Book 2 - The Oxford Order - Part 1 of 14

The telephone rang once, stopped, then rang again. Daniel de Jager let it ring a third time before answering; the office line was not widely circulated and those who had it tended to use it sparingly.

“De Jager Antiques.” he said.

“Daniel,” Croker replied. His voice was clear and unhurried. “Good afternoon.”

“Afternoon, you caught me between . . . things.”

“I apologise,” Croker said. “Did you receive the email I sent this morning?”

“I saw it come in, I haven't opened it yet.”

“Would you mind doing so now?”

Daniel rolled his chair back from the desk and reached for the mouse. The computer took a moment to wake. Daniel opened it and scrolled. He read slowly through once, then again from the beginning. When he reached the end for the second time, he leaned back and rested his hand on the edge of the desk.

“It reads, at least in places, like a sermon,” he said. “Evangelical, but seems unusually technical. It definitely isn't written for a general audience.”

“No.” Croker said.

"What's the earliest scientific reference?"

"1960."

Daniel scrolled back up to the top of the screen and sighed before asking. “I assume there is a reason you are asking me to read it?”

“Yes . . . it was written in seventeen seventeen.” Croker said.

Daniel did not respond immediately but returned to the top of the screen and read the first paragraph again.

“That's not possible.” he said.

“We thought you might say that.”

“The vocabulary alone would be anachronistic, the whole thing assumes developments that didn't exist at the time.”

“Yes.”

Daniel closed the email window. “Where was it found?”

“Archivio Nove,” Croker said. “Deposited with a collection of handwritten sermons attributed to a group calling itself the Oxford Order. The documents have been sealed since eighteen forty eight. No access requests logged and with no unauthorised views.”

Daniel pictured the stacks, the hum of the air conditioning and the paper bound with ribbon.

“You are confident the document was present at the time of deposit?” he said.

“Yes.”

“And unchanged?”

“Yes.”

Daniel was silent.

“The Oxford Order is not defunct,” Croker said. “They are believed to still operate in some capacity out of Magdalen College. The network has linked them to ritual practice. Specifically, formalised door opening.”

Daniel exhaled through his nose. “Then there will be texts.”

“Likely.”

“Soooo . . . you want me to identify them?”

“We want you to determine what they are doing and whether the activity warrants intervention. Make of that what you will.”

Daniel looked at the shelves lining the office walls. Spines without titles and boxes marked only by date.

“I will need a little time.” he said.

“Of course.”

“When do you require an answer.”

“As soon as you are able.”

The line went dead.

Daniel remained seated for several seconds after the call ended. He then shut down the computer, locked the filing cabinet and put on his jacket; a khaki cagoule, worn thin at the cuffs. He pulled a baseball cap down low and stepped into the stairwell. Outside, Southall was alive with activity. Crates of fruit and rolls of fabric spilled colour onto the pavement, the sights and sounds of little India a necessary realignment after hours of sorting through invoices in the stuffy De Jager Antiques office.

He walked slowly toward Imperial Chef, his favourite lunchtime spot, soaking in the atmosphere as he pondered the email and its impossible content. He took his usual seat and ordered his usual meal; crab foo yung and Hong Kong style sweet and sour pork. The food arrived promptly. He ate as he watched people pass the window; the rhythm of the street and the hum of the bustle steadied his thoughts.

Yinuo, the proprietors daughter, was behind the counter as she usually was. Their eyes met briefly. She knew he kept secrets. He knew she knew. When he'd finished, they exchanged their usual nod before Daniel stepped back into the street. He adjusted his cap, lit a cigarette and turned toward the office.

D.C.Caller, Sermon Excerpt. 1717 AD.

Every human life is shaped by memory. Our choices, perceptions, and even our sense of time itself are the fruit of accumulated experience. Memory is a reflection of God’s own nature. Before the first light broke across the heavens, God not only spoke creation into being through the Word but also held within Himself the total memory of what was, what is, and what will be. This divine experiential memory is the foundation of moral authority. God commands not from ignorance or arbitrariness but from infinite knowledge; His own experiential memory.

Scripture begins not with explanation but with proclamation: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Beneath those words lies a truth often overlooked, creation itself presupposes order and structure. The universe is not a random collection of events but a carefully described framework, sustained by the Word of God. We can measure the patterns of that framework, but cannot explain why such patterns exist. They are downstream from a deeper source, rooted in His infinite memory.

Mathematics and physics serve as explanations of existing form and function within our universe. However, neither explain why or how the rules behind those forms and functions exist in the first place. They merely express patterns and regularities in a system that is already rules-based. Were the universe not governed by consistent laws, repeated experiments would yield inconsistent outcomes. Modern philosophy of science confirms this: laws are not merely descriptive summaries but constraints that actively govern what is possible (Adlam).

This implies that the source of those rules, whatever gives rise to mathematical regularity, must itself be sophisticated. Just as faulty data produces faulty outcomes, the structure responsible for governing the universe must be coherent, purposeful, and precise. Physicists have likewise recognised this coherence. Steven Weinberg argues that the laws of nature are real features of reality, not human conventions, and their universality across scales reveals a profound order (Weinberg). Sean Carroll similarly insists that the laws underlying everyday physics are completely understood, highlighting that ordinary life itself unfolds on a rule-based framework (Carroll). At the most fundamental level, Juan Maldacena shows how symmetry principles shape physical law, demonstrating that regularities are not accidental but woven into the fabric of the cosmos (Maldacena).

No mathematical operator or concept can be fully understood apart from language: What is “1”? What is a “number”? What is “2” in relation to “1”? These concepts require not only symbols but also semantic attribution; they must be named and understood relationally through language. That mathematics so effectively describes physical reality has long been regarded as an “unreasonable effectiveness,” suggesting that the universe itself is structured in a way that is profoundly intelligible (Wigner).

This leads to a profound theological proposition: the phrase “the living Word of God” should be taken literally. The laws of the universe, the frameworks of form and function,  were formulated through conscious thought and expressed through structured language. Each rule is built from operators that are not merely abstract but descriptively named and assigned meaning. This structure enables creation without requiring a prior state, rendering theories of spontaneous catalysis or impersonal emergence insufficient. Without an intelligent agent expressing the conditions for possibility, existence could not follow.

It would be meaningless for God to create within the bounds of the universe unless that creation could be sustained. The framework of physical law, then, is not a byproduct of creation, it is the foundation. Genesis 1:1, often overlooked in its depth, reveals the miracle: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” This creation assumes a framework already capable of supporting such action; chemical law, vibration, gravity, quantum fields. It is this precondition that makes all subsequent activity in Genesis 1 possible.

This initial framework is itself a work of divine language, a self-sustaining structure expressed through descriptive command. It tells a story of intentionality and technical detail far removed from caricatures of God as a cosmic magician. The real miracle of Genesis lies not merely in the appearance of light, land, or life - but in the very architecture that made such things possible.

If the human hippocampus later appears as a biological organ for structuring experience through incoming stimuli, it is because it reflects God’s own perfect experiential memory, expressed through the language He is using. His moral authority is grounded in His total experiential knowledge; nothing escapes Him, and no outcome is hidden from His understanding. For this reason, His commandments are not arbitrary but rooted in the fullness of memory and meaning that only He possesses. To obey God, therefore, is to align with the only memory broad enough to define what is good.

In Job 38, the Lord confronts Job’s presumption in questioning Him without knowledge: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!” God’s challenge is not cruelty but a reminder that true authority flows from perfect experiential memory, the source of all His knowledge. Unlike human beings, whose choices are shaped by limited recall and imperfect knowledge, God’s judgements rest on the total memory of creation itself. His moral law is not arbitrary command but the expression of knowledge that is absolute, unbounded, and eternal.

Just as God laid the foundations of the earth, He imprinted upon humanity a limited reflection of this capacity through the gift of memory. The hippocampus, a small yet extraordinary structure in the human brain, orders our experiences in time, allowing us to learn, to grow, and to choose. Our moral lives depend on this capacity, yet it is but a faint echo of God’s perfect memory. Where we recall dimly, He remembers fully. Where we struggle to order experience, He holds all creation in flawless sequence.