Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Oct 16/62

Contributor - T. Hogerwaard

Title - Creation or Evolution

Topic - Creation

Already for quite a time I intended to write about Creation or Evolution. It is one of the questions that greatly disturb many of our high school students . In Sunday school, in catechism classes in Church they hear that it was God Who created heaven and earth. Now in the science class of highschool they are told that everything here on earth developed by itself; that the Genesis account is only a fairy tale for children but that "science" has "Proved" how matters really stand. This is a shock thousands and thousands of highschool-students receive, year after year; the result is a generation that is confused and uncertain. A good many of them lose their Christian faith altogether; many others become agnostics (meaning: those who assume that real knowledge about the unseen world is simply nor attainable for humans). This need not have been the case if our youngsters had received more Christian instruction, if they had been armed beforehand against these theories.

Lack of time prevented me up till now to carry out my intention. I only touched it slightly in "For the first time to highschool". Now I am grateful to Mr. A. Vos that by his challenge he has forced me to write more extensively about this very important issue.

Our Christian creed starts with the words:

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and earth.

On the first page of the Bible, first chapter of Genesis we are told by God Himself(for that is the meaning of "revelation") that:

a. God created this world (heaven and earth) and everything that is in it;

b. that God created man in His own image and likeness;

c. that God appointed man to be His viceroy on earth: subject to him;

d. that God made man and woman different in nature but equal in their relation to Him.

Before a person begins to study theology, or before he comes into contact with non-Christian religions or systems of thought he has. as a rule, not the slightest idea' how extremely important these four points are and to what extent human life and human society depend for their well being upon this revelation and its acceptance. From the first to the last one, every word of the first chapter of Genesis is a fighting word, denying in the strongest way possible the pagan assumptions which are held by all the peoples of the world where and when they may live or have lived.

Creation unknown outside of Israel

To start: When pagans accept Christ they experience it as an enormous liberation to learn that this world was willed and created by God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In some New Testament books (f.i. Colossians and the first chapter of the Gospel of John) it is emphatically stated that Christ was the Executive Who carried out the Father's will and intention about creation. That was something they had never dreamed of. For them the world was full of ghosts, a few helpful ones, but the majority of them devils and demons making life for humans uncertain and hazardous. The benevolent "great spirit" who originally shaped (not created!) the world is far away and not very much interested in what befalls the human beings 2). Outside of Israel, outside of the Christian Church there is not a trace of the conception of creation to be found. The pagan stories differ in particulars, but essentially they have much in common. We learn that in the beginning "there was something or somebody", but when you ask how that started you will receive no answer. The original wielders of power (gods or giants) were succeeded by a younger and brighter generation of "gods"; Mostly there was a fight in which the older divine generation was killed; their bodies served as material to make this world. The Greeks and Romans had those stories, so had the Germans. With the Papoeans and other tribes it was the same. And even those peoples (Greek and Hindus especially) who developed an impressive philosophical system never "arrived" at any semblance of the conception of creation; matter of fact nobody can "arrive" at that; God is the only One Who can reveal that. The fact that God Who had benevolent plans with His creatures called this world into existence provides the basis for trust in Him and in 'the future' because He is the One Who decides what will happen. But if this world (as our German forefathers thought) is only a temporarily ordered affair, born of original chaos and any moment in danger of falling back into it that is disastrous in every way for the one who holds that faith.

What is man?

Of no less importance is God's revelation about ourselves. Only God can reveal to us who we are: His creatures. Outside of God's revelation there are only two ways of thinking about man, namely.

a. Man is essentially a god

b. Man is essentially an animal, or better: a beast.

a. is taught by all idealistic systems of thought and especially in India where it is taught that a person can reach the stage that he is (re)united with Brahman.

But in our day and age we have more to do with b. What the effects are - the destructive moral effects - when it is taken for granted that man is only an animal has been clearly shown by Prof. Dr. A. de Sopper.

When you would ask what all this has to do with evolution, the answer follows.

The everlasting war

The Christian Gospel, including the revelation that God created heaven and earth; that He created man in His image and likeness has nowhere and never been accepted wholeheartedly. The history of the Christian Church has been (and will be) the history of a permanent and persistent fight against pagan elements, be it in a Greek, a German, a Japanese or an American form.

In the N.T. and especially in the O.T. it is the same story. At a certain moment Elijah thought that he was the only one left in Israel who worshipped the true God and that all the other men of Israel had become pagans, worshipping the "gods" of nature, glorifying sexual passion and partaking in the fertility-cult.

This fight against exactly the same "old gods of Kanaan" is in our days stronger and fiercer than ever before, but far more difficult to discern, because now pagan intentions and desires are camouflaged in "scientific dress".

Before all things there was the desire to throw off "the fetters" of Christianity and return wholeheartedly to the worship of "the old dark gods"., In Hitler Germany that was done openly and brutally; in the rest of the Western world, where the same desires existed, a different course was followed. Man was to be his own master and lord; he was not to take orders from anyone; he simply could do what pleased him. And here is where the interest of the "evolutionists" comes in.

When for instance we are told by men of science that it was five billion years ago that the universe came into being; that this world of ours existed millions of years before a human being appeared; that there was a long period that only dinosaurs roamed the earth, we can listen to that with peace of mind. The Book of Genesis was never meant to give us - as if it was a highschool book of science - precise information about those matters; The Word of God gives us information (revelation) about God and about ourselves. As long as the scientists move on this ground where they can make it reasonably acceptable that things may have taken place that way, no real values are at stake.

But that is not the intention at all ! The scarce and scant scientific material available is used to build an impressive theory (an intellectual tower of Babel) about the question how this world came into being and how man finally appeared as the finished product of a long process of development and adaptation.

The disguised adversary

And here we leave the grounds of science, here we are up against the old pagan interests, the old pagan rebellion against God, the denial that God created the universe, the denial that man was created in His image. And this of course, cannot be proved; the Baal priests, too, never tried to prove" their religion; they simply presented it. God's revelation in Christ cannot be "proven" either to anyone; it is proclaimed, preached, according to God's command. It is not: science against Christian religion; it is: pagan religion disguised as science against the Christian religion.

On a table in a museum are placed several fragments or bigger pieces of bone which formerly belonged to a living creature; none of t em complete: part of a lower jaw, parts of skulls, found in various places on earth, Java, South Africa or China (near Peking), What have we here? Well, a few pieces of what once were skulls. That's all. That's all the scientific evidence there is. And now the pagan theory disguised as science begins to work. The magazine LIFE published the first article "Man inherits the earth" of the series called The Epic of man in issue 7th November 1955 (Now also in book form available). The wild horses of phantasy now start to run their course. First we see pictures of beings resembling apes as we can see them in the zoo or in tropical forests, the next page shows the next stage: pictures of rather repulsive "human beings" with low foreheads, hairy chests and a brutish expression on their faces: monkeys developing into humans! The following quotation from the above mentioned Life-article sounds as if one of their correspondents had met and observed them, while the ever present photographer in the meanwhile took some coloured pictures (in "glorious technicolor" as the film people call that) for the benefit of Life subscribers. And the only evidence to go by are a few pieces of skull bone!

"Much later in the Pleistocene, between 100.000 and 35-000 years ago there emerged several new, full-brained specimens of the genus Homo. They were Florishbad Man, Solo Man, Rhodesian Man and the best known and most ubiquitous of prehistoric humans, Neanderthal Man, whose remains have been found on three continents. Because of their large brains these four types are classified as subspecies of Homo sapiens."

"Meanwhile three full-fledged humans, Swanscombe Man in England, Kanjera Man in East Africa and Fontechevade Man in France, had appeared on the terrestrial scene. Homo sapiens sapiens, the man with the forehead and chin, was preparing to make the entire earth his bailiwick".

This way the enormous gaps in our knowledge about the far away past are filled out by phantasy to fit the pagan theory ! The real interest here is not: to discover scientific facts (there are only a few skulls and bones to go by) but to deny the Christian revelation; pagan interests are at work here.

Limits of science and scientific method

Science is only and exclusively a certain method to master facts and happenings in order to arrive at a workable theory, applicable to a very limited field of human life and endeavour only. If there is a clear consciousness of the limited field where science is applicable and again: if there is an open eye for the fact that even in its own proper field there are many mysteries which science has not yet discovered (may be never will discover) then the Christian religion, based upon God's revelation, has no reason at all to be up in arms against "science". But it is a totally different matter when the old pagan interests put on a scientific mask to deny God's revelation. An old German saying is: "Und was das Herz nicht W"', das lasst der Kopf nicht ein". (What is not acceptable to the heart, the head will not accept.) One of the great German philosophers (Windelband) has said : "Thoughts are only the masks behind which the convictions wage the battle." The "scientific" presentation of evolution (the thoughts) is the mask for anti-Christian paganism.

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