As Dave suggests, we should write to Archbishop Roger Herft in a courteous way and ask him why John Shepherd is allowed to deny essential Christian doctrines.
Not really. The guy speaking is John Shepherd, the Dean of the Cathedral in Perth (equivalent of Phillip Jensen). Roger Herft is the Archbishop there (equivalent to Peter Jensen).
Mind you, much of Shepherd’s language is reminiscent of Peter Carnley’s (the previous Archbishop of Perth & I’d guess the person responsible for Shepherd’s appointment), although I think that he takes it further than Carnley did.
I was sad watching the Easter message, & consider it to be the nearest thing to the hope that most non--Christian family members of people I bury have. It is not the joyous, life-changing, death defeating vitality that springs from Jesus triumph over the last enemy, death.
Then I listened to his sermon on 2nd March, & felt sad again. It is a wonderful explanation of the best hopes that non-Christians have about understanding who God is. He has obviously drunk deeply from evolutionary concepts, applying them to theology, but it seems to be a refinement of some earlier classical views including Feuerbach’s projection of our views of what we think God should be. What really surprised me was after a sermon which debunked the scriptures as being letters dusty from the 1st century, only recording the disciples understandings of what happened, & no mention of Jesus as being the full revelation of God, or even any acknowledgement of the Scripture’s understanding of Jesus being the visible deity, he followed the sermon with a wonderfully sung Latin version of the Agnus Dei (Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world). Maybe that was the choir’s protest against the sermon, saying “Hey Dean, look to the Lamb of God as the answer to the questions you posed in the sermon!”
Bishop Mulready of North West Australia had a letter in today’s West Australian thanking the Roman Catholic Archbishop Hickey for upholding the biblical account of Jesus’s passion death and resurrection.
It appears to have been filmed in his study for internet viewers - so don’t know if he has preached this message from a pulpit anywhere. But he certainly is unaccepting of Paul’s clear teaching in 1 Corinthians 15 - especially vs 14 - 19 ;
14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.
Kevin,
to refute the Dean’s message, some might point more to Thomas, who didn’t believe dead people lived again (even though he had seen the widow of Nain’s child, another child and Lazarus all brought back to life). He was a wet blanket for a week. Then Jesus appeared & he believed.
However, instead of trading Bible verses, & letting him undermine our understanding of them by “spiritualising” them, let’s use his own words to show his inconsistencies.
The Dean mentioned Jesus appearing behind locked doors etc, but re-interpreted it to the psychological understanding that his message will never die & so he lives on. (& {as Archbishop Peter Carnley said in a TV interview once} that is why the church is the body of Christ, for he (his message) lives on in us.) Yet if you link the Dean of Perth’s Easter message with his sermon on March 2, then his message has not lived on. In his sermon of the doctrine of God, our understanding of God changes according to our current understanding. The teaching of Jesus about God is no longer accurate, & his message is changed. So therefore, although the Dean says that Christ is risen spiritually, his message has gone the way of all flesh/grass, not lasting the way that Isaiah 40:7-8 says the word of the Lord will.
The 2 messages together show the inconsistencies of his views.
The Dean denies the physical resurrection of Jesus, but in practice he also denies the spiritual resurrection because he changes and challenges the teaching of Christ.
Bishop Mulready of North West Australia had a letter in today’s West Australian thanking the Roman Catholic Archbishop Hickey for upholding the biblical account of Jesus’s passion death and resurrection.
Perhaps that should be posted in the Syd Angs in the papers; David was a long-time Sydney Anglican before leaving for the deep north west, and he and Maureen are still regular visitors to Sydney (their children, their spouses and children are all in NSW)
Hmmm
reminds me of the Bishop in CS Lewis’ “The Last Divorce”.
He denied almost everything about Christ but bowed his head every time he referred to Jesus. Went back to Hell to see if he could get some Bible study groups going or something similar.
I might be a liberal, but I’m a lot closer to central station than that.
If Christianity is to have any chance of acceptance or belief by the vast masses, I believe arguments such as the truth or otherwise of the ressurection are superfluous. The basis of faith in God should be as it was for the first believers---- an inate( in the genes created by God ) belief that we are not masters of our own fate, as opposed to the dictators dictum “man is master of his fate”.
Dogs, cows and apes are God’s mammals with 99&#xor; more of our genes, but they don’t have the genes that seek a God.
If the Bible said Jesus walked out of the cave, got into a 1932 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud and drove off into the ether, I would believe it. We have to believe it because their is no way of proving otherwise. The human incongruities of time and the supernatural are not an issue, because God is beyond these human concepts.
You remind us of the necessity of having faith. That is marvellous. Without faith, Christianity is dead.
However the Bible isn’t merely a book of tales which inspire us to faith. It is firmly based in history, and encourages us by writings such as 1 Corinthians 15, to recognise that there were facts of history which give a very solid basis of fact for our faith. This anchorage in human history is vital, for the message we believe says God did intervene into history at the right time, by sending his son who lived the perfect life, showing us what God fully intended for us, but also died on the cross for our sins, and on the 3rd day rose again. Because it is a fact of history, we believe that we receive the blessings he promised. If, as Paul states, Jesus did not rise again from the dead, then we of all people are to be most pitied.
Paul knew that his claims would be challenged, so lists off names of witnesses in 1 Cor 15, who could testify to the truthfulness of what he was saying. Now 2000 years later, it is harder to prove.
Doug, I live in the Perth Diocese, and I have to say that the liberal brand of Christanity embraced by the diocesan leadeship isn’t exactly bringing them flocking in. That would be putting it mildly. There are only a handful of congregations with the youth and vitality which anyone in Sydney would expect of Anglicanism, and the majority of those are Evangelical and therefore disavow liberal theology.
It is one of the abiding mysteries of liberal theology that its practitioners profess to preach it in order to have a chance of reaching “the vast masses” but it has been quite obvious for years that the masses just want the church to “tell me the old old story”.
Certainly the first believers had an innate sense that God was in charge - but then in the Classical World, everyone, pagan or Christian, had that sense. What was unique about New Testament Christianity was Jesus and the miracle of his resurrection; and the apostles often appealed to belief in this relatively recent event, as it was evidence of what God would do to the life of the believer.
Take that away, and there is no gospel any more, just - as you say - an innate belief that God is in charge.
Paul knew that his claims would be challenged, so lists off names of witnesses in 1 Cor 15, who could testify to the truthfulness of what he was saying. Now 2000 years later, it is harder to prove.
