Formed from the Soil: Did Humans Evolve?

One of the most controversial scientific theories of the past two hundred years has to be Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.  Even non-religious people may not relish the thought that we share common ancestors with not only chimps and other great apes, but even with non-mammalian creatures.  In fact, if Darwin's theory is accurate, we share common ancestors with cockroaches and even plants.  On the surface, this seems to diminish humanity's special place within the cosmos.  But is that really the case?  Read on.

First of all, let me confess, not only am I not a biologist, but I also struggled in my college biology classes.  Having said that, I love what biologists, and other scientists can teach us about life, especially human life.  My struggle in the sciences comes down to details.  I am not very strong in the minutia of mathematical and scientific formulas, but I enjoy scientific concepts from the macro level.  I just need really smart people to dumb it down and communicate it to me in ways that I can understand.  So, I am not in a position to argue for or against Darwin's theory from a scientific perspective, but I do feel qualified to comment on it from a theological and philosophical perspective.  

Second, in this blog I am not arguing that a person should necessarily embrace evolution, but rather that there's nothing inherently heretical for followers of Jesus to do so.  A great resource on this is the BioLogos website and organization (BioLogos ). The founder of the organization is Dr. Francis Collins, the former director of the National Institutes of Health.  Collins is a committed Christian and endorses Darwin's theory of evolution.  

In this post I just want to shed some light on a short passage in Genesis 2 that might provide us with a different way of considering the way in which God created humanity.

"...then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." - Genesis 2:7 (NRSV)

There is a lot of intimacy and care in how this verse describes God's creation of humanity.  He doesn't just speak mankind into existence; we are told he forms or fashions the man from the ground - the soil. In fact, the name Adam is the Hebrew word for man and comes from the same Hebrew root word for land, ground, or soil.  God uses the stuff of creation - dirt - to create humanity.  I don't believe that this passage is a historical, much less scientific description of how God created humanity, but rather a symbolic account of the significance that YHWH places on humanity from the very beginning of creation.  It's not an accident that the "name Adam" literally means "man".  But there was not literally one man, named Adam in the Garden of Eden. Rather, the Adam of the Genesis 2 story represents all of humanity.  The stories in chapters 2 and 3 give us insight into the plight of all of us, not simply two individuals in the beginning.  In a sense, we are all Adam and Eve.

So, how does this relate to evolution?  If God is able to create humanity from the dust of the earth (from the molecules and atoms of creation), then he is capable of creating humankind from lesser and lesser developed organisms going all the way back to the primordial soup of the primeval Earth.  What distinguishes us from other living things, and the rest of creation isn't our chemical and material makeup, but that God used the chemicals and materials of his creation to form us in his image.  The process (or the length of the process) isn't the defining factor.  Afterall, none of us place a great deal of importance on a shovel full of dirt, but it's pretty cool that our God can take basic stuff like that and create all of us!  

So, whether or not evolution turns out to be 100% accurate, what all of us can be sure of is that we have been created in the image of the God who loved us and in fact became one of us.  And that gives humanity its ultimate dignity. - Shay 

The Goal and Destination of Creation (part three)

 

This is the final post in a three-part series on the goal and destination of creation. The Biblical story as a whole can be summed up as: "Creation to (re)New(ed) Creation".  It is the story of God and his people, a story of becoming.  It begins like this.

In the Beginning 

"In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind (or spirit - ruach in Hebrew) swept over the face of the waters." - Genesis 1:1-2 (NRSV)

God's creation begins with the heavens and the earth, but in the beginning, they are without form and are void of the necessities for life and meaning.  Though Genesis 1 describes God's creational process symbolically and poetically as a seven-day journey, in our human way of reckoning it has been a multi-billion-year evolution.  God is far more patient than the average 21st century person!

As God's story with his people progressed, through gradual and unfolding revelation, it began to emerge that this grand epic has a goal and destination.  The prophet Isaiah described it like this, "On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.  And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.  Then God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken." - Isaiah 25:6-8

In the next chapter of Isaiah, we discover a cryptic description of how God will defeat death. Some scholars believe this to be the first reference of resurrection in the Hebrew scriptures.  "Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise.  O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!  For your dew is a radiant dew, and the earth will give birth to those long dead." - Isaiah 26:19

So, in these chapters of Isaiah we see that God has a hope and future in store for his people that goes beyond the grave.  It is not an ethereal, non-physical, non-bodily, spiritual existence, rather it is a full-bodied, robust, and ultra-physical reality.  Later in Isaiah (chapters 65-66) we discover that this new reality is not to be experienced in some distant heaven, but rather that God will create new heavens and a new earth, just as he had done in the beginning.  These later chapters in Isaiah do not describe the life of the age to come as eternal, but as a full, well-lived, and meaningful life. However, as the doctrine of the resurrection of the body became the norm in much of Judaism, Isaiah's visions in chapters 25 and 26 were combined with the visions found in chapters 65 and 66.   By the time of the 1st century of our era, most of mainstream Judaism held to a belief in a future bodily resurrection leading to eternal life in a new age and a renewed creation.  They believed this was the goal and destination of creation, but there were questions of how and when God would bring this new reality about.  In stepped Jesus, believed to be the Messiah by many of his Jewish brothers and sisters.  

Jesus' Death and Resurrection: The Gateway to the Age to Come 

The earliest Christians (both Jews and Gentiles) believed that through his death and resurrection, Jesus ushered in the age to come.  In their minds and hearts, the new creation had already been launched on Easter Sunday.  However, as the Apostle Paul so ably communicated in Romans chapter 8, this new age has come not all at once but can best be described as simultaneously as an "already" and "not yet".  The renewal of all things has already begun, but it has not yet been brought to completion.  When will it all come full circle and why has it taken so long?  The writer of 2 Peter answers these questions in chapter 3 of his short letter.

God's Timing is Not Our Timing 

"But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.  The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.  But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything done on it will be disclosed...But in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home." - 2 Peter 3:8-10 & 13 

The writer of 2 Peter claims that Christ has not yet returned and brought all things to completion because God is still at work bringing the good news of salvation to all people and helping those people to realign their lives with his new creational purposes under the Lordship of Jesus.  Like he did through the flood in Noah's day, God will one day cleanse the creation again, but this time with fire.  On the other side of this cleansing will emerge a (re)new(ed) heaven and earth where righteousness is fully realized.  

The New Heaven and the New Earth 

At the end of the book of Revelation, John sees the goal and destination of creation up close and personal.  He describes it thus, "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more...And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'See, the home of God is among (people).  He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes.  Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.'  And the one who was seated on the throne said, 'See, I am making all things new.'" - Revelation 21:1 & 3-5a 

John describes the consummation of creation as the coming together of heaven and earth.  In other words, God's will is finally done on earth as it is in heaven.  And God comes to live with his people in the renewed creation.  He makes all things new.  Though we cannot fully grasp what this new reality will be, here are three brief things to consider and imagine.  

1. All Wrongs Will Be Made Right 

Anyone who has lived long enough in the present world knows that things don't always go as we would hope.  The world is broken, and all people are also broken.  So often, injustice reigns and those on the margins are exploited and left without a voice.  One day, these wrongs will be undone and those things left undone in our own lives will be made right.   

2. Humanity's Vocation Will be Fully Realized 

We discussed in a previous blog that baked into creation is God's plan for humanity to live meaningful and productive lives.  When we engage in purposeful and impactful work, we not only bless others and the creation, but we also become who we were created to be.  In the age to come, we will fully realize our potential as human beings and we will creatively work alongside one another and alongside God himself (Revelation 22 says that we will reign with him) in stewarding the world.  This work will not be "toil", but rather "productive play".  

3. The New Creation Will Include Unfolding Drama and Adventure

Just as the initial creation is not static, so the new creation will include an element of unfolding drama and adventure.  This is probably where we need to harness our imaginations the most.  In fact, we can probably only skim the surface of the adventure that lies before us in the age to come when we dream about all that we hope to experience and achieve in this lifetime.  We probably all have regrets about those moments and areas in life where we failed to live up to our full potential.  In the renewed creation we will be given the opportunity to plumb the depths of who we truly are and where the longing of our hearts might take us.  The best movies, plays, books, and dreams are foretastes of the drama and adventure that is yet to come.  But as compelling as we might find these stories now, the narratives we will continue to write and live out in the age to come will far exceed anything that we can conjure up in the present.  The goal and destination of creation is not so much an ending, but rather a new beginning.  No wonder the early disciples cried out, "Maranatha!" (Come Lord Jesus!). - Shay  

The Goal and Destination of Creation (part two)

In the previous blog we explored the goal and destination of creation, and this is where we will pick up again in this post.  

The Freedom of Creation to Become 

It is often supposed that God created a kind of static or steady-state universe.  It is imagined that God said, "Let there be mountains!" - and then there were 20,000 feet mountains dotted everywhere across the landscape.  But the sense of the "let there be" phrases in the Hebrew of Genesis 1 carries more of the idea of both being and becoming.  It might be better to translate these verses as, "let there be the power of (mountains - or anything else, including humans) to become".  

Even the name, YHWH carries within it the sense of both being and becoming.  YHWH is the God who is and also the God who "becomes".  Theologically, this has a profound impact on how we understand God, creation, and ourselves.  

Within God's very nature is freedom.  In fact, there is no being or entity with a greater freedom than God.  Humanity is also given the freedom to not only "be", but to "become".  This is true of the creation itself.  But becoming is a process, it is not static.  To put it bluntly, it takes time.

If you've ever been to the Grand Canyon, then you have seen what the slow trickle and flow of water can create, if given enough time.  Like Rome, the Grand Canyon was not made in a day.  In fact, it didn't take thousands of years, rather it took millions of years for the Grand Canyon to be carved by the forces of nature that God established.  Mount Everest and the Himalayas did not automatically tower over Asia and the Indian subcontinent overnight but were formed through millions of years of plate tectonics.   

In Genesis 1, like he does for the rest of creation, God speaks humanity into existence.  In Genesis 2, he forms the human out of the dust of the earth - using the elements of creation to sculpt humankind.  Neither of these descriptions tell us exactly how God created humanity, nor do they tell us how long it actually took.  Instead, they describe the significance and role that humanity is given within God's creation plan.  Like mountains and canyons, humanity's formation took not thousands, but millions of years to complete.  

And here is the interesting thing.  The job of forming and creating humanity is not yet complete.  Like the rest of creation, we too are on a continuous journey of becoming.  And like the rest of creation, God has allowed a freedom in our journey.  What we will become is not set in stone.  There is an open-endedness to not only creation as a whole, but for individual lives within creation.  God's plan for the creation - and for us - includes a great deal of latitude.  

Though we are given freedom to become, some of the free choices that we make, ironically lead us into a path of slavery, rather than freedom.  The Bible describes these free, but suboptimal choices as "sin".  Sin limits our freedom to become the true humanity we were originally created to be and instead condemns us to slavery and eventually death.  The message of the New Testament declares that through Jesus' sacrificial death on the cross, he destroyed the power that sin has over us, setting us free to truly become human.  Through Jesus' resurrection, we can be sure that death will not have the final word on our lives.  Just as Jesus was raised from the dead, so all of God's faithful people will one day overcome death through bodily resurrection.  At that moment, we will truly be free to become.  And so will the rest of creation be set free. 

 The Creation Will Be Set Free 

The apostle Paul, in Romans 8:18-21, describes it like this: "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.  For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God."

Paul tells us that one day, we will be set free from death and decay and will obtain the ultimate freedom to become the humanity that we were created to be but failed to be.  In the same way, the rest of the universe will also be set free to freely and truly become that which it was always meant to be.  Creation isn't just about "being", but much more about "becoming."  But what will that (re)new(ed) world look like?  What will it be like?  We'll tackle that question in the next post.  In the meantime, consider who you are now and who you wish to become one day in the future.  We are all on a journey of "becoming" and who we are becoming has not yet been determined. - Shay