Abstract
In this book the author employs kairology method - the theological hermeneutics of changes in cultural and social paradigms. He applies to the history of Christianity the metaphor of parts of day that C.
G. Jung has used in discussing the developmental stages of an individual (morning as childhood and first half of life, midday as crisis and afternoon as a period of adulthood and wisdom).
Halík sees pre-modernity as morning, midday crisis as the modern, secular period and asks the question of whether contemporary postmodernity and post-secularity is the beginning of the afternoon of Christianity. Whereas in the premodern period Christianity played the role of religio, the integrating power in society, modernity signals the dissolution of the "marriage of faith and religion".
Christianity in modernity is assigned the role of confesio, the so-called world view. In the context of peak globalization, even this form of Christianity and its claim to universal validity reaches a critical point.
Christianity in the times of third enlightenment seeks a new cultural form. Unlike religion in the sense of religio, this form can offer new hermeneutics (new reading, re-legere) of its foundational documents (gospel) and of its own tradition as well as of the signs of times (the social and cultural crises as kairos - opportunities for reform).
Just as St Paul guided early Christianity in its transformation from one of many Jewish sects into the wide context of oikumené at that time, a universal proposition of "new creature", so does Christianity at the cusp of its afternoon phase have to take a radically ecumenical form. By setting the example of love as self-transcendence, rejecting isolationism, egocentrism and "collective narcissism", the Christian community can help transform the process of globalization into a process of mutual sharing.