Wrestling with God in a changing world

Internationally celebrated New Zealand theologian and author Emeritus Professor Lloyd Geering, in Masterton this week to launch his autobiography, says his acquittal on heresy charges almost 30 years ago would not happen today.
"If the trial was today I would never be acquitted. The church is more conservative now than it was then and the trial would have had a completely different outcome, " he said.
"More mainline churches are coming closer to sects, which are growing, while churches are rapidly declining in numbers because liberals are abandoning them."
Professor Geering, 88, was speaking on Tuesday ahead of the launch at Hedley's Bookshop in Queen Street of his latest in a line of 11 books he has written since 1968.
He described the autobiographical work, Wrestling With God, as a retracing of his own personal "pilgrimage" through the decades since he touched off a firestorm of controversy that still smoulders, with his unfettered take on theology and Christian belief that included his acquittal in 1967 on charges of heresy brought against him by the Presbyterian Church.
"The controversy just happened. Once it started it was hard to get away from and anything I said was carefully scrutinised by my critics. I was simply reflecting what had been commonplace."
During his 'trial' he claimed that the remains of Jesus lay somewhere in Palestine, and that the resurrection had been wrongfully interpreted by churches as a resuscitation of the body of Jesus.
He also rejects the notion that God is a supernatural being who created and continues to look over the world.
Professor Geering is a member of The Jesus Seminar and a participant in the Living the Questions programme, an alternative to the Evangelical Alpha course.
In 1988 he was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and in 2001 a Principal Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. He is Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at Victoria University in Wellington.
Professor Geering said he has lectured frequently in Masterton over the past 30 years and first visited the town in the early 1940s.
The latest book, he said, is a distillation of his own experiences through his years of his study, discourse, and controversy that will hopefully "enable people of similar mind to think their way through" their own interpretation of reality and religion.
Theology is becoming more autobiographical, he said, and "all theology comes through experience".
"It's not only a personal life story but traces how my thinking has developed. I was 18 or 19 when I embraced Christianity and accepted a fairly liberal stance that has gradually been changing ever since. I would probably now be seen as very radical.
"I have come fairly recently to identify with Colin McCahon and his religious experience expressed in his paintings. Even though we never met, despite both of us attending Otago Boys High at the same time ? he was reaching the end of his tether before I became aware of his work ? but he has since had a personal impact for me.
"I look back at the things I thought and they were very conservative. The world and cultures throughout the world are changing. We have to work at our own final answers and make your own pathway."