(4) An ordered cosmos

This world that we live in is not haphazard or arbitrary.  God created the world in an ordered and patterned way.  This is quite explicit in Genesis 1, where it describes God’s separating out light from darkness, sky from earth and land from sea and creating rich vegetation and varied animals, each ‘according to their kind’.

The Bible refers to this ordering of creation in many ways: God’s law, ordinances, wisdom and so on.  A good example is Psalm 19 which describes the glory of God declared in creation before meditating on God’s law:

7 The law of the Lord is perfect,
    refreshing the soul.
The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy,
    making wise the simple.
8 The precepts of the Lord are right,
    giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the Lord are radiant,
    giving light to the eyes.
9 The fear of the Lord is pure,
    enduring forever.
The decrees of the Lord are firm,
    and all of them are righteous.

10 They are more precious than gold,
    than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey,
    than honey from the honeycomb.
11 By them your servant is warned;
    in keeping them there is great reward.

 Psalm 19:7-11

Those familiar with the Bible’s wisdom literature will have less difficulty understanding what to modern minds appears to be a sudden shift in Psalm 19, from the way of the sun across the heavens in verse 6, to God’s law revivifying human life in verse 7.  That is because such literature takes for granted a creation wide perspective on God’s kingship that is foreign to modern perplexities about how to relate nature and culture. We should be careful not to project such concerns back into the text.

The point is that God’s ordinances extend from the natural world through to the structures of society, to the world of art, to business and commerce. As always when reading the Bible, we do not look for detailed prescription on how to live, but for the very bread that sustains our life, the lamp that will light our path, the power of the gospel to redirect our living before God. We do not get a detailed theory, but a directing principle that shows us that human civilization is normed throughout. We are to open our eyes in faith and see that everywhere there are limits and proprieties, standards and criteria: in every field of human affairs there are right and wrong ways of doing things.  There is nothing in human life that does not belong to the created order.  Everything we are and do is thoroughly creaturely, and requires of us a responsible response to our Creator.

Here we confront an important issue for Bible-believing Christians. The problem is that the Bible does not address itself directly to many of the issues that confront us in modern society. This strengthens the temptation for Christians to retreat from any effort to engage culture in a distinctively Christian way. It thus continues the cycle of privatising our beliefs and secularising our public lives. How then are we to "discover limits" and discern "right and wrong ways of doing things"?

In the Old Testament the Israelites were given the Torah, God's laws for being a holy nation. However, in Exodus 18:15-16 we are told that the people brought their cases to Moses, and he decided between one person and another and made known to them “the statutes and instructions of God”. What is interesting is that the word for “instructions” used here is “torah” in the plural, and this episode comes before the giving of the law at Mount Sinai. We have the Torah before the giving of the Torah! We can make sense of this when we look at the idea of wisdom. Both wisdom and Torah are linked to God’s intent at creation. So, various psalms speak of the creating word by which God ordered creation in Genesis 1. These psalms explicitly identify creation by word as creation by God’s commands, statue, or decree, using these terms as rough equivalents (Psalms 33:6-9; 119:89-96; 148:5-6). This is the same range of terms used for the divinely revealed law that Israel is required to obey. Thus there is a fundamental unity between God’s word in creation and God’s Torah for Israel. Torah cannot be limited to the written law revealed at Sinai; it holds for the entire created order. This insight leads Psalm 148:8 to describe even the wind as obedient to the Creator’s word, while the poet in Psalm 119:91 says to the Lord God, “All things are your servants.” Law is embedded in creation and grounds all proper creaturely functioning. A particularly revealing example of this is given in Isaiah where we are told that wise farmers know how properly to till the soil and thresh their grain for maximum benefit because “His God instructs him and teaches him the right way” (28:24-29). Just where we would normally say that they learned these skills from trial and error, and from being apprenticed by other, more experienced farmers, we are referred to God's direct revelation.  From these points the biblical scholar Richard Middleton has concluded that “in principle there is no difference between wisely discerning God’s will structured into the created order and obeying God’s revealed word.” This perspective continues in the New Testament. In numerous places we are exhorted to discern God's will, to work out our salvation, to practise discerning right from wrong and so on (Romans 12:1-2, Hebrews 5, Philippians 2)

We can summarise this perspective by saying that God’s Word is first published in creation, then authoritatively republished in Scripture to guide God’s people in differing historical circumstances. In the revelation of the law at Sinai, God simply articulates relevant aspects of God’s creational Word for Israel in their particular historical context, with their specific needs for moral and social restoration. God’s Word in creation gives constant direction; the articulation of this directing Word in changing historical circumstances requires wisdom as evidenced by the early church in Acts 15.

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