 |
Sincerely believing that all Christians can unite in a worldwide initiative to spread the gospel, author Tonk presents this thoughtful material as a basis for inspiration and study, pointing the way to that hopeful result. The wide-ranging work embarks with the essential question of whether and how God speaks to humankind even now. Tonk has collected numerous prophecies arising from gatherings or conferences of different groups of Christians, prophecies that speak words from God in "our" contemporary language. He examines the meaning of holy scripture and specific beliefs of Protestantism, Eastern Churches, Western Catholicism, and Judaism in scrupulous detail, demonstrating his genuine ecumenical viewpoint. He also opines on such modern "strains" of theology as "Political Correctness" and "Generalized Sexual Confusion." He proposes a "Great and Holy Council" and suggests planning stages and an agenda for this envisioned global event.
The author is widely educated in history and theology and has notably spent significant periods of his life as a Protestant, a member of Eastern Orthodoxy, an Episcopalian, and a Lutheran. In 2017, he was received once more into the Catholic Church. Though the bulk of this well-structured treatise is concise and scholarly, a letter written by Tonk to his mother about the possibility of her joining the Catholic Church is casual, respectful, and reveals his ardor for the subject matter in a different, more personal light. Similarly, an imaginative analogy compares the possibility of Christian unity (his dominant theme) to the organization of an orchestra, with God as the composer and the Holy Spirit as music itself. It is rare to find someone as dedicated to spirituality in such a variety of contexts as Tonk. His work should serve to open the minds and hearts of believers to the opportunity for the worldwide Christian unification he propounds.