The core statements of Christian faith have never been self-evident. They have always been disputed. They have also been tenaciously reasserted by Christian authorities. For many observers the exercise of power and the claim of tradition offer a sufficient explanation of why they have been defended. But that leaves unasked a more interesting question: what would be lost if these positions were softened or abandoned?
I believe that what is at stake is the operative imagination: the way we see the world, from which follow consequences for our inner conversation and actions.
We may, for example believe that germs exist but never think of them or take them into account in the way we eat and wash. This shows that they are not part of our operative imagination.
As it is described in Scripture and experienced by Christians subsequently the operative Christian imagination holds together in a dramatic story a number of large convictions about God and the world. They stand in strong tension with one another and with any conventional wisdom.
They may be summarised in this way. God takes exuberant delight in the world and loves each human being. This love lies behind the metaphysical mayhem involved in the Son of God becoming human. His brutal sending out of the world by crucifixion reflects the human capacity for evil. His rising from the dead shows God's unconquerable love and the hope we have beyond death.
The characteristic energy of Christian faith comes from holding together these elements in the imagination. God's love is shown both in becoming human and in rejection. Human murderousness is the step towards Christ's rising and human hope. The tension between total love, total rejection and total reaffirmation expresses itself in the defiant and exultant Pauline cry that nothing can separate us from God's love. The depths of the 'nothing' have been fully weighed, and the result is a faith that cheerfully touches all aspects of life and fate, however grim.
The persistent Christian defence of a personal God, of Christ's divinity, of the power of sin, of Christ's resurrection, and of life after death underlines the importance of the imagination. If God is seen as distant and Jesus as just a good human being, or if life after death is written out, faith will lack its original power and energy.
It is difficult to maintain high tensions in any operative view of the world. We naturally move to harmonise the