In his reply to my letter on his first sermon, my minister stated that I should await his resolution of a number of points that attracted my criticism of his 'literary-literal' divide in the second (this) sermon.
I will post a more detailed review of it in the next few days, d.v., but for now will give a rough response.
In some ways, overall, not too bad a treatment of the question; but in the end, unsatisfactory, theologically, IMO.
The minister started out discussing the poles of the debate: so called 'young earth' creationist (perhaps this should be called Historical Creationist, reflecting that it was the majority view of the church up until the mid 19th century) on the one side and 'atheistic evolutionist' on the other. He identified Richard Dawkins as a prominent representative of the latter, and rightly criticised Dawkins' portrayal of the debate as one between two alternatives; however I don't agree that the Bible allows a spectrum of equally valid views between the two poles.
He then went on to identify a number of alternative views, most the classical compromises that seek to harmonise the Bible and the conclusions of modern materialism. At least he mentioned the excesses of 'science' that transmogrify deplorably into 'scientism' where there is an excess of unrecognised ideology masked, and probably to its proponents as much as anyone else, as science!
The views he mentioned were the apparent age theroy, 'gap' theory, the day-age theory and theistic evolution. I think the day-age theory that he espouses is a sort of irrational 'stepped' evolution, so effectively a variant of theistic evolution, but without the full blown attempted melding of God's work as revealed and that of the created world's as imagined.
Many old war horses were trotted out during the sermon; such as science tells us not why, but how, that the Bible tells us why but not how, but failing to pick out the philosophical issues that lie beneath both; which I will attempt in my longer response.
At the end of the service, the compare ('reader' in Anglican terms), wanted us to put aside 'side issues' such as creation vs. evolution, and concentrate on Christ...this is a frequently heard comment amongst certain evangelicals, but it is a comment that betrays a narrow, and I think, impoverished theology...more on this later; but for now, just think on John 1:1-3, Hebrews 11 and the tension Paul teaches between sin, by implication the pre-fall creation, and the new creation.
In the end I thought it was an opportunity missed, both for the cause of Biblical understanding, and for that of God's relation to the world as both creator and covenenter. But more of this later.
