Atheistic Theism: Brook Ziporyn’s Mystical Atheism and the Exclusivity of Beatitude
Topoi June 30, 2026 Benjamin Birkenstock, Gregory S. Moss
The authors introduce the concept of 'atheistic theism' to reconcile monotheism with Brook Ziporyn's concept of mystical atheism. They argue that Ziporyn's principle of intersubsumption—the idea that any determinate content is indistinct from any and all other contents—leads to this reconciliation. In atheistic theism, both atheism and monotheism become contradictory: absolute intersubsumption requires a theistic transformation of atheism and an atheistic transformation of monotheism.