PayPal and Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel is embarking on an unusual intellectual journey this fall—delivering a sold-out four-part lecture series on the biblical figure of the Antichrist. The private lectures, which will be held at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, represent the latest evolution in Thiel’s increasingly public theological interests that intertwine his Christian faith with his concerns about technology’s potential to enable authoritarian control.
The series, organized by the nonprofit Acts 17 Collective, will explore “the theological and technological dimensions of the Antichrist” in four sessions across September and October. The lectures remain off-the-record, with no transcripts or recordings made public, but they draw upon the work of René Girard, the French philosopher who profoundly influenced Thiel during his Stanford undergraduate years, along with thinkers like Francis Bacon and Carl Schmitt.
