Today, the idea of the Last Judgment has faded into the background: Christian faith has been individualized and primarily oriented towards the salvation of the believer’s own soul while reflection on world history is largely dominated by the idea of "progress".

The atheism of the 19th and 20th centuries is —in its origins and aims— a type of moralism: a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history: a world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering of the innocent and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God. But although the protest against God is understandable, the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty.

—A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope. Faith in the last judgment and in Christ's return is first and foremost hope, the need for which was made abundantly clear in the upheavals of recent centuries.