1957 Geloof en Wetenschap : Orgaan van de Christelijke vereeniging van natuur- en geneeskundigen in Nederland - pagina 204

REVELATION AND EVOLUTION

167

could not be either intelligible, credible or operative" (International Bible Encyclopedia). In other words, if God had not given reason and intelligence to mankind in general, we would not even be able to understand special revelation. We believe that the two revelatons are coordinate und correlative. The one helps the other. As the Lord has given us binocular vision, so it has pleased Him to give us a twofold revelation for better perspective. Among Christians there are too many who have the eye with which they look at and through general revelation atrophied and the one with which they view special revelation hypertrophied so that they are suffering from intellectual, if not spiritual, strabismus. We should discredit neither the one nor the other revelation. Both are written by the almighty hand of God. We do not believe that the Christian always has to put on the Bible as a pair of spectacles when he views general revelation. The Bible is primarily a book for our redemption. It also gives much light in other fields. But there are millions of facts and many principles and practices that we have to learn through general revelation. The Bible itself gives many illustrations to that effect. The method of the true scientist is predominantly a posteriori. He regularly must divest himself of preconceived notions. For example, when in 1912 Paul Ehrlich sat in his laboratory he had hundreds of bottles of various chemicals before him that might kill the Treponem pallidum, the cause of syphilis. He had no preconceived notion just what bottle it would be. Finally he came to bottle 606 which contained the arsphenamine that killed the spirochete. So too Copernicus did not need to put on the Bible as a pair of spectacles to find out that the earth travels around the sun. Of course, the Christian scientist is not satisfied until he has placed everything, also in the field of general revelation, in the light of Scripture and has brought it all in subjection to the redemptorial work of the Triune God. We are living in an age of tremendous change, particularly in the field of a rapidly developing scrience. And change means struggle. Only among the dead there is no longer any clash of opinion. It is no surprise that the increase in knowledge is having a profound effect upon thinking orthodox Christians. Only half a century ago it was generally believed among the orthodox Christians that the earth, particulary the human race upon it, was no older than about 6,000 years and that the species were constant. Today hardly anyone can be found

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