1957 Geloof en Wetenschap : Orgaan van de Christelijke vereeniging van natuur- en geneeskundigen in Nederland - pagina 207

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PETER G. BERKHOUT

who are strongly opposed to concepts such as progressive creationism and creative evolution. James Orr, whose works Dr. Warfield highly recommends, and who was a personal-friend of Dr. H. Bavinck, was definitely a theistic evolutionist. He believed that the whole universe, including organic beings and man, have evolved by what he calls a „creation from within". Man was but a large mutation. See his, „Christian View of God and the World", p. 151, and Fundamentals, Vol. IV, p.p. 97—104. He makes the interesting statement in the former, p. 217 : „The picture given us of the first man in the Bible is primitive in every way. The Adam of the book of Genesis is not a being of advanced intellectual attainment, or endowed with an intuitive knowledge of the various arts and sciences. If his state is far from the savage, it is equally far removed from that of civilized man. The earliest steps in what we call civilization are of later date." Tn his brochure Evolutie, published in 1899, Dr. Abraham Kuyper, after combating materialistic evolution, says on p. 47 : „An entirely different problem is that so often discussed in England, whether religion permits us to believe as such in the spontaneous evolvement of the species in the organic world from the cytoplasm or the nucleus of the cell. That question, without reservation, must be answered in the affirmative. We have no right to impose our type of architecture upon the Chief Architect of the Universe." Then he continues that if it pleased God not to create the species as such, but to have one species develop from the other, the creation would be just as wonderful. There would still be plan (Zweck). And that is what the materialistic evolutionists, particularly Haeckel, do not want. That does not mean that we consider Kuyper a theistic evolutionist, but it is absolutely true that here he permitted a believe in it. Finally, that prince of Reformed theologians. Dr. H. Bavinck, wrote in his final work, „Verzamelde Opstellen", p. 119 : „The relation between faith and science will improve if, on the one hand the mechanistic conception of the universe is surrendered and the hatred against religion, in particular the Christian religion, is laid aside and when, on the other hand, more than thus far, the important element of truth is acknowledged that undoubtedly lies hidden in the doctrine of evolution and descent." And so on. Here again, as in the case of Dr. A. Kuyper, the target is the mechanistic conception of evolution. The argument that these two men are not speaking of evolution as such, is false.

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