Yes, Dayspring, like others I wonder who you are.  Assumedly you are ‘from on high’.

And yes, I watched the clip you suggested and found myself singularly underwhelmed.

Also, given the tone of your response to Michael, it seems that you are deeply convinced in your views.  That of course is fine as long as you can be gracious towards those bible-loving Christians and dedicated scientists who seek to look unblinkered at both Scripture and the geological and biological records for the hand of God, and find that hand in the richly figurative words of the early chapters of Genesis and the richly fashioned world of the Cosmos’s exceedingly ancient history.

I suspect we need to agree to differ graciously.

Thank you for that Jeremy.  Your daughter’s experience strongly echoes a member of our family's time at university in the 1980s.  Then she was criticised by a leader in an evangelical church for ‘dabbling in politics’ and so found her way, happily, into more liberal settings which were well rooted in Jesus’ commitment to the marginalised.

Putting the clock back further, my own experience of the CICCU in the 1950s echoes various elements already expressed in this thread.  I was involved with the CICCU but became increasingly unhappy with their exclusivism and, along with others, the poverty of their pastoral commitment to new converts.  As a result, and somewhat belatedly, I was drawn to the Cambridge Pastorate which, though seen as nudging in a ‘liberal’ direction by at least some CICCU members, proved to be a Christ-centred enterprise with strong and compassionate pastoral elements.  It’s leading lights at that time were Stanley Betts, vicar of Holy Trinity and Bill Skelton, chaplain of Clare College.

Thank you for that spirited piece Clare.  I greatly appreciate your enquiry about church growth and your nuanced views on liberal and evangelical Christians.  Having previously worshipped in an evangelical church for many years I would echo your implied point that such churches are often better at evangelism than addressing the multi-faceted pastoral needs of the congregation and local community. 

My wife now attends our local church (I am a member but too housebound with illness to attend) and we both find the level of care, godliness and concern for mission in this ‘middle-of-the-road’ church (one which might be called ‘liberal’ by others) exemplary.  The team clergy and readers have a refreshing teaching ministry and deep pastoral commitment.  Their involving of church members is commendable.  For example, in relation to the recent new appointment of a team rector, the congregation was circulated with a questionnaire as to what qualities we would like to see in such an appointment.  The 70 or so replies were carefully collated and discussed by a PCC day away.  In turn, we were kept carefully briefed at every stage of the appointment process through the parish magazine.  We are praying for new beginnings with the advent of our new rector and anticipate committed lay involvement in the pastoral and missional needs of the wider community.

Evangelism is fine where it pays heed to listen as well as speak.  So often answers are offered to questions that individuals are not asking and there can be little attempt to see ‘where people are’ before seeking Christ’s ways to meet their needs or encourage their aspirations.  The pastoral agenda will seek to address the whole person – physical, psychological, social, relational, as well as the spiritual.

Dayspring, I wonder whether the difference between our approach to the early chapters of Genesis links to perspectives that the Reformers wrote about, namely Special Revelation and General Revelation.  I suspect you and I agree on Special Revelation through which God reveals himself through specific times, places and people, supremely, of course, in and through his son Jesus Christ and the giving of the Spirit. 

The Bible also points to a God who reveals himself through General Revelation, ‘in nature, in history, and in human existence’, to quote the Calvinist Berkouwer.  We see this perspective, for example, in Psalm 19:1: ‘The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork’ and in Romans 1:20: ‘Ever since the creation of the world [God’s] eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made’.

And so I have no problem with a God who works and reveals himself in a general sense through natural processes.  This concept of ‘General Revelation’ once more gives the mandate to explore God’s creation and observe what can be observed in the present and in the past and, as several of us have argued on this thread, evolutionary theory fits into this exploration.

And I do not deny that God can create without subjecting what he creates to process and maybe he did that in relation to angels.  We have no way of knowing.  And yes, he could have created human beings in that way but (and here is the difference) we have evidence to the contrary in geological, anthropological and general biological observation and analysis.

And belief in Jesus’s miracles doesn’t gainsay any of this.  Interestingly, he always took what was there (be it a blind man, loaves and fishes, a storm-wracked sea).  There don’t seem to have been any clever tricks of working wonders out of nothing.  God is a God who uses his own raw material through sudden event and/or process.

You write, ‘If we have sufficient faith to allow that God is able to create these angels without recourse to natural processes which both Scripture and nature seem to agree on, surely God is able to create man without (if one takes a giant leap of faith and assumes evolutionary theory to be correct) having to resort to aeons of time and enormous amounts of death and struggle?’

Perhaps we differ too in our understanding of ‘faith’.  I do not see faith, in the biblical sense, as gritting our teeth against the evidence – whether that evidence is theological, psychological, biological, geological or historical.  As Graham so clearly argues, we need to acknowledge the disparities between Genesis 1 and 2, bringing our faith to those passages to discern an understanding of the wonders of creation without, at the same time, ignoring the value of General Revelation and what is revealed through scientific enquiry.

Thank you for those suggestions Clare.  'Jesus of Montreal' is one of my top favourite films, offering a richly creative re-visiting of the Gospels and their outcome.

Dayspring, I wonder whether the difference between our approach to the early chapters of Genesis links to perspectives that the Reformers wrote about, namely Special Revelation and General Revelation.  I suspect you and I agree on Special Revelation through which God reveals himself through specific times, places and people, supremely, of course, in and through his son Jesus Christ and the giving of the Spirit. 

The Bible also points to a God who reveals himself through General Revelation, ‘in nature, in history, and in human existence’, to quote the Calvinist Berkouwer.  We see this perspective, for example, in Psalm 19:1: ‘The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork’ and in Romans 1:20: ‘Ever since the creation of the world [God’s] eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made’.

And so I have no problem with a God who works and reveals himself in a general sense through natural processes.  This concept of ‘General Revelation’ once more gives the mandate to explore God’s creation and observe what can be observed in the present and in the past and, as several of us have argued on this thread, evolutionary theory fits into this exploration.

And I do not deny that God can create without subjecting what he creates to process and maybe he did that in relation to angels.  We have no way of knowing.  And yes, he could have created human beings in that way but (and here is the difference) we have evidence to the contrary in geological, anthropological and general biological observation and analysis.

And belief in Jesus’s miracles doesn’t gainsay any of this.  Interestingly, he always took what was there (be it a blind man, loaves and fishes, a storm-wracked sea).  There don’t seem to have been any clever tricks of working wonders out of nothing.  God is a God who uses his own raw material through sudden event and/or process.

You write, ‘If we have sufficient faith to allow that God is able to create these angels without recourse to natural processes which both Scripture and nature seem to agree on, surely God is able to create man without (if one takes a giant leap of faith and assumes evolutionary theory to be correct) having to resort to aeons of time and enormous amounts of death and struggle?’

Perhaps we differ too in our understanding of ‘faith’.  I do not see faith, in the biblical sense, as gritting our teeth against the evidence – whether that evidence is theological, psychological, biological, geological or historical.  As Graham so clearly argues, we need to acknowledge the disparities between Genesis 1 and 2, bringing our faith to those passages to discern an understanding of the wonders of creation without, at the same time, ignoring the value of General Revelation and what is revealed through scientific enquiry.

Hello again, Dayspring.

You’ve taken me ‘unawares’ by asking whether angels evolved.  Unlike human beings and the natural order, I suspect angelic beings are not susceptible to scientific enquiry – to careful observation, controlled experiments and tests to ascertain their genetic material, DNA and carbon-dating.

The Bible seems clear that these divine messengers were created, but biology, palaeontology and anthropology have to be silent before the mystery of these creaturely beings.  As Colossians 1:16 has it: ‘…for in him all things in heaven and earth were created, things visible and invisible…’

And so, to summarise my argument, ‘all things’ have been created by God.  For angels that may have been ex nihilio without an evolving process but we have no way of knowing.  For all the visible creation, homo sapiens included, there is the wonder and mystery of process, of change, of development over long stretches of time.

I wonder whether you heard the service from St John’s College, Cambridge this morning with its focus on Darwin and at which Professor Simon Conway-Morris, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the university and a Christian, preached.  He spoke well about the wonder of God’s ‘very good’ creation, its process, mystery, beauty, design and God-given intention.  An altogether worshipful service, praising our glorious creator God.

Thank you Mark for your perspectives on this debate and no, I don’t feel you are taking my name in vain since my views are similar to yours.

Dayspring, I rather agree with Pluralist’s implication  that you are perhaps seeing the Bible as a text book, in the sense that you take the surface meaning and seem to believe that every statement, observation, proposition and narrative is self-evidently true in the literal sense.  You do of course allow for metaphor and simile with regard to Jesus’s declarations about him being the door, etc.

I wonder though where you stand with regard to Psalm 19:4-6 where the sun is described as ‘running its course’ and talks of ‘its circuit’.  Do you allow this to be poetic language or would you argue that since the Bible declares that the sun is on the move then (never mind Copernicus and friends) the sun must circle round the earth and not the other way round.  And what about all those floods clapping their hands and those hills that sing together for joy, in Psalm 98:8.

I cite these examples in order to question your literalism.  If truth can be expressed poetically, metaphorically and symbolically (and the clue to this links with our ‘scientific’ observation of what the sun, floods and hills tend to do or not do) then why do you have a problem where scientific enquiry (‘all truth is God’s truth’, once again) fills out and complements the biblical account and nudges us to understand that, for example in the early chapters of Genesis, truth can be figurative and representational?

I think Graham’s bid for ‘redaction criticism’ of the Bannabas Fund’s two editions in response to Ben White is perfectly reasonable.  To examine how the editor (readactor) has moulded the argument to express his or her theological understanding is a valid enterprise.

Andrew, why should such a venture be suspect?  It is surely self-evident that the two versions of David Zeidan’s piece are presented for two different clienteles: Fulcrum is offered the more palatable edition (although this is still defensive and accusative at times) and the Barnabas Fund is given what one can only assume is the unabridged edition, with its polarising blast at Ben White’s review.

Redactive criticism engages with such presentations as, for Fulcrum, ‘Ben White’s review … is a robust critique of the author’s stance’ and, for the Barnabas Fund, ‘This is not a normal book review, but ideological propaganda camouflaged as a book review’.  As I argued in an earlier message on this thread, the latter edition offers, in effect, a strongly partisan view as it accuses Ben White of having a contrary partisan view.  This, I feel, is not a style that does credit to the Barnabas Fund.  Where is the spirit of its namesake, ‘the son of consolation’?

Dayspring, you write, 'If you believe creationism is incredible then it follows you do not believe God can create'.

Do you really hold to that view?  Can't you see that 'all truth is God's truth' and that God is not at a tangent to any 'truth', be it theological, physical, psychological, historical, scientific, symbolic or ontological?  And so it is completely in accord with the rich revelation of Scripture to see the truth of the early chapters of Genesis as symbolic and representational and to feel perfectly at home with the notion of a Creator God who, wonder of wonders, has set in train this glorious cosmos whose mysteries can be plumbed by scientific enquiry, careful observation and logical theorising.  The theory of evolution dovetails beautifully into this call to understand the truth of Creation and its slow, slow unfolding.

Ben, that is such good news about Philip Rizk.

I must say that in re-visiting Bens’ review of Patrick Sookhdeo’s book and re-reading his highlighted sections of David Zeidan’s response I find myself coming to two main conclusions.  First, I so not see BW’s piece as including ‘peronal attacks’ on PS; I find his review clearly expressed, raising perfectly valid queries and offering reasoned counter-arguments.  Second, in contrast, I find DZ’s response at times unhelpfully defensive and in places charged with accusative and dismissive language.  The issues are of course hotly contested but surely clarification is not helped by unduly emotive language.

It seems tragic that the vital matters around an understanding of Islam are so rarely put forward in an even-handed way that avoids demonisation and illiberality.  It seems that any such attempt to do so can be met with accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘leftist, liberal, post-modern’ prejudice.  Conversely, it can be equally hard to talk of Israel and America’s roles in their handling of Middle Eastern affairs in a fair-minded way that can safely criticise policies and attitudes where appropriate and commend whenever more generous-spirited views emerge.

These are big issues and they won’t go away.  Let us seek less polarised views and greater empathetic listening to ‘the other side'.

Thank you Ben.  I do hope you and others will be able to secure the release of Philip Rizk.  I have signed the online petition and the petition on Facebook.