Abstract
Affected by the rise of Nazism, German authors Karl Löwith in 'Meaning in History' (1949) and Eric Voegelin in 'New Science of Politics' (1952) returned to Christian and classical sources of political thought to counteract 20th-century totalitarian tendencies. Their secularization theories relate Christianity and modernity to relay the message that Christianity needs to understand its relation to history to make progress. Hans Blumenberg in 'Die Legitimität der Neuzeit' (1966) defends modernity against the secularization charges of Löwith and Voegelin.