Rev. Wayne Fraser thinks the resurrection of Jesus never happened.
Apparently, if we disbelieve in the central tenet of Christianity, “our eyes are opened to see so much more”. We can see that Christianity is essentially political, we can recite tired cliché’s such as speaking truth to power, instead of confronting and repenting of our own sin we can do something much easier: “confront injustice where we find it”, we can stop believing in Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, and we can tell each other things we don’t actually believe like “Alleluia! Christ is Risen”.
And people wonder why we fled the Diocese of Niagara.
From here (page 6):
When I became an adult, I realized the Sunday School teacher had been right. A physical resuscitation of a human body is impossible. The heart will not accept what the brain rejects. What do we celebrate on Easter morning? Without insistence on physical resuscitation, our eyes are opened to see so much more. Understanding the political and religious contexts of the execution of Jesus by Rome, we see the injustice of the state and the courage of the Anointed One to speak Truth to Power. “What is Truth?” Pilate asked, unable or unwilling to see it plainly standing before him. Freed from a literal reading of the gospel accounts of a physical Resurrection, we see the growing enlightenment of the disciples and experience the deep symbolism of the Easter story. We become Resurrection people, enabled to confront injustice where we find it, to love our neighbours as ourselves, to clothe the naked, feed the hungry and befriend the stranger. No longer having to believe the Crucifixion as a propitiation for the sins of the whole world, we can rejoice in the Original Blessings of this life and the At-one-ment of the Indwelling Spirit. Love over and around us lies and we can tap into that source of strength as Jesus did to forgive seventy times seven, to begin anew when we err and to nourish abundant life for all creation. On Easter we can sing together, “Praise with elation, praise every morning, God’s recreation of the new day.” And we can greet one another, “Alleluia! Christ is Risen
The Reverend Dr. Wayne Fraser is Interim Pastor at St.Paul’s (you remember, St. Paul the fellow who said “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” That puts Reverend Dr. Wayne Fraser’s preaching into perspective, at least) Dunnville and can be reached at fraserwayne@gmail.com.
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I think what he is trying to say is “Christ is risen because we are risen in wokeness’.
Unbelievable. How did we let it get to this sorry state. Maybe they are just trying to get one up on other denominations who allow atheists to lead their flock.
In his final address to his Pastors’ College,1891, The Reverend C.H. Spurgeon diagnosed the current, and what would become, the prevailing “downgrade”:the radical undermining of The Eternal Inerrant Holy WORD of GOD in the Divinity Halls; this the direct consequence of the 18c,19c and 20c ‘Higher Criticism’. In ‘The Greatest Fight in The World’ + Timothy 6 :12 he forewarns,”If you read the Babylonian books of the day, you will catch their spirit, and it is a foreign one, which will draw you away from The LORD your GOD. You also may get great harm from divines in whom there is much pretence of the Jerusalem dialect, but their speech is half of Ashdod: these will confuse your mind and defile your faith. It may chance that a book which is upon the whole excellent, which has a little taint about it, may do you more mischief than a thoroughly bad one. Be careful; for works of this kind come forth from the press like clouds of locusts. Scarcely can you find these days a book that is free from the modern leaven…but with your Bible you may always feel at ease.”
Notable now is the restructuring of Reformed polity in UCC, PCC and ACC to accommodate full control of which Candidates for Ordained Ministry are accepted;or not. What once began with the Call of GOD issued from His Pulpit now has downgraded into
Ecclesiastics’ control issued from a Committee board room.
The barren fruit of this was witnessed this past week at the public Memorial for 2018 Yonge Street van victims: a PCC Universalist cum LGBT Activist ‘Chaplain’ presiding: with no WORD of Holy Scripture, that through its Promised “Comfort” we may have an Eternal “Hope”; an amorphous prayer in the Name of the Nemo of the ‘None’ generation:The Very Name of The One True GOD not uttered once. Reach out and physically touch somebody, the ‘sermon’.
These century-old horses have left the barn, the forewarned Four
charging behind them.
Words fail me. He worships himself and his brain.
Just further proof that the diocese of Niagara with the clear blessing of the apostate primate and previous so-called bishops no longer accept the GOSPEL and worship their own god – the god of political expediency,
Technically, Dr. Wayne Fraser is committing a variety of naturalistic fallacy, which fallacy can be stated in short as attempting to drive an “ought” from an “is”. He is half-right in stating that “a physical resuscitation of a human body is impossible”. More precisely, extremely unlikely, under thermodynamics (second law of, entropy) and quantum mechanics, but, more pertinent, only extremely unlikely within a totally naturalistic system. He is, a priori, denying the supernatural, for there is no reason if one allows the supernatural, especially the deity asserted by Scripture, to disallow that deity, in conformity with the thermodynamics and quantum mechanics He endowed nature with, to reverse the process of death, even death on a cross. Naturalistic science has nothing to say about singular occurrences, only about aggregate statistics, of even the most extremely improbable events. Dr. Fraser’s naturalistic fallacy enters with his implicit “ought” from his metaphorical interpretation of the Resurrection narrative, albeit however “nice” (to be delivered with a clerical smile) and in conformity with the current fashion in ethical sentiment, (As my theology academic acquaintance asks, what grounds to we have for thinking that God is “nice” according to our concepts?) Disclaimer: a full treatment of this belongs to the realm of Philosophy; I am not a philosopher, I only play one in comment sections of blogs :-))
The Rev Wayne Fraser – nice old fuddy duddy!
I think it started with a Fr Crossan who left the Roman Catholic Priesthood about all of this kind of stuff who thus inspired our own former Bishop Michael Ingham of the Diocese of New Westminister not believing in Christ’s bodily resurrection
But
Not the only one
Not the only thing
Rev Gary Patterson who was minister of St Andrew’s-Wesley Pastoral Charge:
did not believe in:
Birth Sin
&
The Incarnation
He the became:
The Moderator of the United Church of Canada
Well,
at least they’re honest
It’s better that they do this than claim to believe in all of this but don’t, right!
But still it’s sad!
A Minister
A Bishop
A Moderator
All three have a service to provide
But with their beliefs
What service do they now have to provide?
How can they Spiritually Feed those of whom are attending where they serve?
Will those in the pews stay or leave?
I think that they leave either for a more Conservative Church or just nothing at all
How did they get this way
How was it allowed
Why did not someone do something about it?
So
the above’s thinking
Bible not literally taken
The Blessings of this life
Good Works
But
We’re Saved by
Grace
Not
Works
Ye must be Born Again
But
Truly
The Good Works part mentioned above by the Rev is good
Remember the bishop in C.S. lewis’s The Great Divorce? Here he is again, not that his ‘thinking’ ever went away. Same old hubris, too.
Yes, I certainly remember him! Nothing new under the sun.