One way to line up Shiʿi Islam, Christianity, and ultra-Orthodox Judaism is to say they’re all waiting, for the Mahdi, for Christ to return, for the Messiah to come. But while at a distance the comparison seems apt, upon closer inspection it falls apart. The main issue is not just that they’re waiting but what kind of absence they posit and what kind of absence means for the question of authority in the here and now. That’s where they diverge greatly. In Twelver Shiʿi Islam, the tension is this: The Mahdi is not only a figure to come; he is believed to be alive, but hidden. The problem this poses is that authority hasn’t vanished, it is present in full force, it is just inaccessible. So who can act on its behalf? Many Shiʿi scholars have answered: no one, not fully, and that is why authority must be limited and exercised with caution. Ruhollah Khomeini, however, answered differently: Qualified jurists should rule in the Imam’s stead. Then the question becomes not one of restraint, but of how to make authority work.

Once you take this route, it is difficult not to go to far. The absence of the Imam ceases to function as a limit and starts to seem like a predicament to overcome. Authority is given expression not only by human beings but by institutions and laws and political systems claiming to act on its behalf. Even if characterized as an interim solution, it becomes real and operative, and the separation between the authority of God and the authority of man is bound to become muddled. Ultra-Orthodox Judaism almost goes in the other direction: The Messiah hasn’t come at all, and that absence is respected as a limit not to be overstepped. The mistake to make is not to solve the problem, but to transgress it. This option has an advantage, which is maintaining a clear separation between the authority of God and the authority of man. However, it can have the effect of making participation in politics in the fullest sense suspect. Christianity approaches the tension from yet another angle.

The New Testament doesn’t present Christ as hidden in the same way, or simply as absent and postponed to the future, but as reigning: present, acting, and with full authority, although no longer incarnate. His return is looked forward to, but his authority is not suspended until then. This disarms the problem: there is not a space to be filled or guarded, because in the most important sense, the relevant authority is not absent. That’s not to say that Christ’s authority is exercised in a direct way: Christianity has never posited an institution or office standing in for him in quite that way. Rather, authority is manifested in the ways Christians have always claimed: through Scripture, through the Spirit, through the church. So in that sense, there is mediation, but not replacement. The church does not take the place of Christ but acts under his reign. Authority is operative but not usurped by mankind. That affects the “feeling” of this kind of waiting: If Christ is already reigning, then humans are not hanging on desperately until he comes to fix what they’ve screwed up. It is less frenetic, less filling a void.

It is more of an exercise in faith: There is no void into which one must step, and no danger of overstepping the bounds. It is more about living into a reality that is believed to exist, even if it can’t be seen fully yet. Placed side by side, the options become visible: In response to absence, Shiʿi Islam seeks to make authority operational in the hands of men, even at the risk of overstepping. Ultra-Orthodox Judaism does the opposite, protecting itself against that risk by refusing to resolve the problem of absence at all, and therefore runs the risk of under-reaching. Christianity, as I see it, claims that mediation has already happened in Christ, and that his authority is presently being exercised, without the need for replacement or re-creation. So the real question is not how a tradition waits, but what it believes is absent, and how it attempts to address this problem. If it’s a problem to be solved, one is likely to overreach; if it is a limit never to be overcome, one risks under-reaching. If the relevant authority is not in fact absent, on the highest levels, at least, everything changes.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)