Abstract
"Creationist" was the self-designation used by a Calvinist professor of biology, J. Lever, in the Netherlands in the 1950s. He intended to communicate to the reformed constituency that he understood as "creation" in the scriptural sense the reality he studied as a biologist - even while accepting the best available biological knowledge of his time, including evolution and genetics. Those who would take the same reconciliatory attitude in our time cannot use the label "creationist" anymore. The word has become so tightly linked with a particular cluster of views opposing biblical faith and mainstream biology, that it no longer communicates that one believes this world, partly but reliably known through the sciences, to be God's creation.