The historian, anthropologist and sociologist Michel de Certeau (1925-1986) compiled a historiographic map of social practices based on the concept of the “présence manquante”. In this article, the main philosophical implications, from French Hegelianism to Deconstructionism, are presented in the context of the Church crisis of the 70s. The topography of these echoes can be followed in those texts that are devoted to religious discourses such as “La rupture instauratrice”, L’étranger ou la union dans la différence (1969) or Le christianisme éclaté (1974). The contribution of Certeau to the theological debates should be analyzed from a perspective of hermeneutics, if not of rhetoric, and of discontinuity or rupture. The absence establishes the textual space which is ruled by the desire of a mystical body in retreat.