The peace process, at face value, was an agreement forged within a community to trust in common good intentions and willingness to honour commitments. In this respect, if in no other, it resembled a money system.
But what, exactly, was the medium of exchange? Trust? Optimism? Hope? Certainly not trust as we commonly understand it. Nor was there any great optimism. A degree of hope existed, but on its own would have amounted to no more than a naive, wet-if-warm-hearted aspiration. I believe the currency was faith. It seems ironic that the resolution of an ostensibly religious conflict should depend on such a commodity, but perhaps that is its core meaning.
Without faith, there is no hope, no optimism and no trust. Faith is different from all these in that it does not necessarily have a rational basis. This is not to say it is of a liturgical character: it can be a willingness to suspend scepticism to allow in the possibility of change.
Faith occurs blind, behind eyes closed for the leap and lips whispering in hope or prayer, a surrendering to forces beyond the individual's control. Faith is a prerequisite to transformation and transcendence precisely because it follows a certain abandonment of reason. Thus it allows for the possibility of the unimaginable miracle.
The magic ingredient in the creation of at least the hope of new faith in the North was Tony Blair. A born-again 1960s idealist disguised as spin-doctor's puppet, he seemed able to alter mindsets without frightening the horses with piety, ideology or historical baggage.
We celebrated Good Friday 1998 with such jubilation because we presumed that the signing of the Belfast Agreement must signal the subtle changing of mindsets as a result of the careful nurturing of an inchoate, as yet unstated, faith in the future. We celebrated the miracle. We knew that the faith we fancied Mr Blair had created in the parties was not in one another - it was too early for that - but in the capacity of the process to transport them all out of the darkness.
But unionism is incapable of such faith. It is not possible to possess faith and demonstrate its confidence only when things are going your way. Faith, by definition, lives in the dark. The whole point of the peace process was to take us out to the light. If we could have so easily achieved the things demanded by the unionists, there would have been no need for a peace process.
The peace process operated in a manner analogous to a money system, which depends on the continuing belief of a majority of its beneficiaries. It does not have the capacity to deliver all its promises at once, but survives because it is never called upon to do so. It preserves itself by a sleight-of-hand, by the exploitation of probability, as opposed to hard fact. Only by postponing confrontation with the known limits of the system can the benefits continue to accrue.
The Belfast Agreement issued enormous overdrafts to all participants in the hope that mutual self-interest would create a new reality. The Irish and British governments were extended trust within the process on the basis of a commitment to constitutional change, demilitarisation and prisoner releases.
Unionists were extended trust on the basis of their stated willingness to share power with nationalists. Loyalists and republicans were extended trust on the basis of their commitments to eschew violence in favour of politics.
REPUBLICANS displayed enormous courage and good faith in venturing into the process and bringing most of their extremists along. The people of this Republic, in readily jettisoning a number of core principles, showed enormous capacity for sacrifice based on a belief in the possibility of peace.
But certain other parties, it now appears, agreed to embark on the journey not because they believed in its possibilities but because they thought it would collapse on account of the bad faith of others.
The existence of such cynicism from the outset tells us that there was no magical moment. There was only a hothouse at the centre of a media circus, intent upon creating, at that moment, the requisite plume of white smoke.
Afterwards there was the babble of self-justification as various parties sought to redefine the nature of the agreement they had freely entered into, seeking to re-create the conditions whereby others would be seen to default. It seems clear at this remove that many participants saw the purpose of the exercise as the wrongfooting of republicanism.
Although the widespread euphoria suggested a "South African moment", it now appears that the delight of the two governments and the Ulster Unionists was to do with their belief that republicans had finally been tricked into the Orange trap, to be divested of military power and neutralised.
The celebrations, then, instead of announcing the transformation of the situation, signalled partisan triumphalism at the success of self-serving tactics. The agreement was a hoax, a sham, a carnival of bad faith.
In seeking to cash the post-dated cheque of decommissioning, the unionists knew they were placing the entire process under threat. In effect, they told the bankers that they would not start paying their mortgage until republicans had paid off their debts. The bankers, instead of sending them home with a flea in their ear, sought to foreclose on the republicans' debts. This told unionists they could hold the process to ransom.
Most astonishing was the way unionism was able to stay ahead in the propaganda battle, marshalling virtually every non-republican voice in the cause of concealing the true nature of the unionist trick, and creating the widespread belief that decommissioning was a moral imperative.
If good faith was present, unionism already had enough guarantees. But instead of perceiving the possibilities inherent in the mutuality of the transaction, unionists sought immediately to exchange their tokens for hard metal in the shape of guns. In doing so they displayed not just a deeply reactionary view of the process, but also a lack of faith in their own capacity to participate in it in a manner as beneficial to themselves as to others.
It is strange indeed that unionism, which has placed such emphasis on its own religiosity, should behave like this. David Trimble and his followers lacked faith in the process precisely because they lack faith in themselves. This being the case, it makes no difference whether the IRA decommissions or does not. Without faith, there is no future.