Van open fundamentalisme naar jonge aarde creationisme. De acceptatie en verwerping van evolutie door orthodoxe protestanten

Samenvatting

The reactions of orthodox Protestants to the theory of evolution show changes throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The initial openness to the new understanding of the first chapters of Genesis - even characteristic for early Fundamentalism - was prepared by the acceptance of the new geology. Initial theological objections against evolutionism regarded the atheistic implications of naturalistic evolutionary theories, rather than the correct exegesis of Genesis. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Fundamentalism became dominated by dispensationalists and millenarianists who advocated an interpretation of the geological data within the biblical framework. In line with that tradition, young-earth-creationism arose in the 1960s as a reaction against a neoevangelical reinterpretation of Genesis. A better understanding of the development of earlier Protestant reflections can help Christians today to take a position in the difficult field of the relationship of Scripture and science.