The Task of an Archaeo-Genealogy of Theological Knowledge: Between Self-Referentiality and Public Theology

This article addresses the epistemic and political problem of self-referentiality in theology within the context of post-secular societies, as a demand for public relevance of faculties of theology within the 21st-century university. It focuses on the epistemological emergence of public theology as a distinct knowledge such as human rights, and ecological thinking, contributing to the public mission of knowledge production and interdisciplinary engagement. The study applies Michel Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical methods in dialogue with Michel de Certeau’s insights into the archaeology of religious practices through a multi-layered analytical approach including archaeology of knowledge, dispositifs of power, pastoral government, and spirituality as a genealogy of ethics. As a result of the analysis, it examines the historical conditions of possibility for the emergence of a public theology, and how it needs to be thought synchronously with other formations of knowledge, allowing theology to move beyond its self-referential model of approaching dogma and the social practices derived from it. The article concludes programmatically that the development of public theology requires an epistemological reconfiguration to displace its self-referentiality through critical engagement with a public rationality framework, as an essential task for the public relevance and contribution of theology within contemporary universities and plural societies.