It’s interesting that Joe doesn’t use the phrase “social order”, except tin passing when he talks about “revelations dealing with the social order of the saints.” I want to finish reading before I comment too much. But there is an element to the text that distinguishes order from God as source. That is order is always being transformed rather than arriving at a fixed order. So we have hope not tied to hope in a particular order so much as an “openness to possibilities in the plural, and not just a demand for a certain or particular possibility in the singular.” This is important I think.

Now I try to be a bit skeptical here since this is already what I think. So I try to argue against it lest I fall too quickly into confirmation bias. You note things that you see as problematic such as particular kinds of focus on clothes or exclusion. It’s interesting that here we’re discussing “order established in the law.” It’s worth asking how this relates to the earlier chapters on hope.