late in comparison with England especially; a country in which secularization of the kind that took place in France was resisted with a measure of success; a country which only became a democracy in 1918 (and even then, in a tragically flawed form).4 The truth is that these social and political developments took root only after the advent of modern theology; they conditioned its further development but not its creation. We come closer to the truth when we look for the preconditions that helped pave