In September 1986, just before the discovery of his cancer, Taubes had lectured in Heidelberg […] His topic was “Reprieve from the Gallows: The Apocalyptic Experience of Time, Past and Present”. Taubes had been ruminating upon that theme since his doctoral dissertation […] As he now formulated it, the Western experience of time was marked by the apocalyptic notion that history was a “reprieve.” It was neither eternal, as the ancients had supposed, nor an eternal recurrence, as Nietzsche  imagined. Rather, time was experienced as having “urgency.” Moreover, contra Nietzsche,  there was no innocence to be recovered, for humans are all guilty debtors. “As debtors we have a limited time to repay our debts,” he added gnomically. “In the phrase ‘The Kingdom of God is near,’ ” he said, “what is of interest to me is not the question of what the Kingdom of God means, but the plausibility of the notion that it is near.” That is, Taubes interpreted Jesus’s statement to mean that we  ought not to take current institutions too seriously, for sudden transformation is always possible. So too, it was not the theological substance of Paul (in which Taubes did not believe), but Paul’s emotional stance toward the world— colored by Gnosticism and apocalypticism— that Taubes valued.  These themes inherent in Christianity, Taubes told his audience at a Salzburg symposium, are “mines,” capable of exploding existing institutions. He referred to Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, in which the apostle famously stated, “The time is short. From now on  those who have wives should live as if they had none; those who weep, as if they weep not; those who are joyful, as if they were not;  those who make a purchase, as if they had nothing. For the form of this world is passing away. I want you to be free of all concern.” Taubes glossed this as demanding “a loosening of one’s relations to the world.”

Jerry Z. Muller, Jacob Taubes: Professor of Apocalypse