A brief article about the difference between election and selection. Although the two words are nearly identical in sound and spelling, Kuyper notes an enormous conceptual difference between them. Each word represents a concept that provides an answer to the “fundamental question: Whence are the differences?” But whereas “election” stands for the answer of Calvinism, in which the sovereign Creator elects, “selection” stands for the answer of Darwinism (which is not named), with its concept of the survival of the fittest (see 1899.29). Kuyper admired the penetrating conceptual power of the theory of natural selection, which he considered to exist on the same level of profundity as the Calvinist answer.

On the publication of this article, see 1898.21.