sent by email:

Dear Archbishop Herft,

I am writing to express my great disappointment at Dean Shepherd’s Easter Message which your Diocesan website published at the following url:
http://www.perthcathedral.org/images/VIDEO/Dean Easter 2008.wmv

In this message the Dean denied the physicality of Jesus’ resurrection body and resurrection appearances and, by necessity of his argument, the historical reliability of the Gospels which record those appearances for us.

I understand that individuals within the Church may wish to hold, in good conscience, various views on matters pertaining to the Christian faith but, surely you will agree, the Dean of a Cathedral is not just an individual in the Church. He is one of the most senior clergymen in your diocese and his words are listened to by many (not least, since your website promotes them).

I am also concerned that the Dean would hold a position at odds with the Anglican Articles of Religion which, in our ordination vows, we promise to uphold and adhere to. In this case the clear words of Article 4:

Article IV
Of the Resurrection of Christ
Christ did truly rise again from death, and took again his body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man’s nature; wherewith he ascended into Heaven, and there sitteth, until he return to judge all Men at the last day.
Being in the ministry myself I am well aware that Holy Week is extremely busy and you will no doubt have not reviewed (nor even felt it necessary to review) the Dean’s message. Now that Easter is over could I urge you to address this matter. I am sure that you, like so many other Christians around the world, are keen to hold out to as many people as possible the Christian hope given us in the physical resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, who on that first Sunday morning showed his hands and sides to his disciples and went on to eat breakfast with them and appear to the 12, and then more than 500 believers at a time.

Wishing you a joyous Easter, secure in the hope of the Resurrection.

Rev. David Ould
Neutral Bay, NSW

David Ould
http://www.davidould.net

So when are charges against him going to be filed?  Or are the protecting shepherds still asleep at the swithch?

When heretics like Spong are, far from being justly ejected from their respective branches of the Anglican Communion, celebrated and hailed as deep thinkers and avatars of a New Christianity, is it really so surprising that others line up to emulate them?  Who doesn’t want a fawning WaPo (or national equivalent) article on one’s self?

The orthodox have played well with others for far too long, and this is the result.  Our charity and meekness have been Satan’s playground.

Easter isn’t over though!  Thank God for that.

What do people think also of the Archbishop of Melbourne’s Easter message which is on Titusonenine
http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/11126/

Vacuous is perhaps the best description—salvation by (the mercifully unnamed MDGs) is nearer to the real message.

If the good Dean is right then we may as well all go home.  We certainly don’t want to waste our time going to church.

“And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. . . [I]f Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.  Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.”

--The Apostle Paul, from I Corinithians 15

In the US, these sentiments are shared by scores of Episcopal Priests and Bishops, although most of who disguise their disbelief better than this guy.  Is this guy representative of the Priests in his area of Australia?

Packing his bags for Lambeth no doubt. His heresy will be celebrated by the Ingham and the Schori disciples. Thank God for my Bishop Schofield and Archbishop Gregory. Christ was so alive today in our Cathedral in DioSJ...how sad for Perth’s.
The Lord has risen indeed.
Intercessor

The
Eroded
Church

Thank you Jesus for your sacrifice and for Rising again Physically to conquer death for all who believe to come to you and have eternal life in their belief, faith, repentance, forgiveness, and surrender to You!

Thank God the Bishop of Chicago left all that symbolic, spiritual nonsense out of his sermon today. He said that the problem with people is our stubborn tendency to prefer our symbols to remain solely symbolic.

What a complete contrast to what David Kupelian writes on WorldNetDaily (reprinted from 2004/02/27 today on the website:  http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=23485)!!!  HERE is what we as Christians need for our spiritual nourishment - NOT some petty would-be “great intellectual” Man-worshipped pointy-hat (or his deputy in the case of Perth, but just as much of a worthless scoundrel!!!) good-for-nothing’s denials of basic doctrine and faith in the name of “liberalism, inclusivity, MDGs, political correctness” and all that total, unadulterated, 100% JUNK!!!!!

Truly, it is infinitely better to stay at home and get THIS kind of preaching BY FAR than to sacrifice time, energy, money, etc. to support such THIEVES as those “liberal” COMMIES!!!!

[At least, where I went to church today, after nearly a whole year, I got something much more along Mr. Kupelian’s lines... Wish it were closer, oh well...]

Do you suppose Doubting Thomas would have had something to say about this?

What I love about this sort of claptrap is that the advocates of The Very Rev’d Dr. Shepherd’s sort can not answer two questions. First, if God is Truth then how is what you say consistent with God? And second, if what you say is true, then why should anyone bother with either God or the Church?

The revisionists can not answer either question. They attack the first question by denying the existence of truth. They attempt to answer the second by discussing the need for a spiritual journey. Neither response really carries any intellectual weight.

It really is a pity that clerics of the Very Rev’d Dr. Shepherd’s sort do not have the moral fortitude to pursue honourable professions for which they would be better suited such as being used car salesmen or mortgage brokers.

Celebrate Easter the Episcopalian way: Grill some burgers!

I shall confine my comment to one word, ‘Anathema’!

Got that? I’m staggered. One of the most senior clergymen in the country denying the physicality of Jesus’ Resurrection. 

C’mon David - don’t tell me you’re that surprised to hear this stuff…

Gee, how original.  How groundbreaking!  NO ONE has EVER thought of THIS before!  Give this man a cookie for he is in the vanguard of a new spiritual movement in Christianity!  I mean.. wait.. wha..huh?  Who’s Arius?  Oh.  Never mind.

And don’t forget the verse in Romans 10 that in essence states that if we believe that Jesus was bodily resurrected we will be saved.  All what we are seeing, Perth being the latest example, was predicted in Scripture, and we are admonished to have nothing to do with it.

“We need to challenge the belief that the Resurrection from the Dead was a physical resurrection”

I am reminded of the conclusion to Orwell’s Animal Farm, where the pigs and the human tyrants develop a resemblance so strong that no one can tell them apart anymore.

The same thing has happened with liberal Christians and atheists—can you honestly tell the difference these days?  I can’t.

Dean Shepherd should know there exist those who challenge the belief that he has any belief worth believing.  Has he read this lately?  I wonder…

May the LORD Almighty bless your efforts, Fr. Ould.

I’m sure Shori and her gang are preparing charges as we speak...but not against this guy - he fits right in with their beliefs…

Pathetic and cowardly…

I enjoyed this recent lecture by Bp Tom Wright, in a series on science and faith, entitled “Can a scientist believe in the resurrection?” It is actually about what can be determined from history, and the Dean in question might have profited from reading it. Bp Wright reaches very different conclusions, in a clear and compelling manner.

http://www.jamesgregory.org/tom_wright.php

Richard Crocker

ps Don’t be confused by the name James Gregory who, as well as being a major American comedian, was also an eminent early Scottish scientist!

If Jesus didn’t rise, Paul never met him and is therefore a gnostic and not apostolic so one would need to discard 45% of the New Testament, the writings of Paul. I don’t think the good gentlemen has thought this through completely.

How ironically is Shepherd+ named!  “Wolf” would be more accurate (with apologies to +Geralyn Wolf of TEC, who seems at least to believe the bodily resurrection of Jesus)!

I think that the Dean needs to quit the church and become a Baha’i. His comments exactly mirror their teaching on the Resurrection which of course was lifted directly from that old heresy which refuses to die because there are some who just wont let it, Arianism.

While he is at it, he would probably love their views of the equality of all religions. The only sticking point of course is their adherence to traditional sexual morality. Otherwise its a perfect match for this guy. He needs to get to steppin’. Who knows? Given how there is less there theologically for him to object to in the first place, he might be able to focus totally on corrupting that faith’s moral teachings and leave us alone.

I am sad to say that I am no longer shocked by this.  I am saddened by it.  I am angry that one who is in charge of a congregation of Christians is not one himself.  As a priest said in my youth, the Resurrection is not a doctrine of the Christian faith, it is the Christian faith!  If the bones of Jesus Christ are found rotting in some forgotten tomb or I ever lose faith in the physical resurrection of Jesus, then I will resign my orders and become either a Jew or a Buddhist. 

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

He states: “It is important for Christians to be set free from the idea that the Resurrection was an extraordinary physical event which restored to life Jesus’ original earthly body.”

Once you believe this, you are no longer a Christian. Period.

Ctowles, discarding Paul is precisely what revisionists want to do.  They hate Paul with a passion, and think that he led the church astray from its original roots.  In their alternative reality, early Christianity wasn’t really about Christ, but was more of a down-to-earth political movement based on Jesus’s social justice teachings (in short, a mirror image of today’s liberal church).  But then Paul came along and ruined it all with his talk of a divine Christ and sin and eternal life.  Read Dan Brown (if you can stomach it) and you’ll get the drift.  Paul is their scapegoat.

The revisionist agenda is to tear down the present church and re-erect on its ruins this imaginary version of a pre-Pauline Christianity where you don’t have to believe all that stuff about the Trinity, redemption and salvation.

"Then [Jesus] said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe’”
---John 20:27-29
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Caravaggio well captured the scene:
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_cult/courses/emotion/thomas.jpg

..need not require us to believe in the physical resuscitation of Jesus’ earthly body. People who find that concept difficult are by no means excluded from the Christian faith..

I want to thank you Dean Shepherd for reassuring me that I continue to be a member in the Christian Faith.  I had been very unsure if I was in fact, a Christian after determining that many of the things I read and believed in the New Testament were constantly being contradicted by priests, bishops and laity in TEC. 

As you said, I do find it “helpful” to hang on to what was a “symbolic” mention instead of an “actual” event of the physical resurrection of Jesus.  However, would you be so kind as to send me an updated New Testament, as mine seems to be inaccurate - filled with spurious and misleading information.

I would normally say, “Alleluia! Christ is Risen!” but, I would not want to offend you.

Wooly,

P. S. If you could please tell me what happens when I die, that would be most helpful.

Come to think of it...Dean Shepherd’s viewpoints are exactly where TEC is heading...of course TEC is 50 years behind but will catch up.
Intercessor

Ah, yes, so very avante guarde for the disciples to die for the image of resurrection only.  So very hip.  So now.........!  (This guy stuck in the 19th or 20th century?  Don’t the clergy have to do some kind of continuous education to keep up with archeology and history and theology?  Some seem stuck in certain phases of denial...or on the sandbars of time in the Nile...?).

What’s the big deal? He’s just trying to make the faith more user-friendly. We’ve been given license to beleive what we want and extend NT images as far as out imaginations will stretch.

yes better to stay at home home and watch the tv ministers...most of them are still Christians, or at least pretend to abide by Christian principals

Memo to The Very Reverend Dr. John Shepherd:

Please do not lecture Christians to disavow the centrality of their faith. For, despite what your title and position may be currently, you are NOT a Christian believer by any historical definition of that term. Please do the right thing.........repent of your blatant heresy or resign.

To paraphrase Flannery O’Connor,
“ If it’s only a symbolic resurrection to hell with it”

yes better to stay at home home and watch the tv ministers...most of them are still Christians, or at least pretend to abide by Christian principals

I have serious problems with most of them as well, but for other reasons.  Mainly summed up by worship of dollar signs, most of which they wish to convert from believers to their own pockets.  Or worshipping the gifts and forgetting the Giver.

your right ,Jim..money and especially money given to them, is a major emphasis in their ministries, they have big expenses (like TEC) ... and it often, too often, seems that the worship is of the gifts/give to get?  perhaps this is the real problem....why am I still a member of the Episcopalian church...what they say is not what I believe… so I look elsewhere to hear the Word of God..then I can still stay in TEC...but you are correct the tv ministers are often just as lost..their’s is not God’s Word/direction either.

How retro. How very early post WWII.
In the Great Divorce, c. 1946, C. S. Lewis describes an encounter between one of the Bright People and a proud bishop:

‘Mine certainly were [honest opinions]. They were not only honest but heroic. I asserted them fearlessly. When the doctrine of the Resurrection ceased to commend itself to the critical faculties God had given me, I openly rejected it. I preached my famous sermon. I defied the whole chapter. I took every risk.’

‘What risk? What was at all likely to come of it except what actually came—popularity, sales for your books, invitations, and finally a bishopric?

And the man’s name is Shepherd! For pete’s sake!!

John Shepherd, Dean of the Cathedral, denies the physical resurrection and Anne Rice defends it?

Appropriately, to quote a line from Cordelia in the vampire series Angel:

“What freakin’ bizzaro world did I wake up in?”
(--season 5 episode “You’re Welcome")

It’s very dangerous to be an atheist around vampires.  TOo much about them is predicated on the Faith. 

Video challenge:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NaSROohLzs

I’ll go with the latter, thank you!

st. anonymous,

Paul is everyone’s scapegoat :-(

I heard one Muslim guy once call our faith “Paulinity”

What a freakin shame he has so much company.....

You know, for a brief, hopeful moment, I thought he was going to make the point about how Jesus was transformed at His resurrection into a form the Apostles and Mary Magdalene didn’t recognize right away.  He didn’t just “wake up” like Lazarus, to die again, but AROSE, was transformed and taken up into heaven a bit later. 

But of course, he started with that simple premise and then ran off the end of the world with it.

So, now he’s asking us to believe that 10 of the 11 remaining disciples suffered violent, voluntary deaths proclaiming Jesus Christ Crucified and kinda, sorta, in spirit and vision only, Risen from the Dead?  THAT claptrap is what they gave their life for, denying the Roman Empire and Jewish Sanhedrin for?

Seems a bit unlikely to me....

KTF!....mrb

The ArchBishop’s PA (lovely lady) has let me know that the AB is away until the start of April. It would be quite a surprise to him to find so many concerned emails written in the meantime.
Any email you send will be forwarded on to the Dean himself. Please do remember to be polite and courteous. I, personally, expressed surprise that the AB would allow such unbelief to go out under his oversight. The AB is, of course, a man thoroughly committed to orthodox theology

This is the same old heresy that’s been kicking around for decades now.  Unbelievers have to explain how the disciples went from hiding and cowering in terror of the Romans to martyrs boldly sacrificing their lives for the Gospel.  Take out the Resurrection event and this transition makes no sense.  So the unbelievers just say that the disciples sat around talking out their fear and grief, and making up stories, and this Group Therapy Session (with, no doubt, much hand-holding and group hugging) set them back on the path to Self-Actualization.  So they all went out and became martyrs.

Yes, I know it still doesn’t make any sense.  But we’re not dealing with logical thinkers here.

Why is it important for Christians to be set free from the idea that the resurrection was a physical event?  Our faith hinges on the resurrection.  In his book ‘The Resurrection of the Son of God’ the Bishop of Durham refutes everything Bishop Shepherd says.  +Wright has also pointed out on more than one occasion the error of Dr Shepherd’s take on 1 Corinthians 15 on what Paul means with regard to the type of body with which we will be raised. 

“May you have a very happy and joyous Easter” Dr Shepherd concludes.  I find no joy, no reason to shout Alleluia, in the ‘gospel’ he proposes.

To take preaching seriously, you need a high theology of the Word of God. When your preaching announces that Jesus is the crucified and risen Lord of the world, things happen. The principalities and powers are called into account. Human beings who once thought the message of someone rising from the dead is ridiculous, actually find that the message of resurrection can transform their lives.

Read N.T. Wright’s interview here for a bit different perspective.

I mentioned the contrast with this and Anne Rice’s proclamation of the importance of the physical resurrection earlier in the thread.  Well, I just skipped ahead to her ‘authors notes’ in the back of “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt” and she cannot praise highly enough the works of N. T. Wright!  Wow.