Creation Order Is Universal

The Created Order inheres precisely in all Creation. It is not the preserve of any locality, any period of history, or any culture. So Christian people are not merely commending marriage as an institution they like and which they impose within their own little Christian sub-culture. There is no such thing as “Christian marriage”; there is only marriage, which is the same in every culture and every age, whether or not a culture or era conform to it. In other words, marriage is a Creation given rather than a local or temporal structure. Because an ethics of creation is above cultural relativity and historical transience, it is ethics for all people and all time; it enables the church to speak to the world. And it means that Christian people are not “defending marriage” as though the created order of marriage could be undone by human choice.

Creation Order Is Revealed in Scripture

It is all very well to claim that there is such a thing as Creation Order, metaphysical, given by God for all people in all of human history. Such an ontological claim is meaningless unless there is some epistemological confidence that this Order may reliably be discerned and known. The ontological and the epistemological poles of our enquiry are distinct and yet inseparable. For every statement about how things are we need to address the question of how we may know that they are like this. The Christian ethicist believes not only that the Order of Creation exists (it has an ontology), but also that it may be known through the revelation of God in the Bible (it has an epistemology). It is possible by responsible exegesis and theology to discern in the whole Bible a consistent ethic of sexuality. It is beyond the scope of this paper to examine this claim, which can properly be tested only in a long study.¹⁹

Creation Order Is Significant

Someone may ask what the concept of Creation Order means in practice, given that different cultures and individuals make their own choices in matters of sex and family life. Are we not in danger of positing a purely theoretical theological construct of no practical importance, a kind of Platonic ideal that hovers above us on another plane of reality, but doesn’t intersect with our own? The general truth may be stated simply: “The well-being of man is grounded in the good will of God.”²⁰ Human well-being is promoted by conformity to Creation Order and damaged when humans ignore or reject Creation Order. This well-being is both individual and social. God has given humankind a uniquely privileged place in the universe. Human beings have the dignity that our moral actions have consequences.²¹ The Bible relates human moral agency to the Created Order by the language of blessing and curse.

The Created Order is an ontological given, an objective reality. Our subjective freedom is to respond to that objective reality by conforming to it or rejecting it. When a society conforms to that Order, the general truth is that blessing follows. For example, when a society honors parents, its days will be long in the land (cf. Exodus 20:12, the fifth commandment, and Ephesians 6:2–3). This expresses a deeper truth than just taking care of mom and dad. Respect for parents stands in biblical law as the tip of the iceberg of all the laws that relate to respect for authority. When a society systemically rejects proper authority, there is a catastrophic breakdown of order, and the civilization collapses. This is why their days will not be long in the land if they neglect this commandment. It is not an arbitrary command, but one that reflects how things are. When a society chooses to live out of harmony with that Order, curse follows, and we see in family life how acutely the sins of the fathers are visited on the children down the generations. Sexual chaos will in the end destroy a civilization.

The present significance of Creation ethics lies in this: conformity with Creation Order involves conformity with the will of the Creator, and this means blessing. Nonconformity means rebellion against the Creator, and this means curse. There is a correspondence between human flourishing and conformity to the Created Order. Actions have consequences, and good consequences generally follow actions in conformity to the revealed will of God in Creation Order. In general, a society where sex is guarded by the boundaries of marriage will prosper more than a society where there is sexual chaos.

This is the general truth. But life is not as simple as this. Much of the book of Job wrestles with precisely this difficulty. For example we may place the confident act-consequence framework of Proverbs 6:20–35 (where bad consequences follow from immoral actions) alongside Job 31:9–12. Here Job admits (as one of a succession of hypothetical sins) that if he had allowed himself to be enticed into an adulterous relationship, this would have been “a heinous crime … a criminal offense,” and he would have deserved to be punished. But in fact he has not done this, which renders the suffering he endures sharper and more puzzling. Sometimes bad things happen following blameless actions.

What can we say in the light of such moral and consequential complexity? First, we may observe that in the wisdom literature itself and in the psalms (e.g., Psalm 73) there is repeated recognition of this problem. The consequences of blessing and curse must therefore be understood in this life as a general rather than as a universal truth (and only as an absolute truth at the end of history).²² But a general truth with exceptions is not a worthless truth. Imagine a well-ordered town that has suffered an earthquake. The main lines of the streets are still usually the best way to travel, even though we know we may encounter obstacles that ought not to be there, and indeed there may sometimes open up through a former building an apparently clear path that ought not to be there. Although there is disorder in the ruins, it is disorder superimposed upon underlying order. It is like this with the Created Order in this age.

Having said this about blessings and curses as they relate to the Created Order in the fallen ambiguities of this age, we must reaffirm the strong general corporate truth that a society living in line with the Created Order in the realm of sexual ethics will be a happier and more lasting society than one that does not.

This reminds us that marriage (as a part of the Created Order) exists as a significant institution in the world whether or not societies conform to its beneficial disciplines. So when Christians seek to persuade society about this moral Order, we are not defending the institution of marriage as though the God-given institution of marriage were under ontological threat. If ethical systems were voluntarist constructs, that is indeed what we would be doing, engaging in a power struggle for the convictions of people. But it is not within the power of humankind finally to destroy Created Order. It was given to humankind in Creation; it stands above human history and the human will; and finally it will be restored and transformed in the new heavens and earth. No institution that is part of the Created Order can be destroyed by human disobedience. Human nonconformity leads not to the destruction of the Order, but to judgment on human beings. No Christian movement needs to defend marriage: rather we seek to protect human beings against the damage done to them by cutting across the grain of the Order of marriage. That knowledge takes a burden off our shoulders. When teaching ethics Christians are engaged in proclamation of a given Order and appeal to men and women to live in believing obedience to that Order in Christ; we are not engaged in a desperate attempt to turn back the tide of social affairs.

We affirm therefore that marriage is a part of the moral fabric of creation, given in grace by God to men and women as a non-negotiable shape for sexual relations, given for our blessing, within whose free constraints a man and a woman may respond to God’s calling to serve him in love.