March 31, 2025

Re: "Kierkegaard, 'Ordo Amoris,' and the Polarization of Love"

In a media-driven society, it is common for people to speak first and to think later. I suppose this tendency has a variety of underlying factors, but doubtless one of them is this: technological conglomerates benefit from, and thus seek to promote, instantaneous reaction. After all, media engagement increases web traffic, enhances “brand visibility,” and ultimately amplifies ad revenue on digital platforms. It also taps into humanity’s deepest impulses, giving users a sense of interpersonal validation, social identity, and/or neuromodulatory satisfaction (dopamine release). In a nutshell, the psycho-spiritual needs of human beings have made companies such as Google and Twitter/X incredibly rich.

With this in mind, I have tried to avoid hot-button political issues on Just FYI. It’s not that I lack interest in such issues; it’s just that I neither wish to be reactive nor want to encourage reactiveness. Even on the handful of occasions that I’ve waded into a political controversy, I have tried to approach the issue obliquely, focusing on philosophical and/or theological issues that are typically excluded from mainstream commentary. This approach may limit the popularity of Just FYI, but, in my view, it is a needed form of resistance, however modest, to the seductions of our social media age.

This post will stay the course, though it begins with a political powder keg. On January 29, in an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance defended the new Trump administration against charges that it was mishandling the problem of immigration, particularly as it pertains to the ongoing “crisis” along the Mexico-United States border. This was, of course, one of the key issues in the 2024 United States presidential election, and many commentators believe that it helped tilt the contest in Trump’s favor. In October 2024, just a few weeks before the election, a Pew Research survey indicated that 96% of Trump supporters and 80% of those who supported his opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris, were “in favor of tightening security measures on the U.S.-Mexico border.” It was not shocking, then, that post-election exit polls revealed that Trump’s vows to crackdown on undocumented immigrants held cross-demographic appeal. As Michael Tesler of 538/ABC News explains:

As politicians and the media shifted…to expressing concern about the record number of border crossings under Biden, Americans' opinions moved in a similar direction. Those sizable shifts were not limited to any single racial or ethnic group, either. In fact, the chart below shows that the percentage of white, Latino and Black Americans who agreed with the statement "immigrants drain national resources" all increased dramatically from June 2020 through December 2023.

Despite Trump’s litany of personal flaws, a majority of American voters agreed with him on the immigration question. It was one of a few issues (the economy, above all) where the Trump team was able to put distance between itself and the Democratic coalition.

Of course, just because the stance of a political figure or party is popular doesn’t mean that it’s right—a point brings us back to J.D. Vance. Soon after taking office, the Trump administration rolled out a number of changes to U.S. immigration policy. Critics have been legion, albeit for a variety of reasons (economic, ethical, religious, etc.). As noted, the reaction was vociferous enough that, early in Trump’s second term, the vice president felt compelled to address it in his interview with Hannity. In the video below (4:38-5:21), Vance argues that the Trump administration is not anti-immigrant but pro-American. Their policy, he implies, is driven by love, not hate:

Indeed, perhaps the most eye-opening aspect of Vance’s remarks is that they directly appeal to Christian teaching. For Vance, the populist policy of “America first” is not morally problematic but, in fact, an extension of natural law: “There’s this old-school [concept]—and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way—that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”

Unsurprisingly, the suggestion that the Trump administration understood its immigration reforms as coterminous with Christianity elicited a host of opinions—and rightfully so. It is, at minimum, an audacious and striking claim. Myself, I have grave doubts the modern state, whose power is rooted in techno-bureaucratic and militaristic coercion, can in any way be allied with the Gospel. But this would be as true for Joe Biden’s status as “a Catholic commander-in-chief” as it would be for Vance’ s invocation of “old-school” Christian concepts. Still, digging into that question will have to wait for my upcoming book Kierkegaard, Statecraft, and Political Theology, which hopefully will be out by the end of 2025.

In the meantime, Vice President Vance has given us plenty to ponder. What is the relationship, we might wonder, between preferential love and charitable love? Are they mutually exclusive? If not, then how is one ordered to the other? In the aftermath of Vance’s comments, social media exploded with answers to these questions. The British politician-turned-academic Rory Stewart (ironically?) took to the Elon Musk-owned social networking platform Twitter/X to denounce Vance’s comments: “A bizarre take on John 15:12-13,” Stewart remarked, “less Christian and more pagan tribal. We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us in which order to love…”. Just a few hours later, Vance fired back at Stewart, telling him to “google ‘ordo amoris’” (more on that below) and questioning the reasonableness of Stewart’s position: “Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?”

Needless to say, many others chimed in. The prominent Jesuit priest Fr. James Martin censured Vance by appealing to the New Testament’s parable of the Good Samaritan, suggesting that Jesus himself indicates that Christian charity consists precisely in extending love beyond the narrow confines of one’s community. By way of contrast, British theologian James Orr castigated Martin and his supporters, arguing that they have failed to understand the lesson of the Good Samaritan::

The message of the parable, though, is not that a person should help all victims wherever they may be, but that whatever differences may divide us from the suffering, we must care for those who fall within the compass of our practical concern. Suggestively, the Greek word for neighbor in the New Testament is πλησίον (plēsion), which is derived directly from πλησίος (plēsios), meaning ‘near’ or ‘close by.’ It is proximity that makes neighbors our objects of care and attention.

Such responses could be multiplied ad infinitum. The key point here is that, unwittingly or not, Vance’s interview triggered a viral debate on the nature of Christian love. In an era of peculiarities, few developments have been so peculiar.

Still, as noted, Christianity’s understanding of the relationship between preferential and charitable love is a longstanding theme in the life of the Church. Indeed, as the debate over Vance’s words intensified, I immediately recognized many of the key points of tension from my research on the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55). Though the question of love crops up throughout Kierkegaard’s oeuvre, it is crystallized in Kierkegaard’s 1847 book Works of Love: Some Christian Deliberations in the Form of Discourses (Kjerlighedens Gjerninger: Nogle christelige Overveielser i Talers Form). Though typically not one of the first texts mentioned when the topic of Kierkegaard comes up—here one might nominate proto-existentialist books such as Fear and Trembling (1843) and The Concept of Anxiety (1844)—it is nevertheless true that Works of Love has undergone a kind of revival in recent decades. In 1933, the Marxist theorist Theodor Adorno (1903-69) published Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic (Kierkegaard: Konstruktion des Ästhetischen), arguing that the Dane’s emphasis on “the single individual” (den Enkelte) is a notable but ultimately inadequate attempt to come to grips with modern capitalism. On this line of thinking, Kierkegaard sees the problem—the commodification of human life—but answers it by turning inward. His is an apolitical philosophy, prioritizing authentic selfhood over societal change. Adorno’s critique proved massively influential—an influence that the recent recovery of Works of Love has sought to redress.

While Works of Love is too nuanced, too ironic, to be straightforwardly enlisted in a socio-political program, the book does center on ethical responsibility, particularly from a Christian point of view. Drawing on the New Testament (Luke 6:44), the opening “deliberation" insists (pace Adorno) that Christian love is not just an inner disposition but an external manifestation. In other words, love originates in the mysterious and irreducible wellspring of God’s charity, but just as God has revealed himself to humanity, so does Christian love want “to be known by its fruits.”

What sort of fruits, then, are we talking about? In the second deliberation, Kierkegaard turns to the issue of “neighbor-love,” citing the commandment given by Jesus Christ: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:39). Whatever fruits are to blossom from Christian charity, they are inseparable from how one treats the “neighbor.” But who, exactly, is the neighbor? This, indeed, is the very question that is animating the debate over the Trump administration’s immigration policy. Kierkegaard ventures a definition:

Who, then, is one’s neighbor [Næste]? The word is obviously derived from “nearest [Nærmeste]”; thus the neighbor is the person who is nearer to you than anyone else, yet not in the sense of preferential love, since to love someone who in the sense of preferential love is nearer than anyone else is self-love—“do not the pagans also do the same?” The neighbor, then, is nearer to you than anyone else. But is he also nearer to you than you are to yourself? No, that he is not, but he is just as near, or he ought to be just as near to you. The concept “neighbor” is actually the redoubling of your own self; “the neighbor” is what thinkers call “the other,” that by which the selfishness in self-love is to be tested.

In her excellent 2001 study Love’s Grateful Striving: A Commentary on Kierkegaard’s Works of Love, M. Jamie Ferreira pays a great deal of attention to Kierkegaard’s distinction between “love of neighbor” (Kjerlighed) and “preferential love” (Forkjerlighed). On the one hand, Kierkegaard seems to argue that Forkjerlighed is an inferior form of love, which, for the Christian, should be replaced by neighbor-love or, in the language of the New Testament, “agape” (ἀγάπη). “Passionate preference,” as Kierkegaard puts it, “is actually another form of self-love,” in and through which the lover views the beloved as “the other I.” This is true both in erotic love (Elskov in Danish) and in friendship (Venskab). When, then, a person chooses to spend time with his wife or his buddy, he is choosing to do what makes him happy. His companion is an occasion for his own gratification. Kierkegaard concedes that this sort of love is natural, but he denies that it can be equated with Kjerlighed/ἀγάπη. For preferential love does not move “a step closer to the neighbor, because the neighbor is the first you,” not the “other I.”

And yet, while it is tempting to conclude that Kierkegaard is hereby condemning Forkjerlighed, Ferreira points out that the Dane’s views actually align quite neatly with those of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas—two thinkers who have influenced the natural law tradition to which Vance has alluded. After all, says Ferreira, Kierkegaard in no way recommends that erotic love (ἔρος) and friendship (φιλíα) “be eliminated or replaced” by agapeic love. In fact, Kierkegaard calls these forms of preferential love “life’s most beautiful happiness” and “the greatest temporal good.” Kierkegaard’s goal, then, is “preserve love for the neighbor in erotic love and friendship,” so that preferential love will be “permeated” or completed by Kjerlighed/ἀγάπη. “What is at sake for [Kierkegaard],” according to Ferreira, “is not that preferential love should be excluded but that it should not be the determinant of responsibility for the other. The discussion of preference is meant to show that love that is restricted to preference will not apprehend people as equals.”

Hence, on this reading, the real problem from a Christian point of view is conflating preferential love with Kjerlighed/ἀγάπη. But is this what the concept of ordo amoris is doing? The notion has its roots in the Bible and in the Church Fathers, but its definitive formulation comes in the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225-74). According to Aquinas, all forms of love derive from and tend towards God, who has structured human life in such a way that some people are naturally nearer to us than others, whether on account of kinship, affection, or some other qualification (e.g., nationality). As Aquinas writes:

There is yet another reason for which, out of charity we love more those who are more nearly connected with us, since we love them in more ways. For, towards those who are not connected with us we have no other friendship than charity, whereas for those who are connected with us, we have certain other friendships, according to the way in which they are connected. Now since the good on which every other friendship of the virtuous is based, is directed, as to its end, to the good on which charity is based, it follows that charity commands each act of another friendship, even as the art which is about the end commands the art which is about the means. Consequently this very act of loving someone because he is akin or connected with us, or because he is a fellow-countryman or for any like reason that is referable to the end of charity, can be commanded by charity so that, out of charity both eliciting and commanding, we love in more ways those who are more nearly connected with us (ST, II-II, q. 26, art. 7, corpus).

Partiality is characteristic of human life: a finite individual simply can’t demonstrate Christian love to all people at all times. Thus charity must be exercised in accordance with God’s providential design. When one donates energy, time, money to an altruistic local cause or organization, one is not sinning against philanthropic endeavors abroad but participating in what Aquinas himself calls the “order of charity” (ordo caritatis). Again, it is not that Christian love is excluded from such activities; it is simply acting in congruence with proximity. This principle holds even as one moves beyond one’s immediate family and neighborhood, fanning out into wider spheres of responsibility. For example, in her 2012 article “Nation-States and Love of Neighbour: Impartiality and the Ordo Amoris” (Studies in Christian Ethics 25:3), British theologian Esther D. Reed concludes that the ordo amoris remains valid in an era of increasing globalization: “I have begun to argue for a more structured response to global poverty than is advocated in some forms of new cosmopolitanism to take more account of the de facto reality of birthplace and relationships into which one is born; the order of near and far remains of moral significance even given the new global realities that bring famines in countries other than our own into our living rooms.”

But what, then, of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan? Does it not suggest precisely the opposite—that one is to love the neighbor regardless of natural affinities, that, in point of fact, the highest expression of Christian love will ignore precisely such affinities? After all, as Jesus tells the story, a Jewish priest and a Levite ignore a fellow Jew who has been robbed and left for dead on the roadside. Yet, while these leaders of the Jewish community neglect their neighbor, a Samaritan takes pity on him. Not only does the Samaritan give medical care to the injured man, but he pays for the man’s convalescence in a local inn. It is the Samaritan, then, who exemplifies a genuine love of neighbor, because he shows mercy even to someone who stands outside of his own community. (Luke 10:30-37).

That this parable remains oft-cited today indicates the power and scope of its vision. It inspires and scandalizes in equal measure, reminding us that the requirements of God’s command to “love thy neighbor as thyself” are not satisfied simply by being a “pillar of the community” or “doctrinally orthodox.” The corporal and spiritual works of mercy must be present as well—a qualification that serves as an “ego check” on those who assume (for whatever reason) that they are good enough already. Like any great coach or teacher, Jesus sets the achievement of genuine ἀγάπη as an ever-receding horizon. It is a goal to be pursued but never attained. And yet, by the same token, Jesus himself did have an “inner circle” of family and friends, and the bulk of his ministry was carried out among a relatively small group of people in the Roman province of Judaea. The practice of charity may have global implications, but it must have a local inception.

Therefore, in and of itself, the concept of ordo amoris is not problematic from a Christian point of view, but neither is the invocation of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Both illuminate different sides of what Christian love entails. As Jack Mulder, Jr. points out, thinkers as different as Aquinas and Kierkegaard can agree on this much, even if they differ on a handful of underlying anthropological and theological questions:

Kierkegaard and Aquinas…can come to partial agreements on some of these matters once their real commitments with regard to the role of the self in love are understood. … Kierkegaard does not share Aquinas’s conception of nature, but whether and how far it would change the essence of his thought is an interesting question. Such disputes may have their roots in denominational divides in which I dare not claim neutrality. What cuts across denominational boundaries in this respect is Jesus’ question, from which none of us will be exempt, namely, “what have you done for the least of these?”

So, Vance’s citation of ordo amoris should not be characterized as “pagan tribal,” just as Martin’s invocation of the parable of the Good Samaritan should not be shrugged off as “woke.” Such binary terms may provide a temporary sense of satisfaction, but they are ultimately downstream of the reductionistic logic of memes, reels, and sounds bites.

But what, then, are we to do? Don’t we have to pick a side? It would be convenient if this question could be answered in tidy fashion, but in reality it is a matter of conscience. Such is the nature of a fallen world: “Man is sometimes confronted by situations that make moral judgments less assured and decision difficult. But he must always seriously seek what is right and good and discern the will of God expressed in divine law” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, ¶ 1787). To be sure, Scripture does not give people a handy checklist on how to love the neighbor. It presents examples, principles, and stories, with which the individual must continually wrestle. Perhaps God requires one to protest against a given political movement or figure—or perhaps not. Perhaps one is called to sit quietly for a time but to protest later. Or perhaps one shouldn’t “protest” at all, focusing instead on loving his or her neighbor in modest acts of charity. However one views these options, I’m quite confident that Kierkegaard would be happy to refer the reader to the perennial words of the Apostle Paul: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13).