Did He Consider It Acceptable?

Herman Bavinck a century ago was a leading Reformed theologian, who may deserve a place among the most learned and clearest Christian thinkers of all time. In recent controversy about Evolution, his observations about that subject are worth noticing. Generally, he tended to take more account of problems and unanswered questions about such matters than did some of his successors. Professor J.G. Vos in his 1966 address to the Reformed Fellowship (“The Bearing ofScriptural Revelation on the Evolutionary World view,” reprinted in the April and May, 1987, Outlooks) noted Bavinck’s comments in Our Reasonable Faith (p.172) on the Biblical creation days. (In the same May issue I noted a related observation in Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics.) Bavinck’s treatment of these matters has been understood as leaving room for Evolution (by Dr. Harry Boer, for example, in a brief quotation in the Dec. 1987 Reformed Journal). Let’s face the question: “Did Herman Bavinck teach that there is no conflict between creation and evolution, as it is being widely taught and defended in Calvin College today?”

An Overlooked Essay

The Preface to Bavinck’s Our Reasonable Faith (p. 9) lists among the few translations of his work into English, “a little treatise Evolution.” When Calvin College Library’s catalog revealed no such listing, my appeal to the theological librarian, Mr. Peter De Klerk, through a thesis bibliography, located in the November, 1901 Methodist Review(!) a 25page article of Bavinck entitled, “Creation or Development” (translated by J. Hendrik de Vries). Whether or not this is the writing mentioned in the Preface, it sheds much more light on Bavinck’s views of Evolution, and shows an interesting anticipation of present arguments.

The Inevitable Conflict

Bavinck at the beginning of this century foresaw an intensifying conflict between two contradictory world views. “This conflict extends the whole length of the line . . . . more serious and fiercer than ever before . . . between the old and the new world-view. For man has undertaken the gigantic effort of interpreting the whole world, and all things that are therein, in their origin, essence, and end, what is called purely and strictly scientifically, that is, without God. . . .” Although this had often been tried, with indifferent success, “Darwin’s theory of development has provided the necessary means to make this process of the eternal becoming intelligible in the material world.” Thus Bavinck saw the rise of a “new world-view” which undertakes to interpret all “without exception independently of God, and only and alone from an immanent self-development.” While he saw many following this trend only part-way and trying to find compromise positions, leaving “faith and knowledge divided and irreconciled” and keeping “two sets of books of truths,” be found such compromise impossible. “He who fully accepts the theory of development in the sensual, observable world cannot dismiss it at once and without explanation when spiritual phenomena appear. Even though provisionally a small domain is then set aside for faith, this domain is bound to become ever smaller . . . . One fortification after another must then be sacrificed, one line of defense after another abandoned, and one concession after another be granted. There is no immovable conviction in these conservative dualists, no strength of faith, no enthusiastic courage. And hence they are ever bound to lower the flag before the radicals, who have the courage of their convictions, who shrink from no inferences, and who, beginning and continuing without God, are determined also to end without God. Hence these are the men of the future. Conservatives and liberals die out, but the radicals and socialists are to be the leaders in the twentieth century. They have agreed to hold a total and final clearing out of whatever of the old Christian worldview consciously or unconsciously still remains in our laws and morals, in our education and civilization.” Thus he sees them working to “put an end to the imperfect knowledge as well as to the foolish faith of former days and cause all things to appear before the soul’s eye in the magical light of a world-embracing system.”

The Antichristian World System

Although in science many busy themselves with insignificant details and curiosities, everyone bas to face the question about the origin and purpose of his life. “The development theory of our times meets this question with the answer that in reality there is no origin and no beginning of things.” “Development, evolution is the eternal law, which governs and directs everything that exists; with its blind fate and incalculable accident it displaces Divine Providence. The origin of our planetary system is explained according to this law. Our world in its present form was preceded by a thousand others, which in turn came into being after this same law and have passed away.” “Along long, immeasurably long lines of regularity the higher develops itself from the lower. By all sorts of evolutions the earth forms itself into a fit dwelling place for living beings . . . at length under favorable circumstances from inorganic matter the cell originates . . . . There is no deep, broad chasm between the animate and the inanimate, but a gradual transition . . . . Along the same way at length man arrives upon the scene … not brought forth by the hand of the Creator, bearing his image; but . . . the higher development of that species of animals, whose next of kin still continue to live on in the orang-outang, gorilla, and chimpanzee . . . . No one is able to indicate where the animal ceases and man begins . . . and man himself is the result of a process covering many millions of years.”

A Bankrupt Theory

Bavinck calls attention to the attraction of this interpretation of origins which, understandably, “charms many.” Although “this theory may still be incomplete and leave many phenomena . . . unexplained,” Bavinck sees “an age which . . . shakes off all religion” compelled to “expect all salvation from . . . its own thinking. and to see the solution of all the riddles of the world in development.” This theory, he observes, “is not a product of science, but of the imagination . . . an air castle in the true sense of the word.” “Theology is accused, and justly so, of having usurped, in early times, all the sciences. But no science has ever done this more entirely than physical science of the present day . . . it forces its method upon all the sciences, and considers the mechanical interpretation the only one that is warranted to the claim of being scientific.” Bavinck highlights the contradictions of the theory especially as applied to man, and the total lack of fossil or any other evidence for it, setting in opposition to it at every point, the Biblical revelation of God’s creation as “He spoke, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast” (Psalm 33:9).

In the further treatment of his subject, Bavink points out the total in ability of the theory to do justice to anything human, let alone spiritual. He notes its inevitable relativizing and destruction of all morals, for, clearly, “from this viewpoint there is no difference of good and evil, of right and wrong. of truth and falsehood.” Its adherents “skeptical according to their principle,” are “hardened dogmatists in practice and oftentimes worse fanatics than the adherents of a religious belief. While they do not acknowledge objective truth, they are more certain of the truth of their own teaching than many an orthodox believer.” He exposes this evolutionary system as having “no need of God,” and even less of Christ, no knowledge of sin or Savior or of the Holy Spirit’s regeneration and renewal, or of a faith that justifies the ungodly and that overcomes the world. It only tries to develop a civilization that would temporarily check the “wild animal” in man. “It is the world view of the heathen who, knowing God, does not glorify Him as God,” but, changing the truth of God “into falsehood, honors and serves the creature above the Creator” (Cf. Rom.1:21–25). Thus he contrasts in every way the Christian faith with this anti-christian counterpart.

God’s Revealed Hope

The radical opposition of the two world-views becomes even more evident as one looks ahead and asks, “Where am I going?” “At this point,” Bavinck sees the bankruptcy of evolutionary theory as “especially evident . . . it knows nothing of an end.” “Irrational, planless, purposeless humanity goes forward to meet its ruin.” While the evolutionists reduce the future to a social paradise, impatient people demand it now, if necessary, by “violence . . . revolution and slaughter.” “Complete bankruptcy, moral and spiritual, is the end of the modern world-view,” confirming Paul’s word, “that he who is without God and without Christ is also without hope in the world.” We are shown the radical contrast of all this in every way with the Christian hope. “There is indeed no other choice save between the ruin of all existing things as taught by present-day science, and the hope of the glory of the children of God, as preached by the Holy Scripture.” Though the Lord’s promised future can only come with conflict, and “the near future may be the portion of the world and Satan, the later future belongs certainly to Christ.” “The kingdom of heaven has not once come along the lines of gradual ascent, neither will it come along these lines in the future. Not from beneath but from above do we expect the righteousness and life, the blessedness and glory of God,” when Christ returns and all must “confess that He is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Present Surrender to Antichrist

To what conclusions does this review of the apparently long forgotten essay of Bavinck lead us? It is obvious that Bavinck, the scholar, tried to do justice—possibly more than justice—to the degree of development the Creator designed into His marvelous creation. Bavinck describes the appeal of this comprehensive evolutionary theory with which Van Till in his book in extravagant language expresses his enthusiasm (“Cosmic history is like a magnificent tapestry woven from different strands of temporal development to form the intricately designed pattern of cosmic evolution. Spacial evolution, galactic evolution, elemental evolution, stellar evolution, planetary evolution, and biological evolution are coherently integrated and intertwining processes that serve as the individual threads in the tapestry . . .” p. 254). Yet Bavinck was so much the Christian thinker consciously governed by the Word of God that he saw and pointed out with unmistakable clarity the world conflict (or antithesis) which must be and was intensifying throughout history between God and the devil and the followers of each. He highlighted the evolutionary system as the substitute for God in the devil’s program. The sweep and intensity of that conflict is in some ways even more evident now than it was a century ago. Yet now our professed “Christian educators,” trying to wipe out the Biblical antitheses between God and the devil, are teaching the discredited system with more enthusiasm than some of the unbelievers who invented it.

The avowedly anti-Christian character of today’s secular, evolutionistic system of thought, both in principle and in its devastating practical consequences in all of society, becomes so evident that it hardly needs argument. The way virtually all higher educational institutions, by surrendering to that system, have betrayed their Christian origins and purpose to become militantly anti-Christian is also undeniable. What is especially significant for us is that that secular evolutionary system of thought is now being publicly adopted and defended by the majority of Calvin College’s faculty. And the school’s administration after a year’s “investigation,” has now approved and encouraged this course as perfectly acceptable to the churches who are supposed to own the school. For four generations our family had had more or less of its education at Calvin College. For me it is especially saddening to see the churches’ school today publicly adopt and promote the same kind of anti-Christian faith and life that I faced daily for a decade in a very anti-Christian public school system. When Christ and His Word are being thus avowedly betrayed by our churches’ school, conscience compels Christians to stop supporting and to separate themselves from that betrayal. (This is not to distance ourselves from the many earnest Christians in faculty and student body, but from a chosen course that is plainly wrong.)

Bavinck in this apparently long forgotten essay at the beginning of this century anticipated with uncanny accuracy anti-Christian developments we see as that century nears its end. He reminded us that Christ the King calls us to follow Him in an intensifying but eventually triumphant Holy War against the devil and his works. Although in the ranks of our Lord there has to be charity, there is no room for compromise or neutrality in that war. “From victory unto victory, His army shall He lead,” but soldiers who will not fight can never expect to win.