1957 Geloof en Wetenschap : Orgaan van de Christelijke vereeniging van natuur- en geneeskundigen in Nederland - pagina 208

REVELATION AND EVOLUTION

171

It is interesting to note that after half a century of a status quo voices are heard of orthodox theologians and scientists of today to re-examine to whole problem of evolution. We have mentioned the encyclical of the pope and the volume „De Otiderdom der Aarde". But we are also thinking of men like Ramm, Lever and N. Ridderbos. The latter thinks that we perhaps have been too idyllic in our conception of Paradise. He points to the „without form and void" and asks whether is is not possible for God to have pronounced the creation very good even though there may have been, from our point of view, cruelties and catastrophics. See his „Beschouwingen over Genesis T', p. 37. He tells us also that we as Calvinists should pay more attention to historical anthropolgy. This chimes in with what biologists have been saying all along. They say that St. Aueustine had a liberal view of Genesis L He believed in creation causaliter, that the earth and the waters of the earth were endowed with power to produce plants and animals naturally and gradually. St. Thomas Aquinas quotes St. Augustine with approval. There were many theologians who did not ae;ree. Their ideas became incorporated in Francisco Suarez' (1548—1617) Tractatus de opere de sex dierum, in which he, for example, defends the view that the creation days were twenty-four hours long. This work had a great influence, particularly upon John Milton, who embodied the ideas of Suarez in imperishable form in his Paradise Lost. For centuries theologians doted on that conception. Hence, Thomas Huxley used to say that he had to fight the Miltonic rather than the Mosaic cosmology. See, Locy's „Biology and Its Makers", p. 417—418. It is the increase in knowledge in every field of science, but particularly anthropolgy. that has forced the problem of man's origin again upon the orthodx. We have been saying for a quarter of a century to the serious students of human anatomy, embrj'ology and anthropolgy that there are ever so many structures in the human body that can be explained more logically on an evolutionary basis than by our traditional view. That does not necessarily mean that evolution is true. However, only a superficial and frivolous student will brush them aside lightly. Let us mention some striking examples that have come to our attention. One on the prominent muscles in the thigh is the rectus femoris. This muscle has two heads or origins on the pelvic bones. In man the straight head is developed and the reflected head is so atrophic that orthopedists find only a few fibers. In the pronograde creatures the

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