Holy Order vs. Primeval Chaos: A Classical Anglican Perspective
Creation as the Victory of Order Over Chaos
The Book of Genesis opens not with myth, but with majesty. The world is not birthed in strife among gods, as in Mesopotamian cosmogonies, but is spoken into being by the One Sovereign Lord: "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light" (Genesis 1:3, NKJV). What appears at first to be a poetic beginning is in fact the declaration of divine authority. The Spirit of God hovers over the deep (tehom), the ancient symbol of chaos and disorder, and brings forth cosmos by the power of His Word.
The Anglican theologian Richard Hooker observed in The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity that order is the "first and greatest thing that God hath established in the world." God does not contend with Chaos as though it were His equal; rather, He speaks and it yields. Boundaries are established: between light and dark, land and sea, heavens and earth. These distinctions are not arbitrary—they reflect the divine mind. As the Collect for Peace in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer puts it, God is the "author of peace and lover of concord."
Creation, therefore, is fundamentally an ordering act, revealing the nature of God as one who delights not in confusion but in harmony, rhythm, and structure.
Chaos Returns: Sin as Rebellion Against Holy Order
Genesis 3 recounts humanity's fall, not merely as a moral lapse, but as a breach in the divine order. Adam and Eve violate the one boundary God had set. In doing so, they introduce disorder into creation. The curse that follows—the groaning of the earth, pain in childbirth, toil in labor—is not arbitrary punishment. It is the unraveling of the holy order into which humanity was placed.
By the time we reach Genesis 6, chaos has metastasized: "The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence" (Genesis 6:11). God’s judgment in the flood is a deliberate undoing of creation. The waters that had been divided now overwhelm. Yet even in judgment, there is a seed of hope: Noah. The ark becomes a vessel of ordered salvation—a new creation waiting to emerge.
Anglican liturgy echoes this theme. In the Great Litany, we pray to be delivered "from all disordered affections," recognizing that sin is not only offense but disarray. The moral law, as expounded in Scripture and affirmed in Anglican doctrine, reflects the underlying order of God's creation.
Israel: A People Called to Holy Order
The call of Israel is the call to be a holy nation—a people whose very structure, rituals, and calendar reflect divine order. The Law, given at Sinai, is not a means of salvation but a pattern of life shaped by God's holiness. Its ceremonial aspects—dietary laws, festivals, priesthood—formed a kind of liturgical pedagogy, training the people to see God in the rhythms and boundaries of life.
The Anglican tradition has never seen the moral law as abrogated. Article VII of the Thirty-Nine Articles declares that while the ceremonial laws of Moses are not binding on Christians, the moral law remains. In this sense, the Church is the heir of Israel, not in a political but in a spiritual and moral sense. Our worship, structured around the Prayer Book calendar, is itself a reassertion of holy order in a chaotic world.
Christ: The Word Who Tames the Chaos
In Christ, the Logos of God becomes flesh (John 1:14). He is the very embodiment of divine order. The Gospels portray Him not only as Savior but as the tamer of chaos. When He speaks to the storm, “Peace, be still!” (Mark 4:39), it is the same voice that once said, "Let there be light."
Demons, diseases, death itself—all marks of chaos—flee before Him. The man possessed by Legion is restored to order: “clothed, and in his right mind” (Mark 5:15). The miracles of Christ are not mere acts of compassion; they are signs of the kingdom breaking into a disordered world.
The Anglican divines understood Christ not only as the Redeemer of souls but the Restorer of the created order. Bishop Lancelot Andrewes declared that in Christ, the Second Adam, "all things hold together and are reconciled unto God." The Incarnation is the reordering of the cosmos, begun in Bethlehem, made manifest on Calvary, and sealed in the Resurrection.
New Creation: Order Eternal
The Christian hope is not the obliteration of creation, but its restoration. In the vision of the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21), we see a city—ordered, measured, radiant with the glory of God. There is no sea, for the sea, symbol of chaos, has no place in the eternal order of God.
The Church, according to the Anglican understanding, is a sign and foretaste of that new creation. Her sacraments, her creeds, her liturgy—all are acts of holy order. In an age of formlessness, Anglicanism bears witness to the enduring goodness of structure, tradition, and hierarchy. As the Preface to the Ordinal states, "It is evident unto all men, diligently reading holy Scripture and ancient Authors, that from the Apostles’ time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church."
To embrace holy order is not to retreat into rigidity but to participate in the peace of God which surpasses all understanding. It is to stand against the rising tide of primeval chaos, not with violence, but with the calm authority of Him who once said, “Be still.”
Let us, then, hold fast to our Anglican heritage—not as antiquarians, but as stewards of sacred order in a world spinning into disorder. For in Christ, all things shall be made new, and the chaos shall be no more.