SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18422, 1 July 1925, Page 11

SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE PM33." Sir, —This discussion began with the advocacy of a Bishop with modernist sympathies, but it has drifted into the scientific accuracy or otherwise of Genesis. At the outset it seemed to me that for *he upholding of Protestantism and for maintaining the interest of young men in our church our theology should countenance research and .criticism. Protestant denominations resulted from criticism, and the more this attitudo is stifled the less attractive will the church lie to young men., and they will rather spend their Sundays in sport on the hills ox- rabbitshootinjr on up-country riverbeds. It has not helped theology that scientificmatters should have been introduced into it. The beginnings and the Ir.st things of the earth, introduced iii'to Genesis and .Revelations, hi'.ye created sheer atagonism between religion and science, or current theology and science, and the former has had to give way, though with many attempts at rccon : ciliation. Text books of science alter from vcar to year, for research is fortunately very rapid, and of the old ideas some seem "but slightly changed, while others vanish completely. It seems to me quite hopeless, however, to think that the study of the antiquity of man will ever find our origin to have been Adam and Eve in tho Garden of Eden, and ?.s to tho earth itself does rot Genesis say that in the beginning it was without form . and void, assuming thr.t it existed before the creation of tho sun, moon, and stars? .Such a view is quite inconsistent with the.scientific opinion that the earth is a member of the solar system, and there teems to me no evidence for the statement that it was ever "without form."- —Yours, etc., ANGLICAN. [This corresponder.ee may now cease. —Ed. "Ihe Press."]