Experiments in a Mystical Atheist Political Theology: Metaphysics and Symbols

Abstract This paper develops a mystical atheist political theology drawing on Brook Ziporyn’s work, particularly his interpretation of Tiantai Buddhist metaphysics. Mainstream political theology rests on the idea that political concepts are secularized theological concepts. If true, this poses a challenge for mystical atheism, since this means that atheism is effectively barred from the political sphere. I argue that, on the contrary, mystical atheism offers both powerful concepts (such as conditionality, ambiguity, and reversibility) and appealing symbols (such as that of the monster) which enable us to reconceptualise power in political theology as arising from gaps rather than derived from sovereignty. Sovereignty on this view is not ontologically prior to gaps but rather the retrospective appearance of successful gap-occupation rendered invisible. I address the Augustinian objection that gap-power is merely privation—and therefore demonic—by showing that Augustinian political theology requires evil to be doing positive ontological work, and thus cannot be mere privation. Because political theology operates through symbols as much as concepts, I propose Godzilla as an organizing symbol for mystical atheist political theology: the monster that emerges from sovereignty’s “outside,” resists classification, and both threatens and sustains order simultaneously. This symbol is deployed to analyse nuclear weapons and transnational corporations as gap-powers at scale. The paper concludes that mystical atheist political agency cannot take programmatic form but must remain perceptual, as a capacity to perceive gaps where sovereignty-frameworks can see only absence.