#Meek3: Creation, Evolution and Salvation are all the Same Thing

This article is the transcript from episode #3 of a six-part podcast that I released between October 2, 2022 and January 2, 2023. The name of the podcast is “The Meek Will Inherit the Earth”. You can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other podcast directories. Here is the podcast description: Jesus’s prediction that ‘the meek will inherit the earth’ is not well understood. Taken at face value, he is predicting a fundamental change in the humans who live on earth. He claimed this change is currently in progress and one day, it will be complete — humanity as we know it will be extinct and the new type of humans, along with the animals, will populate the earth. This podcast explores how Jesus saw this happening, why we should take him seriously and what it really means for us.

Episode Introduction

[0:00] Hi. My name is Brian, and this is the podcast: The Meek will inherit the Earth. The Bible tells us God created the earth. Science tells us that the earth as we know it evolved over billions of years. Many Christians, including myself, do not see any contradiction here. I don’t fully understand it, but God somehow uses evolution in his creative process. The question for this episode is, what about the new creation? The Bible tells us the God is making everything new (Revelations 21:5). Is evolution also part of God’s process of new creation?

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There is no contradiction between science and the creation stories from the Bible.

[0:54] The theory of evolution has been a challenging issue for some Christians. It appears there is an inherit contradiction between the story science is telling and the story the first book of the Bible is telling, and you have to pick one or another. Either you believe in Adam and Eve and a 7-day creation event, or you accept the fossil record, which shows new species emerging throughout a four and a half billion-year history.

Fortunately, this apparent contradiction resolves on closer examination. The first step in interpreting the Bible, or any other text should always be to understand what the author is saying to his or her intended audience. The perceived contradiction arises because readers are skipping this step. Tim Mackie gave a talk about this at a Science and Faith conference in Madison Wisconsin where he did a great job of fleshing this out. He has made his talk is available as episode 7 in his podcast, Exploring my Strange Bible. Tim explains, “How to read the first two pages of the Bible without imposing modern western views of the universe on these chapters. But rather, understanding them as the ancient Hebrew texts that they are. And how they speak to us about what the world is. [Whether] you are a religious person or a non-religious person, we need to respect that these are texts that are produced in Hebrew by ancient authors that are making claims about the world and about God and humans within it. What are those claims? And how can we respect Genesis 1 and 2 to say what they are saying on their own terms in light of their own culture and language.”[1] End Quote.

Tim also says, ‘When we begin with the simple fact [that the Bible is an ancient Hebrew text], Genesis chapters 1 and 2 say many surprising things we never would have imagined, and they also leave unaddressed most of our modern questions.”[2]. In the end he concludes that although there is a perceived tension between science and faith, there is no real tension[3]. I have left the link to Tim’s talk in the show notes.

That is about all I want to say about the first two chapters of the Bible. For the rest of this episode I will assume that evolution played a role in God’s creative process. Again, I am not saying I understand exactly how God created the earth or how evolution works, only that I accept the fossil record and that evolution must have somehow played a role in God’s creative process.

The Bible makes the crazy claim that Jesus created the earth

[3:54] What I do want to talk about in this episode is what the New Testament has to say about creation. The New Testament authors make the crazy claim that Jesus created the earth. The world has seen many heroes and their followers often make great claims about them. But I can’t think of any other historical figures whose followers claim that their hero created the whole earth. And yet that is exactly what Jesus’s disciples claimed. They followed him around ancient Palestine for three years, watched him face a humiliating public execution — and then somehow had the audacity to claim not only that he is the saviour of the world, but also that he is the creator of the world.

The gospel according to John puts it this way, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that was made” (John 1: 1–2). John is referring Jesus when he says, ‘The Word’. So according to John, Jesus somehow created the earth[4].

Also, the apostle Paul tells us, “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:16–17.) Wow. According to Paul, not only did Jesus create the heavens and the earth but he also holds it all together. If Jesus stopped holding it together, presumably it would all just fall apart.

[5:54] These kinds of statements seem to lead to only one conclusion — they must have been smoking some pretty good stuff. Yes, I think it is best to be honest about how this claim really sounds. It sounds crazy. Jesus was a Jewish man who lived 2,000 years ago in the Roman Empire. He was born to a carpenter and his wife, he became a Rabbi, gained a modest following and was eventually executed by the authorities in Jerusalem for allegedly disturbing the peace. He may have been an impressive person, but to claim that he created the earth seems crazy! This must be total nonsense, right?

I am aware of course, that most Christians would say, ‘that Jesus is God and God created the earth and therefore, Jesus created the earth’. But I do not find this explanation helpful. As discussed in the last episode, the ‘because God told us so’ argument is not convincing, and the ‘Jesus is God’ argument is similar. In both cases it disconnects the point the disciples are making from reality, denuding it of its power. If the New Testament authors are trying to make a point about something they have witnessed, then the ‘Jesus was God’ argument misses that point. It is not just about being convincing to others — it is about understanding it ourselves. It is about converting ourselves and our salvation. We need to hear what these first followers of Jesus are saying to us. So let’s stick with them. Let’s break it down point-by-point and see where we end up. Who knows? Maybe this crazy claim will make sense when we get to the end.

Creation isn’t complete. Jesus is re-creating the world right now.

[7:53] When the New Testament authors talked about creation they often had an eye to the present. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul tells us “if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Co 5:17) To Paul, what happened in Jesus is somehow a creative act. Creation isn’t something that just happened thousands of years ago and is described in the book of Genesis, it is happening right now, and he and his listeners are experiencing it.

In Ephesians Paul tells us that Jesus’s “purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace” (Eph 2:15). The two types of humans Paul is referring to are the Jews and the Gentiles. They had different identities and there was an underlying hostility between the two. Paul is telling us that Jesus somehow merged these two strands of humans into one and made them into something more. This is an act of creation.

And we already noted the passage at the end of Revelations where God says he is “making everything new!” The point is that creation is happening right now. Creation didn’t stop in the book of Genesis — God is making everything new even as we speak.

Salvation is the same thing as new creation

[9:24] The next point to discuss is salvation. The New Testament authors also say that Jesus is the saviour of the world. For example, at the beginning of Luke (2:11), the angels announce Jesus’s birth to the shepherds saying, “Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born and he is the Christ the Lord”. And in Matthew (1:21) the angel says to Mary that her son will, “save his people from their sins”. These passages are well known so I probably don’t need to give any more examples. The main thing I want to do here is tie the concept of salvation to new creation. The passages we read earlier about the new creation and the new humanity are salvation passages. God is creating a new humanity? He is making everything new? This is him saving us from our sins! To the New Testament authors, new creation and salvation are synonymous. Jesus saves us — Jesus re-creates us — Jesus is making a new humanity. Once we are no longer slaves to sin, we become something new.

When I was growing up I sometimes heard an overly simplistic version of salvation. All you need to do is say a prayer asking Jesus into your heart and you are saved. A similar sentiment is captured well in the Jimmie Davis song (which was also recorded by Johnny Cash) called, “I was there when it happened”. The song goes into quite a bit of detail about a religious experience he had with feelings of peace and forgiveness, and he calls that salvation. I am happy for people to have positive religious experiences, especially if they lead to life transformation, but this vision of salvation is too individualistic and too feeling-based to be what the New Testament authors are talking about.

To the New Testament authors, salvation is about much more — their vision includes salvation for all of creation. In Romans (8:19–22) Paul says, “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, …. creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” End Quote

This is the salvation vision of the New Testament. Humanity is in bondage to sin and this bondage spills over and affects all of creation. It is all connected. God is re-creating humanity and therefore, he is re-creating the whole world. When we enter that new creation, we as individuals are saved, we as a human race are saved and indeed, the entire earth is saved from the violence and destruction that we humans have wrought upon it. Salvation is just another way to speak about God’s ongoing process of creation.

If evolution plays a role in creation, then it follows that evolution plays a role in salvation

[12:57] Now I would like to come back to the topic of evolution. Earlier we talked about how evolution played a role in God’s creation of the world. If we tie this to the claims that the New Testament makes that God is re-creating the world and he is doing it through Jesus in exactly the same way that he created it originally. Then it follows that the scientific process of evolution is also part of God’s process of re-creating the world. Yes, the salvation Jesus brings us is evolutionary. The same force that drove the fossil record for the past 4.5 billion years is also the driving force behind Jesus’s saving work.

This may be a challenging concept to take in. After all, many who grew up in the church understood evolution as a threatening concept. And when they realize there is no fundamental disagreement between the book of Genesis and evolution, they feel relief and are happy to leave it there. But I am not content to leave it. We need to go further. We need to acknowledge that what Jesus is talking about is fundamentally evolution. Listen to the language the Biblical authors use: “new creation”, “new humanity”, “the meek will inherit the earth” and others that we talked about earlier. Putting this into the terminology of modern science, what they are talking about is a new version of the Homo genus emerging. Evolution is not the enemy of our faith — it turns out that our faith itself is evolutionary. Jesus is the new humanity is that is emerging, and he invites us all to join. One day this new non-violent humanity will become the dominant species and Homo Sapiens as we know them will go extinct. This is the good news.

The New Testament uses language that suggests a natural process for the new creation

[15:06] Understanding the evolutionary nature of Jesus’s work, helps us make sense of the Bible passages that talk about salvation using language that suggests a natural process:

• For example, consider James 1:18 which says, “He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created.” In other words, creation is a garden that has been growing and maturing and just now we are seeing the very first fruit that the garden was always intended to produce. And the first fruit is the new humanity.
• Similarly, in Thessalonians Paul tells the early church that “God chose [them] as first fruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth”. (2 Thessalonians 2:13).
• And in Romans, Paul tells us that Jesus is, “the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” (Romans 8:29). In other words, Jesus was the first of this new species to be born (or to emerge), and we can expect many more in the future.
• In Matthew, Jesus’s disciples ask him what the signs of the end of the age will be (Mt 24:3). Jesus then describes the problems of the world we are all familiar with — wars, persecution of minorities, famines, and natural disasters and he calls them ‘the beginning of birth pains’ (Mt 24:8). Although these problems are terrible and frightening, something good is coming in the end. We shouldn’t become obsessed with these disasters because they are to some extent inevitable. They are the natural result of the collapse of the Homo sapien species and the birth of a new species. Our best response is to stay the course, keep on the path of discipleship and invest in the new humanity.

Why did the disciples make such claims? What data did they have access to?

[17:13] We have talked about what the disciples said; now we need to talk about why they said it. What data did they have access to to back up their claims? What had they seen that made them so passionate about this topic?

Well, it was the time they spent with Jesus. In Jesus, they believed they had seen something new in creation. They had observed and touched and followed what they came to view as a totally new kind of human. They did it for three years and found it to be a mind-blowing experience. At almost every turn he acted in ways that they didn’t expect and didn’t even make sense for a human to behave. But they liked it enough to stick around and eventually they started catching on and becoming more like Jesus themselves.

This is a key point — the disciples did more than just observe Jesus, they were involved in replication. When Jesus was with them, he attempted to replicate his humanity in them. Because the disciples saw Jesus actively creating the new humanity they viewed him as the creator, in addition to being the new creation. And after Jesus was gone, the disciples tried to replicate the new humanity themselves, by starting little communities dedicated to practicing the new behaviours that they learned from Jesus. As long as there is just a single instance of a new kind of humanity it can be considered a mutation, or an oddity. But once it starts to replicate and spread, then it is interesting from an evolutionary perspective — and it did spread.

[19:08] A challenge the disciples encountered was that it was not possible to exactly duplicate the process they experienced with Jesus. So they had to innovate and experiment. Each disciple had a slightly different approach. It is safe to say that they found replication very difficult. Whatever they tried, the communities they founded tended to go off the rails, reverting to the old ways of being. And why would we expect otherwise? Evolving into a new species cannot be an easy thing to do. As far as we know, no species has ever consciously tried to do it. Through all these experiences the disciples gained a lot of very hands-on knowledge of the new humanity. They knew its strengths and the challenges it was going to have. They had lots and lots of data — although I grant it was not collected in a scientific manner.

Jesus and his followers did not have a scientific understanding of evolution. How could they? They were not biologists, and the theory of evolution was not formulated for another 1800 years[5]. So they used their language — the language of creation. Today, most people would use the language of evolution if they were trying to describe the emergence of a new kind of humanity. This is the language we speak. Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution by observing barnacles, finches and other species from the Galapagos Islands. The disciples developed their theory of human evolution by observing Jesus and their many experiments in replication. Both Darwin and the disciples of Jesus wrote down their observations and theories for us, trying to convince us of the importance of their findings.

[21:10] Although the disciples were actively trying to replicate the new humanity, they freely admitted that they were not the driving force. God was the driving force, they told us. God was making this happen — they were just aligning with what God was already doing[6]. The concept is similar in evolutionary language — if a new version of humanity is truly emerging then it suggests that humans aren’t really in control — evolution or natural forces are. Regardless of which language we use to describe it, this is the key point — forces bigger than us are driving the ongoing change in humanity. We can ignore it, fight against it or align ourselves with it. However we respond, we are likely not powerful enough to stop it or to ensure it happens.

There is another piece of data the disciples had that I want to call out. The disciples had observations of current humanity. These observations lead them to conclude that Homo sapiens were doomed to extinction. It didn’t start this way for the disciples. When they met Jesus they, like many other good Jews longed for a Messiah who would take control of the government with a strong show of force and establish a society of peace and justice. This is why they followed Jesus — they hoped he would overthrow the Romans and they would be the first ministers in his new cabinet, and everything would be great. However, they came to understand that the way Homo sapiens cooperate is flawed at its core. Although this method of cooperation has led to huge success, and dominance over all the other animals, it is also inevitably leading towards destruction. Therefore, they believed the best thing they could do for this doomed species was to align themselves with what God was already doing and help drag humanity into the future. Understanding this piece of data is important, but we don’t have time in this episode. We will pick this up again in episode 5. There we will talk more about what makes Homo sapiens unique, such that they are able to dominate all the other animals. Hopefully you can tune in for it.

[23:46] These are the reasons why the disciples said that Jesus was the creator of the world. They felt they understood the driving force behind creation because they had observed it firsthand. They had seen the emergence of a new form of humanity, and they had seen Jesus creating it. If this is how the creator is at work in the world right now, then they reasoned that this is how the creator must have worked in the past too. The creator must be just like Jesus– she creates all life, she gives it opportunities to flourish, and she never forces it to submit to her agenda, ever.

Did the disciples have proof? No, they did not. Some things are very difficult to prove. In particular, predicting the future is notoriously difficult. But the disciples felt they had seen enough that they were willing to go ‘all in’. And the data they observed is still here. If you are interested, you can find people who are moving beyond relating to others in Homo sapien ways and embracing something new. It is certainly easy to overlook them, but if you are motivated it isn’t that difficult to find them either. You can observe them, and you can even experiment with replication yourself. I hope you will consider it.

Please share this podcast if you think it is an important conversation

[25:18] That’s it for episode 3. Before I summarize it I would like to ask you for a favour. I would like to broaden the conversation and get more listeners. If you are finding this podcast interesting or thinking that it could be an important conversation, I am hoping you can help spread the word. Please tell your friends about it, or comment on it on social media or leave a review in your podcast app. This would very be helpful. Thanks so much for considering it. Also, if you have questions or comments feel free to send me an email. I’ve left my address in the show notes.

Episode Summary

[26:02] Let me summarize this episode:

• When the book of Genesis is approached as ancient Hebrew literature, which it is, it is clear that there is no contradiction between the creation stories it is telling and earth’s 4.5-billion-year fossil record. God has continually been creating throughout the 4.5 billion years — and evolution, whatever it is, has somehow played a role in this process.
• The New Testament authors make the wild claim that Jesus created the heavens and the earth.
• The starting point for these disciples was their experience with Jesus. They saw him creating a new humanity and they participated in the work themselves.
• They also told us that Jesus is saving us from our sins. It ends up that salvation is synonymous with new creation. When humanity is no longer in slavery to sin, they become something new. A new covenant written on their hearts[7]. It is new creation.
• It is because they believed they had seen the creator in action that they felt they had insight into how the creator works at all times. This is why they claimed that Jesus created the world.
• If evolution played a role in the original creation and God is continuing his creative work in the same manner that he has all along, then it follows that Jesus’s saving work is evolutionary. The new humanity that Jesus is creating should be understood as the next stage in human evolution. We should not drive an arbitrary and unnecessary wedge between our modern understanding of the world and the message of the New Testament.
• The disciples believed humanity, as they knew it was doomed and the best thing they could do to help was to focus on replication and hopefully drag humanity into the future.
• The disciples’ experience with Jesus as well as their experiments in replication gave them a lot of data to base their conclusions on. It is possible they are wrong, but there is no doubt they made a significant impact on the world by living out their theory. We should make sure we really hear them.
• The data the disciples observed is still with us today. If you are motivated, you can find people who are living according to new patterns. They are replicating the new form of humanity, right in our midst. Their existence is a sign that something truly evolutionary is happening. I hope you seek them out and maybe even experiment with replication yourself.

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Trailer for the next episode

[29:15] The gospel according to Matthew notes that the crowds were amazed, ‘because [Jesus] taught as one who has authority, and not as their teachers of the law’. The irony here is that the teachers of the law were appointed by Jewish religious institutions and therefore, they had what we think of as real authority, whereas Jesus had none. We will see that Matthew understands authority differently — instead of coming from human institutions, divine authority comes from alignment with reality. Divine authority comes from alignment with the heavens and earth that God created. In addition, human institutional authority normally finds divine authority threatening and is hostile to it. Please join for the next episode.

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[1] Exploring my Strange Bible, Episode 7: Science and Faith. Posted August 16, 2017. @Time 3:36. (Original talk in 2011.)

[2] Exploring my Strange Bible, Episode 7: Science and Faith. Posted August 16, 2017. @Show Notes.

[3] Exploring my Strange Bible, Episode 7: Science and Faith. Posted August 16, 2017. @Time 5:15.

[4] It may be more precise to say Jesus is the incarnation of the Word of God.

[5] The scientific method itself was not invented at the time of Jesus. Francis Bacon was the first to formalize the concept of a true scientific method, but he didn’t do so in a vacuum. The work of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) and Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) influenced Bacon tremendously.

[6] Jesus often spoke about how the time was right for him. To me this suggests if Jesus had appeared on the scene 1,000 years earlier for example, the time would not have been right. That is, even if he was the exact same Jesus, replication would not have been possible, and his work would have amounted to nothing.

[7] Jeremiah 31:31, Luke 22:20, 1 Corinthians 11:25.