Critical Political Theology in Education: Sanctifying Profanation and Cultivating Creative Love

ABSTRACT This article examines whether political theology can be implemented in education while avoiding oppressive value imposition and simultaneously preserving the capacity to transmit essential educational values. The central argument demonstrates that critical political theology (CPT) in education resolves the fundamental tension between unconditional student love and meaningful value inculcation through an innovative synthesis of Giorgio Agamben's political theology, expanded apophatic theology, and critical educational theory. Agamben's call to “profane” oppressive sacred values, freeing individuals without preconditions, has inspired the Whatever Love model—unconditional teacher–student regard. Yet this raises the challenge of imparting love itself, which CPT addresses, enabling the paradoxical “sanctification of profanation.” From this emerges Creative Love in Education—a relationship where teacher and student function simultaneously as lover and beloved, each recognizing the other as constitutive of their distinct consciousness. Within this framework, educational values emerge as necessary consequences of preserving the love relationship itself.