The relationship between history and theology is dependent in the twentieth century on the modernist controversy. As a result, history is understood first as a critical science and later, after the 1970s, as a reflexivity in a discursive practice (M. de Certeau). Theology, first identified with the history of dogmas, then becomes a hermeneutical task of revelation and tradition.
The modernist crisis has thus left in history a conflict between reason and faith, more precisely between extrinsecism and historicism that theologians and historians have tried to unravel over time. They did so by resorting to philosophy to maintain multilateral consultation with it. M. Blondel intervened by returning back to back the two positions in conflict with his reflection on the creative tradition. Historical-critical exegesis and, to a lesser extent, the history of dogmas have benefited from this plurilateral conversation. But then history and theology had to enter into a second multilateral conversation with hermeneutical philosophy. Here again, historical exegesis and the history of dogmas have learned about the fruitfulness of historical distance (P. Ricoeur) and the always partial analysis of prejudices (H.-G. Gadamer). The subject’s involvement in the implementation of sciences slowly conquered and still still disputed has nevertheless benefited historians and theologians alike.
But today there is resistance to these two conversations between the three partners, history, theology and philosophy …
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