1956 Geloof en Wetenschap : Orgaan van de Christelijke vereeniging van natuur- en geneeskundigen in Nederland - pagina 227

TOWARD A THEISTIC CREATIONISM

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that. For all practical purposes the neat distinction between immediate and mediate creation has usually been dropped about as soon as made. Many Reformed thinkers have either failed to sense the significance of the doctrine of mediate creation or — and this would be even worse — have because of an ethnic bias in their souls shied away from working out the implications of this doctrine so clearly laid down in Scripture. The writer of these lines is quite convinced that it is high time to shake ourselves free from a non-Christian vestige that all too frequently evinces itself whenever we discuss the matter of origins. When we proceed as though that which can rightfully be predicated of primary creation can also be predicated of secondary creation then we are setting out in a seriously objectionable direction; and the outcome will be a theology of origins that is in important aspects quite in error (1). One of the features of this objectionable theology is the treatment given in it to time. Ever since St. Augustine wrote that creation was „non in tempore sed cum tempore" time has been treated as though it were a dimension that began after creation had ended. Under the influence of Augustine's dictum men have dealt with creation as an activity that antedated time. This is a serious error. It is a construct which the Bible is at considerable pains to obviate. It may verily be said that nothing is set forth more plainly in the Genesis record than that God's creative activity and the passing of time were contemporary; days and nights (whether „days" be taken to mean solar days or aeons of time is six of one and half a dozen of the other for our present purpose) were already following each other in regular sequence all the while that the Creator was busily engaged in mediate creation. St. Augustine's dictum may be allowed to stand when it is taken to refer to primary creation; it is to be rejected when the reference is to what we call mediate or secondary creation. Mediate creation was decidedly in tempore. Closely related to this highly objectionable treatment of time is a second objectionable feature, one that immediately follows from the former, namely, the sub-Christian treatment given to process. He who denies, or fails tot confess, that creation (in its secondary sense) was in tempore, cannot admit that creation had a processional dimension; he will be inclined to the view that creation and process are mutually exclusive concepts. It need surprise no one that adherents of the lessthan-Christian view of creation which we are rebuking think they smell fire and brimstone whenever the dimension of process is ascribed

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