Topical Guide: Created Order

Created Order Related Topics

Order and Contemporary Issues

Alzheimer's disease

Artificial Intelligence

Business failure

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Data protection

Feminist movements

Freedom of speech

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Mental health treatment

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Nuclear weapons

Quantum randomness

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Racial and gender equality

Search for truth

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Sex trafficking

Sexual revolution

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University leadership

Weapons manufacturing

Order in Creation

God declared creation good, which is the foundation of moral order

Humans are at the top of the hierarchy of created things

In the Bible, chaos is the enemy of God's will

In the Hebrew Bible, God often uses the non-human creation to bring about his will

Music and rejoicing accompany God’s creating

Old Testament

Babel caused the profusion of languages

Moses and the Torah

The gift of liberation precedes the giving of the law (Exodus)

Wisdom literature borrows from Egyptian sources

New Testament

Jesus chose not to force a regime change through violent revolutionary action

Jesus’ ministry brought disorder to the power structures and social status quo of his day

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Paul's view of order has some overlaps with that of Confucianism

The Bible and Moral Order

New Testament ethics show that it is difficult to move from the observed natural order to moral law

Paul describes the Gentiles as having an awareness of natural law

The biblical tradition affirms both equality and hierarchy

The New Testament borrows from Roman morality

Creation and the Nature of God

Christian doctrine of creation compared with a Confucian view

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Creation is ordered, but it is also profuse and diverse

God's attributes are mirrored in the created order

God’s oneness means that what he makes accords with his rationality

Trinitarian monotheism entails a created order that is dynamic and creative

Human Nature and Human Flourishing

A Christian ethic cannot be reduced to moral commandments

Creational goods are prior to moral commands

Creational goods are valuable irrespective of whether humans value them

Creational goods promote human flourishing; moral laws defend these goods

Embodied human existence itself is a good

Humans' role as image bearers is linked to their rule over creation

Values are as intrinsic to creation as matter is

Sin

Divinely-given values provide grounds to critique human orders

Human depictions of evil in art mimic God’s awareness and judgment of evil

Sin makes us ignorant about human nature and behaviour

Sin's effect on our minds makes identifying what is good difficult

Salvation

How the moral order might be communicated through the history of salvation

Humans order creation as a response to God's saving action

We are redeemed by love, not law

Worship

Christian spiritual practices such as confession, prayer, and worship make us better at promoting the good

Embodied goodness is at the heart of Christian worship and liturgy

The Source of Moral Order

A created, objective moral order is a logical outworking of monotheism

If the universe exists because of blind chance, the human condition is probably amoral

In Confucianism, cosmic order generates moral law

The Good is neither independent of God nor his arbitrary command, but is God’s eternal nature

Creational Goods and Moral Commands

Creational goods and their goal, human flourishing, are prior to moral commands

Creational goods and their goal, human flourishing, are prior to moral commands: a psychiatric application of this idea

Intrinsic goodness can be distinguished from instrumental goods

Morally obligatory acts can be distinguished from those which are morally good but not obligatory

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The difference between moral goods and moral principles

This theory explains why people are willing to sacrifice for a higher moral good

Moral Law in Practice

Appeals to the created order may aid cross-cultural and inter-religious dialogue

Freedom is inherent in God’s moral law; it is both private and communal

Laws do not overlap with natural morality perfectly; otherwise, states would have to police in highly intrusive ways

Only some parts of divine moral law are best realised through human laws

Situations may arise where the dictates of God’s moral order conflict with a leader’s obligation to their constituents

Discerning Moral Order

A ‘tense consensus’ is possible between Christian and non-Christian accounts of morality

Difficulties with divine command theory

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Due to the way sin impairs our ability to know what is good, we need special revelation - the Bible and subsequent reflection on it

Since the moral order is universal, it is (at least partly) accessible to all

Some moral principles are observable across all societies; they can be discerned empirically

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We can discover goods by analysing what motivates our behaviour

Difficulties in Discerning Moral Order

New Testament ethics show that it is difficult to move from the observed natural order to moral law

Sin hinders our attempts to understand the world, and particularly human nature

The good is difficult to discern due to the ways that sin warps the conscience

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Discerning Moral Order in Practice

Assessing whether laws promote flourishing requires empirical evidence as well as ethical reflection

Discerning when to disrupt institutions

Moral laws need to be applied wisely and creatively to different situations; they cannot be followed mindlessly

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There are difficulties with 'value neutrality' in psychological contexts

Human Flourishing

AI projects should strive to promote social good

Flourishing is the goal of the moral order

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Health is a state of complete physical, social, mental and spiritual well-being

Psychiatry can promote flourishing rather than just treating pathologies

Hierarchies

A well-ordered society has multiple levels of government

Covid lockdowns showed that those jobs at the bottom of the social hierarchy are often the most essential

Healthy accountability is a way of holding hierarchy and autonomy together

Hierarchy exists in the layers of an AI model

Humans are at the top of the hierarchy of created things

Jesus came to invert social hierarchies

The biblical tradition affirms both equality and hierarchy

Those at the top of a hierarchy must treat those below them fraternally

Other Cognates

Instrumental and intrinsic goods

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Peremptory norms

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Created Order in the Christian Tradition

Ancient Christian philosophies of music

By reflecting on the order in nature, Christian natural philosophers invented modern science

Christian adaptation of classical virtues

Christian thought grants that rebellion may be morally justified

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General revelation in the Christian tradition

Natural law in Christian tradition

Order in Worship

Thomas Aquinas and the moral life

Created Order in Classical Traditions

Ancient Chinese and Greek philosophies of music

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Ancient Greek philosophy of science

Aristotle: community is basic to human life

Natural order in Aristotle

Natural order in Stoicism

The Euthyphro dilemma: where does the standard of goodness come from?

Disorder

Creation is diverse and profuse as well as ordered

In Chinese thought, order and chaos exist in a mutual, dynamic relationship

In the Bible, chaos is the enemy of the good

Political Disorder

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Authoritarianism

War and conflict

Economic Disorder

Business failure and bankruptcy

Collapse of supply chains

Economic collapse

Psychological Disorder

Ecological Disorder

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Social Disorder

Deficiencies to health and well-being

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Social conflicts

Living with Disorder

Art exists to help us see the evils in things to which we have become desensitised

Living in a fallen world requires us to live with disorder and acknowledge its impact on those who have suffered

The acknowledgment of disorder is a prelude to the return of order

Truth is not obvious; our perception of truth is distorted by sin

Beneficial Disorder

A vibrant social order requires disturbance as an impetus to constructive change

Economic collapse led to the creation of bankruptcy laws and a new economic order

Jesus’ ministry brought disorder to the power structures and social status quo of his day

Languages are in continuous, creative flux and resist attempts to make them perfectly systematic

Prophetic critique brings disruption to established orders

The acknowledgment of disorder is a prelude to the return of order

Order and Freedom

Freedom is inherent in God’s moral law

Healthy accountability is a way of holding hierarchy and autonomy together

Postmodernism tends towards freedom (agency); previous ideologies tended towards order (structure)

The west prizes freedom over order; Confucian culture prizes the opposite

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Order, Freedom, and Creativity

Created order is compatible with creative freedom

Joy is the virtue that combines order and freedom in equilibrium

Music requires the combination of both order and freedom

Overemphasising creation’s rationality risks minimising the role of imagination

Trinitarian monotheism entails a created order that is dynamic and creative, not barren or sterile

Order and Postmodernism

A focus on order is counter to the postmodern zeitgeist

In postmodernism, the attempt to reason or appeal to order can be seen as a veiled quest for power

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Modernism's errors were overemphasising order and rationality

Order and postmodernism

Postmodernism has had much less of an impact within the natural sciences

Postmodernism's impact within the natural sciences: an alternate perspective

The structure-agency continuum describes the tension between order and freedom in modernism and postmodernism

Promoting Order

Discussion and collaboration are essential for living well together and discerning the good

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Humility when teaching mirrors Christ’s self-emptying at the incarnation

Promoting moral order means seeking human flourishing; this is more important than following rules

Worship and spiritual practices make us better at promoting the good

Responding to Evil

Markets can make available things that aid human flourishing, but they have no solution to disordered desires

To promote order we need awe at God’s goodness, and horror at the ways evil has marred his creation

We need to sit with people’s trauma before affirming God’s order

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Created Order as the Grounds for Science

Monotheism entails a rational and intelligible cosmos; this is the ground for rational scientific enquiry

Science arose because scholars believed that God had ordered the natural world and this order was discernible through experimentation

Created Order and Naturalism

Against metaphysical anti-realism, the world has real existence outside of human conception of it

Against naturalism, matter and (moral) values are both inherent in creation

The existence of universal natural laws is less plausible in a naturalistic framework

The universe is ordered rationally and we can understand it using reason; this is easier to explain within theism than naturalism

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Order and Quantum Mechanics

Order does not obviate freedom; physical laws permit quantum randomness

Quantum chance is not purely random, but depends upon top-down causation

Order and Artificial Intelligence

AI may be able to reduce human bias in screening for markers of Alzheimer’s Disease

AI’s ability to discern order in nature is limited

Principles for developing AI technology so that it promotes social goods

Political Philosophies

A healthily ordered society will have multiple levels of government and social institutions

Confucian Political philosophy advocates governing by virtue, not force

Freedom is prized in the development of the western political tradition

Hobbes: there is no moral law except for human contracts; the human condition is fundamentally amoral

In a sinful world, states are needed to uphold law and protect the innocent

Order is prized in the development of Chinese political philosophy

There is a tension between rights and virtues in discussions of political participation

International Order

Applying international law most justly may depend on the social or political context

Consensus about what is good can be found or created across cultures because we all exist in the same moral order

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Created moral order governs international relations even when contracts do not exist

How justice can be promoted or subverted through transnational legal orders

International law needs to appeal to some kind of universal moral order to have authority

International Relations is governed by peremptory (fundamental) norms

Is it moral to manufacture weapons to maintain the international order?

It is important to consider religion when seeking to promote international order

The international order has been disrupted in the Ukraine War

Difficulties in Promoting Social Order

Human law is only ever a shadow of divine law

Laws do not overlap with natural morality perfectly; otherwise, states would have to police in highly intrusive ways

Situations may arise where the dictates of God’s moral order conflict with a leader’s obligation to their constituents

Social orders mirror the order of creation imperfectly

There are often tensions between individual and communal interests

Disrupting the Political Order

Christian appeal to created order provides a higher moral authority by which unjust regimes can be critiqued or rebelled against

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How reconciliation should or should not be sought after political conflict

Rebellion against unjust states can be justified in some circumstances

Disrupting the Social Order

A vibrant social order requires disturbance for development and legal change

Assessing whether laws promote flourishing requires empirical evidence as well as ethical reflection

Constant disorder or revolution prohibits social renewal

Disorder provides a means for renewing the social order

Should Christianity be considered conservative or radical?

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Economic Order

Economic collapse led to the creation of bankruptcy laws and a new economic order

Externalities (unintended effects in market interactions)

Free market liberalism

Market economies need private property, money, and a framework of law or social custom to function

Morality of markets

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Promoting goods in the economic order means considering both means and ends

Ways in which markets tend towards moral disorder or injustice

Order and Ecology

Caring for the environment is necessary to ensure good public health outcomes

Human authority over creation is delegated and subject to God’s authority; it must not be exploitative

In the Hebrew Bible, God often uses the non-human creation to bring about his will

Non-human creatures have value independent of their usefulness to humans, yet exist in some part to serve humans

Order and Health

AI may be able to reduce human bias in screening for markers of Alzheimer’s Disease

Public health aims to bring the good of health to individuals and communities

Public health requires caring for the environments in which people live, both physical and social

Public health seeks the complete physical, mental, social and spiritual well-being of people and communities

There is a helpful move in psychiatry towards promoting flourishing rather than just treating problems

Trauma needs to be heeded before order can be restored

Order in the Arts and Literature

Art has intrinsic value, outside of the effect it produces on those who engage with it

Art helps us become moral through both contemplation of what is good and depiction of what is evil

Literature of trauma reflects the disordered nature of those experiences, and by so doing validates them

The acknowledgment of disorder is a prelude to the return of order

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Music

Ancient Chinese musical theory

In ancient thought, music is a means of achieving virtue and order in the cosmos

Music can help foster social virtues

Music is an expression of cosmic harmony and mathematical ratios

Music requires both order and freedom to be successful

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Created Order and Academic Practices

Academic Virtues

Academic virtues are worship practices

Academic virtues displayed in an international relations context

Academic virtues displayed in university leadership

Courage to assert unpopular truths

Describing academic virtue

Academic Virtues: Humility

Humility is needed when communicating the potential of AI technologies

Humility when teaching mirrors Christ’s self-emptying at the incarnation

Humility’s necessity is shown in and promoted by Christian worship practices

Pursuing Truth

Academic vocation is about discerning reality as given by God

Academics must recognise how sin can corrupt their search for truth (ego, insecurity, lust for power etc.)

Discerning truth requires both awe and horror

Truth is not always obvious

Pursuing Truth in Community

Accountability is the virtue which enables us to use our freedom well

Because truth is difficult to discern, academic work is necessarily communal

Discerning what is good requires dialogue between the disciplines

Discussion is essential in discerning the good

The disciplines must depend upon each other to achieve human flourishing

Christians and the Secular Academy

Christian academics can bring a prophetic critique to the orders of our day

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Christian institutions on the margins of universities can create charitable spaces for difficult conversations

Marxist and postmodern theories of truth give a different perspective on the goal of academic research

Created Order in the Disciplines

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Fine and Performing arts

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Physical and Biological Sciences

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Social Sciences

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