This Gospel is a promise that is apprehended by faith, however, and cannot be proven by logic, reason, or the best of modern enlightened philosophy.

When we forget this simple fact – that our relationship with Jesus is based on the unquantifiable faith the Spirit has bestowed upon us – we humans have a tendency to construct philosophical structures to explain exactly what it is that we believe.

However, when it’s on paper, we can quantify it – and through these philosophical structures we can test the ‘orthodoxy’ of other people based on our own standard of theological ‘purity’. That is part of what Tony is reacting against: “who gets to determine purity? And maybe that’s not even the right question to be asking…”

Faith, however, is something that we are gifted with – but it’s not a gift that always remains the same. We either grow or die. We develop deep roots or remain always shallow. Faith is organic – it cannot be static.

I think Tony is merely pointing out a weakness in the way Modernists approached theology. Doing theology as in a post-modern culture allows the surrounding culture to determine the way the Gospel is preached: and that’s nothing new: we’ve been doing it on the mission front for centuries (Paul in Athens? African missions?).

But now, the mission field is in our backyard and we have to do the hard work of understanding a culture that we have, largely, withdrawn from and figure out how the Gospel promise of Jesus Christ can be shared with the people in our neighborhood.

“And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.”

That’s a pretty clear promise that we can cling to dearly and proclaim to others.

This is all the more urgently needed because of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey that just came out. On the question of “can many religions lead to eternal life?”, the tragedy isn’t just that 57% of Evangelicals affirmed this, but that it was also agreed to by 78% of the LCMS respondents. This is clearly not good news for the spiritual health of the churches in our Synod.
Maybe a renewed emphasis on catechesis is part of the answer. God help us.