Towards a Contemporary Australian Retrieval of Sacral Imagination and Sacramentality

Abstract

A theologian of Ghana argues that the West is declining in adherence to Christian Faith because its cultural meanings which are constitutive of the human and the cosmos tend to suppress human sacral imagination and the sacramentality of the cosmos. This author wagers that the Ghanaian's position is correct and goes on to explore how this suppression of sacral imagination has taken place through the cultural changes in the West from pre-modernity to modernity and up to the present. Against the argument behind these cultural changes the author seeks to establish the validity of sacral imagination and sacramentality through a critical appropriation of the human subject as incarnate spirit and symbolic animal. A contemporary Australian spirituality might thus retrieve a capacity for sacral imagination adequate to the mystery carried in this land and to the redemptive hope needed in Australian society.