. Paul, which he perceived as his spiritual heritage. Since then, this cycle has been repeatedly published in different languages and finally published in the St. Petersburg publishing house "Vladimir Dahl" in the series "Political Theology". It should be noted that the same publishing house published "Western Eschatology" by the same author in 2023. Actually, Taubes' cherished apocalypticism can best be traced from Western Eschatology to Paul's Political Theology, two books on which novice readers of this philosopher should focus. In his works, Taubes presents apocalypticism as a kind of memory of the covenant. The historical figures with whom he deals in his works - the Apostle Paul, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Marx, Freud, Barth and Schmitt — are his "enemy brothers", in the struggle with whom Taubes finds a way to live in the presence of God.