But, when you suggest a book and put so much effort into defending why it should be read…then yes, that sounds like an endorsement. Does it mean I think you agree with everything the man writes…absolutely not…

The leap from #2 to #3 is unfair and false. As I’ve said, I may not agree with Harpur and may agree with your Victor Shepherd quote. This still doesn’t mean Harpur isn’t important, should be ignored, and isn’t a brother.

It is from Victor Shepherd who teaches at Tyndale and has lots of credentials attached to his name. I am cutting from an article that touches on Harpur that I found relevent to my position.

http://www.victorshepherd.on.ca/sermons/second_touch.htm

” In January 1969 when I was a seminary student, Tom Harpur was my instructor in Pauline literature at the University of Toronto . Harpur was considered a luminary in both the academic and the ecclesiastical firmaments. He had been a Rhodes Scholar in Classics. Upon returning from Oxford University he had served as a parish minister in Scarborough for seven years before his appointment to Wycliffe College , U. of T. Thereafter he was regarded as the brightest light in the Anglican evangelical orbit. He had a Christian radio program on Thursday evenings. He announced the gospel (and it was the gospel) everywhere. He had plans for evangelising the campus. He was friend to beleaguered Christian students on campus. He was also the most competent New Testament instructor I ever had.
Anyone who reads his material now, his newspaper columns and his books, is immediately aware that he repudiates everything I’ve mentioned. Not only does he repudiate it; he distances himself from it as thoroughly as he can. Everything he previously upheld he now disdains. He doesn’t believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God Incarnate; doesn’t believe in the atonement or the resurrection or the cruciality of faith; doesn’t believe that the church is the body of Christ. Years ago he resigned his credentials as Anglican clergyman.

What happened? I am not going to spell out every detail of what happened. Instead let us all be warned: regardless of what befalls us in life we must continue to ask for and submit to a second touch from our Lord. Second? More than a second; a twenty-second, a 222nd. And we must keep our eyes fixed intently upon

him. For if we do anything else, if we do anything less, we shall find not only have our neighbours become wooden for us (trees walking;) so has our Lord himself.

As often as I recall the help I received in my study of the apostle Paul, from the most able New Testament instructor I ever had, I become somewhat frightened; frightened enough to seek yet another touch, frightened enough to look yet more intently. For nothing could be worse than viewing as trees those whom God has created in his own image and likeness; nothing could be worse, that is, unless it was to view God’s own Son as no better either.”