church dogmatics', ThD thesis, Department of Systematic Theology, UNISA. [ Links ]Veldsman, D.P., 2007, 'Karl Barth's epistemology: A critical appraisal', HTS Teologiese/Theological Studies 63(4), 13371345. [ Links ]Wolff, E., 2006, 'Anatomie van 'n teologiese ideologie: Die Hervormde Kerk se steun aan die apartheid ideologie', Historia 51(1), 141162. [ Links ] Correspondence to:Johan BuitendagFaculty of Theology, University of PretoriaPretoria 0002, South Africae-mail: johan.buitendag@up.ac.zaReceived: 24 May 2009Accepted: 14 Aug. 2009Published: 23 Nov. 2009 DOI: 10.4102/hts.v65i1.272This article is available at: http://www.hts.org.za1. Peacocke (2004:49), in his book titled Evolution: The disguised friend of faith?, openly discusses the value that the other sciences, and particularly evolution, hold for theology: 'In the history of the people of Israel, God was always raising up apparent scourges, such as Cyrus, that were in reality blessings in disguise leading his people through the trauma that would alone enable them to apprehend new truths.'2. Darwin writes about Paley: 'I do not think I hardly ever admired a book more than Paley's Natural theology. I could almost formerly have said it by heart' (as cited in Peters & Hewlett 2003:42).3. This expression was introduced into academic discourse mainly by Donald T. Campbell (see Van Huyssteen 2006:76).4. In this respect, I can, therefore, also reconcile myself to Nancey Murphy's non-reductive physicalism, or to Arthur Peacock's emergentist monism, which judges that the soul can be explained by the functions of the brain, as well as by socio-cultural factors, of which the most important is our relationship with God. The human being's ex-naturality, therefore, lies in his or her being addressed by God ('capacity for speech'). Such ex-naturality constitutes their uniqueness, as embodied in the imago Dei, as indicated by Van Huyssteen (2006).5. The point of Herrnstein and Murray's The bell curve is that the highly intelligent are becoming separated from those members of the general population who have average and below-average intelligence (1994:121). They are of the opinion that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences.6. cf. Gilliomee (2003:454457), who argues that, historically, the Afrikaans churches provided the apartheid ideology of a theological substrate. Though Gilliomee focused, in particular, on the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC), Wolff (2006) applies the argument mutatis mutantis to the second largest Afrikaans-speaking church, the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika (NHKA). He indicates that the NHKA followed a 'racial-nationalistic paradigm' in its interchangeable use of the words volk, Afrikaner, White and race (Wolff 2006:157161).7. In terms of both the apartheid ideology and the universally known research of De Cruchy (1986), Darwinism has yet to be considered. In the recently published proceedings of the conference of the South African Science and Religion Forum (SASRF), which was held to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, Van den Heever (2009:155) draws a parallel between evolution and apartheid, pointing out that Afrikaners modeled their religion on a political master plan. 'The Calvinism developed in South Africa was narrow, prescriptive and did not allow for a wider interpretation of the Biblical text. Thus religion was tailored to support a political master plan and became colloquially known as Boere Calvinism.