ABSTRACT
John Paul II noted that Pope Pius XII had affirmed biological evolution to be “an open question, as long as it confines its speculation to the development, from other living matter already in existence, of the human body". From the standpoint of biological evolution, Homo sapiens shares a common sixty million-year evolution in which certain trends by which primates are identifiable as distinct from other animal orders emerged on Earth. John Paul II’s creationism argument for the direct infusion of the soul by God, could therefore prove to be a “God of the gaps” argument that will be something less than fully in the service of productive dialogue between theology and biological evolution. Generationism, although attuned to the processes of biological evolution more than creationism, makes no claims to comply with the empirical canons of science. Generationism affirms that from the union of sperm and ovum, a human person, and not merely the body of the human being, results.
