Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

The paradoxes of Lucien Goldmann -- The dialectic of grace -- The elect and the damned -- Wagering it all -- In the world and yet not -- Theory : the tight fit of homology -- Homology -- Dialectics? -- Is Pascal among the Marxists? -- By way of conclusion : Marxism as a secular and anti-secular project -- The stumbling block of Fredric Jameson -- Supersession versus a dialectic of ideology and utopia -- Sidestepping religion -- Magic and fantasy -- Feuerbach versus Marx -- The politics of fantasy -- Apocalyptic -- By way of conclusion : towards a dialectic of religion -- The Christian communism of Rosa Luxemburg -- Tactics -- A reformer's zeal -- Betraying the spirit -- A little church history -- Anti-clericalism -- Christian communism -- Consumption versus production -- Completing Cristian communism -- Freedom of conscience -- The enticements of Karl Kautsky -- Text, history, context -- The slipperiness of sacred texts -- The Bible as a cultural product -- Reconstructing economic history -- Differentiation and slaves -- Slaves and other modes of production -- The sacred economy : prolegomena to a reconstruction -- Transitions -- Christian communism -- The forgetfulness of Julia Kristeva -- Flushing out Marx -- Monocausality, or, the taboo of the mother -- The apostle, both ways -- Other-than-human love -- Crucifying the pathologies -- Collectives -- The fables of Alain Badiou -- Banishing the one -- Theology and the event -- A generic procedure of religion? -- Pascal's miracle -- Kierkegaard's encounter -- Paul's fable -- Conclusion : necessary fables -- The conundrums of Giorgio Agamben -- The search for Paul -- Christology, or the problem of Jesus Messiah -- Faith, law and grace as placeholder of the void -- Pre-law, or trying to make sense of Paul -- Conclusion : relativising theology -- The self-exorcism of Georg Lukács -- A world abandoned by God -- Leap-frogging Christianity -- Autobiographical exorcism -- The Bible and the beekeeper's manual -- An apparent absence? -- Warm Marxism -- Autobiography -- Welshness -- The working class -- Conclusion : the vanishing mediator of the Baptist chapel.