Neo-Calvinism is NOT Compatible with Theistic Evolution

Today, Neo-Calvinists seem to be infatuated with combining Darwinism/common descent with Christianity. The problem, of course, is that the founders of Neo-Calvinism – Herman Bavinck and Abraham Kuyper, perhaps the two greatest systematic theologians since John Calvin – abhorred the idea of theistic evolution and the idea that human beings descended from animals.

Herman Bavinck, the co-”father of Neo-Calvinism” who you may better know as the first on the list of Real Apologists, said the following in 1898:

“Positive proofs of human descent from animal ancestry do not really exist…There is no advantage for people to say that it is better to be a highly developed animal than a fallen human. The theory of the animal ancestry of humans violates the image of God in man and degrades the human into an image of the orangutan and chimpanzee. From the standpoint of evolution humanity as the image of God cannot be maintained. The theory of evolution forces us to return to creation as the Scriptures presents it to us.” Herman Bavinck. Reformed Dogmatics, vo. 2: God and Creation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 518, 520.

Given that theistic evolution is probably the majority view of the science/astronomy departments at the three leading Neo-Calvinist colleges in the world (Dordt College, Trinity Christian, and Redeemer – Calvin College is undoubtedly similar), we cannot but be disturbed at how far we have strayed from the truth: God is the Creator of all things, and Genesis 1 told the story in a historical narrative so that it is absolutely impossible to reconcile Darwin’s common descent theory with the Christian worldview.

Abraham Kuyper, the other “father of Neo-Calvinism” said the following a year later (1899) in his rectoral address at the Free University of Amsterdam:

“…although there are points of contact that we may not neglect, the principal contrast between theory and theory remains unimpaired and irreconcilable. Man is and remains created after God’s image, and it is not the nature of the beast that has determined our human being, but contrarily, the entire lower cosmos is paradigmatically determined by the central position of man. Not as Ranke asserted; “the animal kingdom is dissected man, and man is the paradigm of the whole animal kingdom.”50 He who would make that statement needlessly exposes himself [to refutation]. And yet it is the case that conceptually all that is on a lower plane culminates in man, and in that respect is the imagebearer of man, even as man bears the image of his God. And since the theory of evolution thus destroys the object and kills the subject of the two indispensable terms for all real religion‹God and man‹religion can do nothing other than what was done by esthetics and ethics, and religion must, by virtue of the law governing its own life, irrevocably condemn the system of evolution.

To hesitate at this point would mean a betrayal of one’s own convictions. Evolution is a newly conceived system, a newly established theory, a newly formed dogma, a newly emerged faith, which, embracing and dominating all of life, is diametrically opposed to the Christian faith, and can erect its temple only upon the ruins of our Christian Confessions.” from Calvin Theological Journal 31:11-50 (April, 1996)