Critiques of messianic thought is taking place within philosophy and can be viewed in the light of a return of religion; the messianic can be thought of as a way to understand the contemporary situation. A returning messianic figure allows for a transformative and negotiating critique of how to think a secular messianism, and in a larger scale; a critique of a secular thinking which defines itself against the religious perspective. A messianism, redeemed from religious thought, appears as a model for rethinking faith and hope aswell as concepts of time and history.

This essay performs a close reading of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agambens book The Time that Remains, a Commentary on the Letter to the Romans, in which he states that the Pauline letter is to be read as the fundamental messianic text in the Western tradition. With the commentary Agamben argues that Walter Benjamin´s philosophy of history constitutes a repetition and appropriation of Paul´s messianic concept.

The essay shows in what way Agamben extend the messianic thought within the textual, and thus; that the messianic has special claims within literature and poetry and that Agamben, in his correlated reading of Paulus and Benjamin, points in a direction of a metaphysic of literature and reading. The essay seeks to, with Agamben, establish a critique of the messianic model and to discuss and reflect upon poetry as a particular possibility to perform and transform time and memory. I do so through an interpretative reading of the poets Ghayath Almadhoun and Marie Silkeberg book To Damaskus, aiming to define and show how the messianic model relates to the poem and a particular conception of history.