Bodily Resurrection

Anglican Envoy to Rome Walking Back Denial of Christ’s Bodily Resurrection

on January 15, 2019

An interim director of the Anglican Center in Rome is qualifying and expanding earlier statements that appear to question the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ after coming under criticism from clergy and lay leaders across the Anglican Communion.

The Very Rev. Dr. John Shepherd, a retired Australian clergyman, was last week named as temporary director of the permanent Anglican Communion presence in Rome.

“The Resurrection of Jesus ought not to be seen in physical terms, but as a new spiritual reality,” Shepherd, then Dean of Perth, stated in a 2008 Easter video message recently shared by Australian clergyman and blogger David Ould. “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’s earthly body.”

“The Gospel accounts are not historical records as we understand them,” Shepherd continued. “They are symbolic images of the breaking through of the resurrection spirit into human lives.”

The director of the Anglican Center acts as an ambassador from the See of Canterbury to the Roman Catholic Church, participating in ecumenical efforts between the two Christian churches.

Tyler O’Neil of PJ Media quotes me on why this appointment has become such a controversy:

“It is not sensible to appoint a representative who does not share the core beliefs of the group he ostensibly represents,” Jeff Walton, Anglican program director at the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), told PJ Media in a statement Monday. “The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is a core belief of Anglican Christianity and is taken seriously by the vast majority of the 80 million plus Anglicans worldwide.”

Furthermore, doubting the Resurrection “ties directly to a key question: is the Bible trustworthy?” Walton added. “The Gospel writers and the creeds clearly state that Jesus died, was resurrected, and ascended into heaven. If we cannot trust scripture on this important claim, then our faith has nothing to stand upon.”

Jump forward to this week, and the Anglican Communion News Service is doing damage control:

“There has been speculation in the press and on social media about my views on the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Part of this is based on a sermon I preached in 2008.”

“It is my faith that Jesus rose from the dead and I have never denied the reality of the empty tomb. The risen Christ was not a ghost – he ate and could be touched – but at the same time he appeared in a locked room (John 20. 26) and vanished from sight (Luke 24.31) and he was often not immediately recognised.”

While Shepherd acknowledges making the 2008 statement, he doesn’t refute the content of the message.

The resurrection was an extraordinary physical event, and the truth of it is not a negotiable addition that Christians may embrace or take issue with as they see fit.

Shepherd’s questioning of the literal bodily resurrection is characteristic of modernist thought commonplace among oldline Protestant clergy in the mid-20th century. As modernism and its corresponding skepticism of the supernatural receded, even younger progressive clergy now regularly affirm Christ’s resurrection from the dead.

I have called for Shepherd’s dismissal from the office, and suggested that he be quickly replaced with someone who can faithfully represent Anglican Christianity and spearhead ecumenical relations with the Roman Catholic Church.

Read O’Neil’s full coverage of the controversy here.

  1. Comment by Elizabeth Schaetzke on January 15, 2019 at 9:48 pm

    Anyone who spreads the idea that the physical resurrection of Jesus did not take place, cannot and must not call himself a Christian. Period. End of story.

  2. Comment by senecagriggs on January 16, 2019 at 1:34 pm

    The attack on the faith forever mimics the serpent in the Garden.

    ” Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the
    garden? ”

    “Yea hath God said…?”

    The attack never changes.

  3. Comment by gary on March 30, 2019 at 1:55 pm

    The problem for the claim that Jesus was bodily resurrected is that we have no confirmed, uncontested eyewitness testimony of his alleged post-death appearances. The overwhelming majority of scholars (including the overwhelming majority of Roman Catholic NT scholars who very much believe in the supernatural and miracles) reject the claim that the Gospels were authored by eyewitnesses or even the associates of eyewitnesses. For all we know the detailed appearances stories in the latter three Gospels are rumor, legend, or pure fiction.

    Therefore, all we are left with is the agreed upon fact that soon after Jesus’ death some of his followers believed that he had appeared to them in some fashion. For all we know…they all saw a bright light…and believed it was an appearance of Jesus.

    That is not very good evidence upon which to base one’s entire worldview.

  4. Comment by Gary on May 2, 2019 at 5:44 pm

    Most Bible scholars now doubt the eyewitness authorship of the Gospels. Isn’t that a problem for the believability of this alleged event?

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