Iconoclastic Theology

F. LeRon Shults is Professor at the Institute for Global Development and Planning at the University of Agder and Research Professor at the NORCE Center for Modeling Social Systems in Kristiansand, Norway. He is the author of Iconoclastic Theology: Gilles Deleuze and the Secretion of Atheism (EUP, 2014) and Practicing Safe Sects: Religious Reprodution in Scientific and Philosophical Perspective (Brill, 2018). He is co-editor of Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Religion (Bloomsbury, 2016).

• 1. Hammering Theology; The Science of Non-Existing Entities; Anti-Oedipus, Anti-Christ; Anthropomorphic Promiscuity and Sociographic Prudery; Sacerdotal and Iconoclastic Trajectories; The Secrets of Theism; 2. Breaking Theological Icons; The Inversion of Platonism; Christ as the Image of God; Anthropomorphic Prudery and Sociographic Promiscuity; Kant and the Genitality of Experience; Spinoza and the Vertigo of Immanence; Nietzsche and the Rising of the Simulacra; Overturning Religious Figures; 3. Loosening Theological Chains; The Dogmatic Image of Thought; Christ as the Logos of God; The First Shackle: Analogy of Judgment; The Second Shackle: Identity in the Concept; The Third Shackle: Opposition of Predicates; The Fourth Shackle: Resemblance in Perception; The Liberation of Thinking; 4. Releasing Theological Events; Paradox and Becoming; Christ as the Incarnation of God; The Aleatory Point; The Line of the Aion; The Metaphysical Surface; Sexuality and Pious Intentions; The Liberation of Acting; 5. Assembling Theological Machines; Desiring-Machines; Christ as the Judgment of God; Theology and the Territorial Machine; Theology and the Despotic Machine; Theology and the Capitalist Machine; Theology and the War Machine; The Liberation of Feeling; 6. Secreting Atheism; The Production of Atheism; The Gospel According to Deleuze; The Forces of Theology; Bibliography.

In this exciting, tightly-argued and in some ways scandalous book, F. LeRon Shults deploys a sensitive yet shocking reading of Deleuze to offer us a new atheism. Unlike so many of the inept atheist movements of our age, his ideas are attuned to the deep calling of religious icons and to new sciences. His rigorous research in theology, easy style and the original tracks he cuts through Deleuze and Guattari's works make this a thrilling moment in the critique of religion and the invention of new theologies.