As I mentioned, my explorations into Girardian thinking regarding the katechon were kicked off by my colleague David sharing a recent Wired article about the tech billionaire Peter Thiel. I didn’t know much of anything about Thiel at the time, and I typically don’t care what tech billionaires are up to or thinking. But I was struck by how Thiel had been going around giving lectures about the Antichrist and that his ideas were based upon his readings of René Girard. The article was also my first introduction to how the biblical reference to the katechon had been put to use in Girardian thought and modern political theology. I’d read Girard’s I See Satan Fall Like Lightning but missed his reference to the katechon and the work of Wolfgang Palaver at the end of the book.
So, what is Peter Thiel saying about the katechon and the Antichrist?
The most Girardian aspect of Thiel’s thinking concerns the coming Apocalypse. We’ve discussed this over the last two posts. Since the Gospel accounts have demythologized the sacred violence at the heart of archaic religion, modern societies have lost the ability to handle, direct, and discharge rising mimetic violence. Slowly, a war of all against all begins to tear the world apart. All this is foretold in the book of Revelation.
Revelation also foretells the coming of the Antichrist, a power that rises to global dominance. From Revelation 13:
The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months. It opened its mouth to blaspheme God and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.
The Beast in Revelation is “given authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation,” and “all the inhabitants of the earth” will come to worship the Beast. With the rise of modern dispensationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries, these lines from Revelation 13 were taken as prophecies about the coming of a global power ruled by an autocratic dictator. Because of this, Christians subscribing to dispensationalism have often been suspicious of “one world governments” and, in more recent times, anything related to “globalism.”
Here’s where Thiel’s ideas show up. According to Thiel, how does the Antichrist rise to global power? As the world faces increasing chaos and violence, it will look for a savior. The world will look for a katechon, a power with global reach that can hold back, contain, and restrain the enveloping darkness. The Antichrist will offer itself to the world as the katechonic solution to social dissolution and escalating bloodshed. As the katechon, the Antichrist will restore safety, peace, and prosperity. And so, the world makes a deal with the Devil. The Antichrist is given global power and authority to play the role of katechonic savior.
Those are the dominoes that fall. The world worsens and the Apocalypse looms. The world clamors for a katechonic savior, a power that can hold back and restrain the coming disaster. The Antichrist promises to be that savior but needs global power to do so. The world cedes that global power to the Antichrist. And that is how the Antichrist comes to rule the world.
I’m describing all this in biblical and apocalyptic imagery, which makes it seem occult and supernatural. But for Thiel, this is a straightforward material and political analysis. Liberty and freedom are ceded to centralizing governmental and economic forces that arrogate power for themselves by incessantly banging the drum about looming catastrophes—from global warming to AI to nuclear war to terrorism to economic inequality. Stated that way, one starts to see how Thiel leverages this suite of ideas to justify his support of right-wing politicians who decry globalization.
The pithy way Thiel has summarized his theories about the Antichrist is “Don’t immanentize the katechon.” This is a play on the political-theological maxim, “Don’t immanentize the eschaton.” An “immanentized eschatology” is a utopian vision of bringing heaven to earth, that the kingdom of God can be achieved by human effort from within history. Marxism, for example, has been criticized for trying to immanentize the eschaton by claiming it could establish a worker’s paradise on earth. You can see here Thiel’s (serious) joke about immanentizing the katechon. According to Thiel, it would be disastrous if we ceded our freedoms to a global power promising peace and security. It would be a catastrophe if the katechonic savior were realized upon earth.
Personally, I do find this bit of Thiel’s thinking worth pondering. In the past, political visions like Marxism were utopian. They promised heaven on earth. The political saviors of today, by contrast, present themselves more grimly and realistically. Today’s political saviors don’t promise heaven on earth. Rather, they promise to be strong enough to protect you from outside threats. They promise to be your katechon. They promise to fight for you and defend you. The salvation political saviors promise today isn’t utopian but katechonic.
And here, once again, we observe just how slippery all this is, how the katechon doesn’t hold back the Antichrist, as described in 2 Thessalonians, but becomes the Antichrist. The crux of Thiel’s theory is how the Antichrist gains power by promising to be the katechon. In biblical language, Satan is being used to cast out Satan. Satan prowls the earth, causing a rise in mimetic violence. Then we turn toward Satan to restrain that violence.
Which brings us to the katechonic irony of Peter Thiel. In Ross Douthat’s interview with Thiel, he asks Thiel a sharp question. (Douthat starts his question around the 55:30 mark.) Douthat asks whether all the stuff Thiel’s developing—from AI to military tech to surveillance tech—in order to prevent the Antichrist from taking over the world might contribute to facilitating that arrival. As observers of the interview have noted, it’s a question that seems to put Thiel on his heels, giving him pause and making him visibly uncomfortable.
That’s the irony, isn’t it? Thiel is playing katechon. Thiel is trying to prevent the coming of the Antichrist, to restrain its coming. That’s his agenda. And to accomplish that goal—notice this—he’s banging the catastrophic drum. Thiel then steps in as katechonic savior to prevent the Apocalypse.
And isn’t that precisely what Peter Thiel says the Antichrist would do?
