Dr. Pence, in an earlier thread, implied that certain mainstream Judeo-Christian sects did not share the same faith that evangelicals consistently exhibit. I believe he is correct in his observations and hope that he might pursue the question.
At the core of the modern problem of faith, both public and private, lies the distinction or differentiation of the theologia supranaturalis and the theologiae civiles . (see E.V., CW, Vol. 11, History and Gnosis )
There is a significant, mostly implied, pressure within the mainstream churches for its membership to conduct their lives, including their spiritual lives, in a manner that emphasizes the civic virtues and to celebrate the spiritual aspects of their faith within the strict guidelines of doctrine which by its very definition eschews, or at the very least, limits, the reality of the engendering possibilities inherent in the Incarnation.
Without the ‘experience’ of the Christ/Incarnation/Logos the individual’s movement within the tension of reality is restrained, and pneumatic growth is retarded if not obliterated. Being can not move any closer toward Infinite Being. However, the engendering experience presents the danger of what Rudolph Bultmann referred to as “eschatological existence.”
The result has two possibilities: one’s faith can atrophy and potentially die, or that faith can devolve into a gnostic deformation. The atrophy is clearly discernible in terms of church attendance, while the gnostic derailment predicated on “eschatological existence” becomes possible if it’s experienced as the “integral existence of man.”
Man then, rightly exists in the “mystery of history” which includes that singular event of history, the Incarnation. But what of salvation emerging from the extremes of doctrinal existence and “eschatological existence?
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