From the late 1980s onwards, several prominent Iranian philosophers and theologians questioned the notion of religious reform in Islam. While following in the wake of earlier contemporary “reformers”, both Sunni and Shi’i, ‘Abd ol-Karîm Sorûsh distanced himself from them from the vantage point of epistemology. Indeed, he engaged in an epistemological critique of Islamic religious knowledge (macrefat-e dînî) and envisioned diverse ways of “new theology” (kalâm-e jadîd). In turn and throughout his own endeavor to elaborate a new – or modern (jadîd) – Islamic theology, Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestarî has taken stock of alleged and actual attempts at religious reform. In addition, Mostafâ Malekiyân expounded a typology of reforms that sheds light onto the distinct intellectual and sociopolitical contexts of mid- and late 20th century Iran. Parallel to these philosophical approaches to the modern history of religious knowledge, religious legal scholars such as shaykh Mohsen Kadîwar assessed the contemporary developments in Shiite Islamic law (fiqh) and more broadly the historical evolutions of the Shiite political and legal tradition. Such assessments and others in the same line exemplify the critical turn that occurred in the last decade of the twentieth century in Shiite thought and especially in Iran. This very turn requires and allows a reassessment of the historiography of religious thought and institutions in contemporary Iran and Islam in general. First, instead of apprehending all changes through the lens of “reform” and “modernism”, one must distinguish the fields and disciplines in which intended and real changes were made. Second, we can distinguish the specific temporalities of each discipline of Islamic religious knowledge. Third, the contemporary history of Islamic theology can be divided into four periods or moment. Sorûsh ushered into the fourth period, which has spanned the last three decades and still continues. Together with Sorûsh, Mojtahed Shabestarî, Malekiyân, and Kadîwar developped comprehensive epistemological and methodological critiques of religious knowledge and Islamic heritage as well. Accordingly, “new theology” was first a critical break from the century-old tradition of religious knowledge. However, these authors and others have also lain the foundations for an actual new theology. In this purpose, they have elaborated new definitions of faith and religious experience. They have reconsidered the Shiite theology of religions and the issue of religious pluralism. Lastly, some of them ventured into the questioning of dogmas.