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The World to Come
Lloyd Geering observes that we have come not only to the end of the millennium, but to the end of Christendom, the dissolution of Christian orthodoxy, the failure of modernism, and the end of old mythic certainties. We are entering a new era, the global era, which is post-Christian. We must find some way to end humanity's war with itself and with the planet. In The World to Come, Geering sketches his vision of a new global spirituality that incorporates the best of our legacy from the past and promotes care for all living creatures and the earth itself.
192 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1999
20 people want to read
About the author
Lloyd Geering
36 books1 followerSir Lloyd George Geering ONZ GNZM CBE is a New Zealand theologian who faced charges of heresy in 1967 for his controversial views. He considers Christian and Muslim fundamentalism to be "social evils". Geering is Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. He turned 100 in February 2018.
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June 26, 2024
THE THEOLOGIAN SAYS WE ARE AT THE “END OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA”
Lloyd George Geering (born 1918) is a New Zealand theologian and minister who faced charges of heresy from the Presbyterian church in 1967 for his views; he is Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. He has written other books such as From the Big Bang to God; Tomorrow's God: How We Create Our Worlds; Reimagining God: The Faith Journey of a Modern Heretic; Christian Faith at the Crossroads; Coming Back to Earth from gods, to God, to Gaia; Wrestling With God; The World to Come: From Christian Past to Global Future, etc.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1999 book, “Some of the material in this book has, in earlier drafts, been delivered as lectures to a variety of public audiences…. Some lectures recently published as Does Society Need Religion? are reflected in Chapter 12 and elsewhere.”
He explains in the Introduction, “this book attempts, tentatively, to take stock of just where we humans are in the evolution of human culture on this planet, to explore the significance of entering a new era that is both global and post-Christian, and to look into the future.” (Pg. 6) he continues, “The Christian tradition has contained many different elements in the past, some of which were in their day rejected and condemned. Ironically, it is some of those dissident elements of the old tradition that may well contain seeds of the religious dimension of the future global society. The global era will, in some respects, be very different form the Christian era which preceded it, but there will also be continuity. The transition from one to the other forms the subject of this book.” (Pg. 9)
He wonders, “what is the future of Christian civilization? There are many signs that all is not well… just as the ancient roman calendar disappeared with the decay of Roman civilization, the decline of Christian civilization may ultimately lead to the adoption of a new and non-Christian calendar for universal use around the globe. If this is so, then we could be living through the end of the millennium in more ways than one. The year 2000 AD could be marking the end of the last Christian millennium, and the end to all Christian millennia.” (Pg. 23)
He points out, “in the nineteenth century this widespread confidence in the Bible was badly shaken, as biblical scholars began to study it with the modern tools of literary and historical criticism… This new understanding of the Bible has by no means dampened the interest, indeed the enthusiasm, of scholars and the Bible has been more studied in the last 150 years than in the previous two millennia. This has enabled us to gain a more reliable picture of the ancient world reflected in the Bible. The Bible’s value remains high, but it is a value of a quite different order. The Bible remains our chief collection of extant records describing the origin and early development of the Judeo-Christian path of faith, but it no longer prescribes, as it was once thought to do, what devout people of all later ages should believe and do.” (Pg. 40)
He asserts, “we now have an explanation for the types of religious experience that led people to attribute their thoughts to divine revelation. What has been claimed as revelation from a divine source of knowledge is in fact the product of human creativity, stretching back over a very long time and involving countless people… Each religious tradition has exempted itself from natural explanations, while applying them to all the other traditions. In today’s global world, this will no longer do. We land ourselves in this inconsistency by not acknowledging relativity. If Christians use logical or natural explanations to explain … the foundation of Mormonism on the visions of Joseph Smith, these explanations must be applied to the Judeo-Christian tradition as well.” (Pg. 80) He adds, “In the last 200 years we have become increasingly aware of the relativity of culture, morality and now of religion. It means that all religious traditions are of human origin---none is exempt.” (Pg. 81)
He summarizes, “For most of the post-Christian world, the Bible will no longer be regarded as the Word of God, but it will continue to be of value as an historical testimony to Judeo-Christian origins and as an essential resource for the understanding of past western culture. It will take its place alongside other great religious classics from the various cultures of the past. Jesus will no longer be hailed as the saviour of the world, or as a divine figure… God will no longer be conceived widely as an objective spiritual being---one who personally hears and answers prayers, and who guides human history from behind the scenes. God language, if used at all, will be treated as symbolic… If there is ultimately to be no authoritative ecclesiastical institution, no definitive set of doctrines and no clearly definable personal figure to hold Christianity together and promote it, it may at first appear that Christianity will simply disappear… But Christianity will not disappear without a trace. When it is understood as a ‘stream of cultural influence,’ Christianity… stretches far beyond its ecclesiastical institutions, and is likely to last longer than any of them.” (Pg. 87)
He suggests, “We have come to the end of the Christian era and have entered the post-Christian world. Moreover, this global, post-Christian world is, for better or worse, largely the product of the Christian west. The problems that have resulted can be solved only within the context of an embryonic global society. If the global society emerges, it will require humanity to develop a new consciousness and a new form of spirituality.” (Pg. 148-149)
He proposes, “Can there be some global form of spirituality which does for the whole of humankind what the previous religions did for their cultures?... it must arise from and involve the whole human race… it will need to be naturalistic and humanistic in origin and form… It will not be built on some external authority, since people live today more by internalized authority. The vision, goals and values to be found in any global religion must possess their own inherent power to win conviction; they must appear to be self-evidently true to all humans irrespective of their cultural past.” (Pg. 153)
He concludes, “We are coming to the end of the Christian era and find ourselves standing on the threshold of the global era… In the world to come we humans find we are dependent wholly on our own inner resources, yet not so much individually as collectively… Whether the global society will ever be fully realized, we cannot say. What we can do individually is to hope for it, try to visualize it, and do our utmost to bring it to pass… The realization of the global society will require from the whole of humanity creative thinking, self-sacrificing endeavor of the highest order, and all the mutual goodwill of which we are capable.” (Pg. 162)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying contemporary/progressive/Radical Christianity.
Lloyd George Geering (born 1918) is a New Zealand theologian and minister who faced charges of heresy from the Presbyterian church in 1967 for his views; he is Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. He has written other books such as From the Big Bang to God; Tomorrow's God: How We Create Our Worlds; Reimagining God: The Faith Journey of a Modern Heretic; Christian Faith at the Crossroads; Coming Back to Earth from gods, to God, to Gaia; Wrestling With God; The World to Come: From Christian Past to Global Future, etc.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1999 book, “Some of the material in this book has, in earlier drafts, been delivered as lectures to a variety of public audiences…. Some lectures recently published as Does Society Need Religion? are reflected in Chapter 12 and elsewhere.”
He explains in the Introduction, “this book attempts, tentatively, to take stock of just where we humans are in the evolution of human culture on this planet, to explore the significance of entering a new era that is both global and post-Christian, and to look into the future.” (Pg. 6) he continues, “The Christian tradition has contained many different elements in the past, some of which were in their day rejected and condemned. Ironically, it is some of those dissident elements of the old tradition that may well contain seeds of the religious dimension of the future global society. The global era will, in some respects, be very different form the Christian era which preceded it, but there will also be continuity. The transition from one to the other forms the subject of this book.” (Pg. 9)
He wonders, “what is the future of Christian civilization? There are many signs that all is not well… just as the ancient roman calendar disappeared with the decay of Roman civilization, the decline of Christian civilization may ultimately lead to the adoption of a new and non-Christian calendar for universal use around the globe. If this is so, then we could be living through the end of the millennium in more ways than one. The year 2000 AD could be marking the end of the last Christian millennium, and the end to all Christian millennia.” (Pg. 23)
He points out, “in the nineteenth century this widespread confidence in the Bible was badly shaken, as biblical scholars began to study it with the modern tools of literary and historical criticism… This new understanding of the Bible has by no means dampened the interest, indeed the enthusiasm, of scholars and the Bible has been more studied in the last 150 years than in the previous two millennia. This has enabled us to gain a more reliable picture of the ancient world reflected in the Bible. The Bible’s value remains high, but it is a value of a quite different order. The Bible remains our chief collection of extant records describing the origin and early development of the Judeo-Christian path of faith, but it no longer prescribes, as it was once thought to do, what devout people of all later ages should believe and do.” (Pg. 40)
He asserts, “we now have an explanation for the types of religious experience that led people to attribute their thoughts to divine revelation. What has been claimed as revelation from a divine source of knowledge is in fact the product of human creativity, stretching back over a very long time and involving countless people… Each religious tradition has exempted itself from natural explanations, while applying them to all the other traditions. In today’s global world, this will no longer do. We land ourselves in this inconsistency by not acknowledging relativity. If Christians use logical or natural explanations to explain … the foundation of Mormonism on the visions of Joseph Smith, these explanations must be applied to the Judeo-Christian tradition as well.” (Pg. 80) He adds, “In the last 200 years we have become increasingly aware of the relativity of culture, morality and now of religion. It means that all religious traditions are of human origin---none is exempt.” (Pg. 81)
He summarizes, “For most of the post-Christian world, the Bible will no longer be regarded as the Word of God, but it will continue to be of value as an historical testimony to Judeo-Christian origins and as an essential resource for the understanding of past western culture. It will take its place alongside other great religious classics from the various cultures of the past. Jesus will no longer be hailed as the saviour of the world, or as a divine figure… God will no longer be conceived widely as an objective spiritual being---one who personally hears and answers prayers, and who guides human history from behind the scenes. God language, if used at all, will be treated as symbolic… If there is ultimately to be no authoritative ecclesiastical institution, no definitive set of doctrines and no clearly definable personal figure to hold Christianity together and promote it, it may at first appear that Christianity will simply disappear… But Christianity will not disappear without a trace. When it is understood as a ‘stream of cultural influence,’ Christianity… stretches far beyond its ecclesiastical institutions, and is likely to last longer than any of them.” (Pg. 87)
He suggests, “We have come to the end of the Christian era and have entered the post-Christian world. Moreover, this global, post-Christian world is, for better or worse, largely the product of the Christian west. The problems that have resulted can be solved only within the context of an embryonic global society. If the global society emerges, it will require humanity to develop a new consciousness and a new form of spirituality.” (Pg. 148-149)
He proposes, “Can there be some global form of spirituality which does for the whole of humankind what the previous religions did for their cultures?... it must arise from and involve the whole human race… it will need to be naturalistic and humanistic in origin and form… It will not be built on some external authority, since people live today more by internalized authority. The vision, goals and values to be found in any global religion must possess their own inherent power to win conviction; they must appear to be self-evidently true to all humans irrespective of their cultural past.” (Pg. 153)
He concludes, “We are coming to the end of the Christian era and find ourselves standing on the threshold of the global era… In the world to come we humans find we are dependent wholly on our own inner resources, yet not so much individually as collectively… Whether the global society will ever be fully realized, we cannot say. What we can do individually is to hope for it, try to visualize it, and do our utmost to bring it to pass… The realization of the global society will require from the whole of humanity creative thinking, self-sacrificing endeavor of the highest order, and all the mutual goodwill of which we are capable.” (Pg. 162)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying contemporary/progressive/Radical Christianity.
August 18, 2023
Excellent book about the future of Christianity and the future of the planet. We must work together to save the planet in order to save humanity. Well thought through and presented.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews