The God-given created order of reality, how God knows the world to be, stands underneath the order that shapes moral reason. It derives from the divine reason, the eternal law, an order set in things by God, their Creator.
Veritatis splendor provides an extended critique of what it calls teleological ethical views.
These views, the encyclical says, claim to look at the conformity of human acts with the personal objectives pursued by the doer or with the values that he or she intends. In other words, the measure of the moral act falls principally within the agent. The encyclical, on the other hand, points out the totality that exists in a properly defined moral object that both carries and embodies its own intelligibility independent of subjective considerations. A good human act, good according to its object, perfects a human person because it conforms to human nature. When the action is enacted in charity, the person enters, either for the first time or with greater intensity, into a communion of love with God.