Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- Of old timber and lovers -- On theology -- Relativising theology -- Theological suspicion -- Synopsis -- Chapter One Atheism -- Banishing the gods? -- 'New old atheists' -- The death of God? -- Theology versus studies in religion -- Atheists and theology -- Marxism and theology -- Aufhebung -- Feuerbach and beyond -- Freedom of conscience? -- Anti-clericalism -- Protest atheism and theism -- Conclusion -- Chapter Two Myth -- Prolegomenon -- Poligony -- Mythos and logos -- Political myth -- Adorno's wariness -- Discernment -- Anticipation, or utopia -- Adorno once again -- Fragments: from motivation to analogy -- Sorel: irrefutable motivation -- Althusser: a totality which has not yet achieved its concept -- Ontology -- Badiou: forcing a mythic truth -- Deleuze and Guattari: reverse causality -- Analogy -- For example . . . -- Barthes's denotation -- Jameson's apocalyptic -- Early Christian communism -- Conclusion -- Chapter Three Ambivalence -- Scandal and folly -- Papal power -- Heresy -- Missions, of the Californian variety -- Folly to the rich -- Wilhelm Weitling -- Father Thomas J. Hagerty -- Norman Gottwald -- Towards a Marxist theory of political ambivalence -- The unwitting -- The implicit -- Broken connection -- The fall -- The witting -- Glimpses -- Full throttle -- By way of conclusion -- Chapter Four History -- Method: search for an anti-fulcrum -- Paul's shaky transitions -- Anti- or pro-empire? -- Multivalence -- Hesitating on the bridge -- Between the sacred economy and slavery -- The fate of Christian communism -- Conclusion -- Chapter Five Kairós -- At the crossroads of time -- Eschatology -- Ákairos -- Measure and immeasure (Negri) -- By way of conclusion: political grace -- Chapter Six Ethics -- Ethics, morality and moralising -- Care of the self -- Greasing the other.

Quailing before the Real: Terry Eagleton -- The ethics of ethical failure: Judith Butler -- Blasting away the other -- Towards ethical insurgency -- Producing the other -- Chosen people -- Good and evil -- Towards the unethical and the unmoral -- Conclusion -- Chapter Seven Idols -- That hideous pagan idol: Marx and fetishism -- The idol link -- In search of a lost treatise -- Idolatry goes underground -- In the tinker's thinking shed -- Towards political iconoclasm -- On graven images: from liberation theology to Theodor Adorno -- Liberation theology -- Adorno: barricading the fetish transfer -- Conclusion -- Conclusion On Secularism, Transcendence and Death -- Secular and anti-secular -- Transgressive transcendence -- Death -- References -- Index.