Who is Tolerant?

John Brown cites something called The Evangelical Newsletter for this:

Tolerance can be exercised only by those who have well-grounded convictions... Those who have no such convictions, but who espouse polite doubt, agnosticism, skepticism, or downright nihilism, can only be indifferent, not tolerant. The two are by no means the same, and history has demonstrated the intolerance of those who claim that truth either does not exist or is humanly unattainable.

Amen!

I still believe Jesus when He says:

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6)

I follow a Lord Whose love for humanity is universal and Whose claim of Lordship is particular and non-negotiable. He is the way.

But that's neither a license or justification for intolerance. It is in fact, a call to tolerance of the highest order. That's why one of Jesus' first followers, Peter, writes:

Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. (First Peter 3:15-16)