Economic Theology and the Death of God in the Context of the Crisis of Neoliberalism

In light of the ongoing political and economic crises in the twenty-first century, this study aims to apply the discourse of political theology, alongside Nietzsche’s concept of the death of God to an understanding of neoliberalism and the problems it faces on a global level. However, because of the centrality of sovereignty in political theological discourse and the view of neoliberalism as diffusing sovereignty in favor of an ordered system, I attempt to further develop an offshoot discourse of political theology referred to as economic theology. This discourse allows a theological signature of power to be traced through the history of Western governmentality that is continually rationalized over time. The fact that this rationalization, I argue, culminates in the contemporary neoliberal order which, by exteriorizing and alienating knowledge in the name of rationality, undermines this process of rationalization and leads directly to the crises that are currently being faced, illustrates the after effects of the death of God as Nietzsche announced it in the nineteenth century. As such, the crisis of neoliberalism as a manifestation of the death of God necessitates that we disabuse ourselves of the illusion of neoliberalism as an ordered system and embrace a perspectivist, paralogical mode of knowledge legitimation