“If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.” – Luke 6:32

With Pope Francis and Vice President J.D. Vance arguing about an ancient concept, the ordo amoris, an easy first reaction for Lutherans is that we have no dog in this fight. But Lutherans are like the proverbial princess and the pea. A single non-Scriptural assertion sandwiched between mattresses piled by centuries of doctrinal development grates our sola Scriptura sensitivities. We just can’t lay slumbering here. We stand up. We protest. God help us, we can do no other.

Claiming he was describing an “old school idea,” the ordo amoris, or “ordering of loves,” Vice President Vance said, “We should love our family first, then our neighbors, then love our community, then our country, and only then consider the interests of the rest of the world.” Which “we” did he mean? “We” the United States? “We” Christians? “We” the Vance family? As he continued to explain, it became clear he was not prepared to make any distinctions. What is right for the Vances’ personal charity is right for the government’s programs is right for the church’s outreach. So, the Pope responded, writing to United States bishops, “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

The ordo amoris concept came into Christian discussion from outside of the Scriptures. Ancient Greek philosophers, considering how to build society towards greater virtue, considered possible orderings that might foster better citizens. Fast forward to the turn of the fifth century, a bishop in north Africa, Augustine of Hippo, was well conversant with those philosophies. When he introduced the ordo amoris, he immediately recognized the need to qualify it. “All people should be loved equally,” he insisted (On Christian Teaching, I.xxvii.61), before considering the wisdom of focusing charity by proximity.

If J.D. Vance had come upon the ordo amoris by way of Augustine, or the later works of Thomas Aquinas, he would have recognized those church fathers’ understanding of ordering charity would give no aid to what the Vice President was arguing, that we should subordinate love to immigrants who are already living next door to us. Immigrants meet the Augustinian standard of proximity. Besides, “All people should be loved equally.”

What is more likely is that J.D. Vance came upon the ordo amoris by way of contemporary American thinkers. Yet most Americans had not been thinking about ordo amoris until the Veep told us to google it. To find out where and why the idea was still in circulation, we need to take a step back before we can take two steps forward.

The Inquisition Could Not Govern the Planets

“And yet it moves,” Galileo insisted, despite the Inquisition’s brutal attempts to stamp out the theory that the earth revolved around the sun. The astronomer was forced to recant, and yet the church, wielding great earthly power, could not hold back the changing perceptions of the cosmos. Neither could the church change Galileo’s mind. It was not just that the church misperceived interactions of sun, moon, and planets; the Inquisition also misperceived the proper interactions of the church, state, and conscience.

It is not the only time the church, jealous of the state, has discarded her God-given powers to become a poorer and ineffective version of the state. We are not living through a time of Inquisition, thank God, but we are living through a time when many churches are making the same kind of decision, laying aside her great weapon of the Word for the short-term tactics of the state. Martin Luther saw the same temptation during the Reformation. He warned that reformers must stick to their proper calling: “Have I not, with the mouth alone, without a single stroke of the sword, done more harm to the pope, bishops, priests, and monks than all the emperors, kings, and princes with all their power ever did before?” (LW 45, p. 67). What politically superpowered Inquisition could not do, a lone monk posting 95 theses on a church door could.

Why, then, could not Galileo, using his words, convince his peers that the earth moved? For one thing, the church does not believe that just any pen is generally mightier than any sword. It’s a specific Word, the preaching of God’s Word, which we honor (Isaiah 55:11; Revelation 1:16). For another reason, Galileo’s problem was that he could not demonstrate effectively how the earth moved. His mathematical models for predicting astral observations were clunkier than the established Ptolemaic models. To make the math work, Galileo used epicycles, mini-orbits within orbits, like a spirograph within another spirograph. Galileo was committed to an unconsidered Aristotelian claim, that within the heavens, everything would move within a perfect circle. The epicycles added circles upon circles to match observation with Aristotelian philosophy. It was not until the Lutheran astronomer, Johannes Kepler, that Aristotle’s pea was discarded from astronomical theory and the correct pattern—ellipses—found all the data matching heliocentric theory exactly.

“And yet it moves,” true, but not in epicycles. Galileo was not the only astronomer to resort to epicycles. They were a mathematical crutch, helping theories that couldn’t cover the observational distance on their own. They were also only resorted to because of a philosophical assumption, arising outside of Christianity, that the celestial realm must be perfect.

The ordo amoris is the Aristotelian epicycle for another off-kilter theory of how the world fits together. Just like celestial perfection made sense to Christians singing, “Heaven is my home,” ordo amoris initially made sense to Christians recognizing idolatry as a disordered love, putting the created thing ahead of the Creator. Many of the Christian writers who speak of the ordo amoris are only interested in the fundamental Christian claim that our first moral directive is to love God with all our heart, all our mind, and all our strength. In those cases, the ordo amoris is an aside, usually only of interest to others conversant in ancient philosophy. 

But there is another group of modern Americans who seized upon ordo amoris as a way to fit together Christianity and nationalism. Nationalism is “an ideology that elevates one nation or nationality above all others” (Merriam-Webster), while the Apostle Paul charges Christians “in humility count others more significant than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3). How do you fit together nationalism and Christianity? One says, “Us first;” the other says, “As Jesus put Himself last in this life, so we follow Him.” The only way to enmesh these ideas is with a powerful epicycle, where Scripture passages can be spun to mean something very different than what the Holy Spirit intended. Those calling themselves “Christian nationalists” deny what Jesus and Augustine taught, that all human beings should be loved equally, insisting that everyone works with some kind of ordering of loves. Stephen Wolfe, author of The Case for Christian Nationalism, said, “Any Christian who denies ‘hierarchy of loves’ has white men at the lowest level of their hierarchy of loves.”

Rendering to Church and State

Modeling how the church and state properly interact can be as complicated and as divisive as 16th-century astronomy. Jesus was asked how pious Jews should interact with an aggressive Roman state, coining his riddling response, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17). Mark reports the initial audience “marveled” at Jesus for this answer. Indeed, it boggles the brain, since the things that are God’s are… everything.

Such radical moral claims are not uncommon for Jesus. His Sermon on the Mount challenges believers to avoid speaking against our neighbor in anger, to turn the other cheek, and to prefer removing an eye rather than to be found looking lustfully at anyone (Matthew 5-7). How does Jesus summarize God’s moral claims? Love God above all else and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:36-40).

If we’re supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves, how can there be an ordering of loves? How can the bishops be wrong in caring for immigrants? Indeed, how can a Christian ever be put in charge of a government if he plans to turn the other cheek to nations that misbehave? The first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great, felt this disjunction, delaying his baptism until he could wash his hands from the egg-breaking needed to make his imperial omelet.

One Christian church-state model comes from the pacifists. They say Christians simply cannot serve in government or in the armed forces because of Jesus’ claims on His disciples. We’ll call this the Ptolemaic model of church and state, where Christian movement in the earthly realms of power is ruled out. This model is straightforward, consistent, and wrong. Both Jesus and John the Baptist praise Roman soldiers and encourage them to continue in their political service (Matthew 8:5-13; Luke 3:10-14). Jesus further teaches that Pilate himself was given authority by God (John 19:10-11). The Apostles Peter and Paul teach that the government is given the sword to secure justice in this world (Romans 13:1-7; 1 Peter 2:13-14). Jesus clearly teaches there is a positive role for the kingdoms of this world and that believers can actively serve in those kingdoms.

The Lutheran model for church and state, like Kepler’s heliocentric model, allows for different shape orbits, based on where God has placed us in life. For example, one place God has set me is to be a parent to five children. As a parent, if I “spare the rod,” I can “spoil the child” (Proverbs 13:24). If my child strikes me on the cheek, it would be wrong in that instance to turn the other cheek. I ought to punish my child appropriately. But that is only in this one orbit. It is not appropriate for me to go around the neighborhood, dressed like a caped crusader, calling myself “Dadman” and punishing every spoiled child. My authority is limited to my children. I also live in a citizen role, where the shoe is on the other foot, and I must obey authority, pay taxes, and drive mind-numbingly slow speeds through the main part of town, all of which I happily do. In one orbit, I exercise authority, my children orbiting me like moons; in another orbit, I obey authority, rotating around the government. In the church, I also have authority, being a pastor, but that authority ought not express itself like a parent. Pastors do not ground parishioners on Saturday night nor tell them to go cut a switch.

Similarly, those in civil government are not rulers of all people in every nation. They are to govern their citizens first. It is appropriate for a government to protect and provide first for the people under its responsibility. Not every nation can play the world’s supercop, intervening in every instance of international injustice. While a superpower shouldn’t play international Dadman, a superpower also must reckon that with its great power does come more responsibility.

For those, however, who want to conceive of a nation or a state being itself Christian, the subtleties of varying vocations is lost. The Inquisition, for example, did not spare the rod… or the rack. In this model, the model Vance labors under, everything must run in the circles of power we see in earthly kingdoms. If the United States cannot take care of every immigrant refugee, then Vance complains that the bishops also should not try and take care of those same people, even if they are members of the bishops’ churches.

This leads the nationalists to the epicycles of Greek philosophy’s ordo amoris. The Bible commands believers first in the Old Testament, “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 22:21), and then in the New Testament, “If you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors” (James 2:9). But the nationalists believe “America first” means showing partiality in favor of non-sojourners. How, then, can they claim America to be a “Christian nation”? To them, the ordo amoris says, “Yes, we are to love the sojourners, but only with whatever love we have left after we have properly loved our own first.” Augustine had known to insist, “All people should be loved equally,” but after centuries of laying mattresses on that pea, things have become more and more unbalanced.

Galileo was right that the earth moved. Vance is right that Christians and Christian teachings have a role to play in the State’s realm. Both Galileo and Vance, however, have been misled by a nonbiblical idea to think this movement must be governed in only one way. For the nationalists, all of the orbits must run in their perfect circles.

Why Do You Call Me Good?

Many critics of Vance, not least Pope Francis, have turned to Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). Jesus tells this parable in response to a lawyer who asks, “Who is my neighbor?” The lawyer knows the law says to “love your neighbor,” so he wonders if there are some nearby peoples who don’t quite count as “neighbors.” In response, Jesus speaks of a man brutalized on the side of the road. The clergy pass by on the other side. It’s only the Samaritan who stops to help. Samaritans were despised by first-century practicing Jews. Samaritans were seen as traitors to the Jewish faith and people, foreigners who adopted foreign practices. Undoubtedly for the lawyer asking the question, Samaritans were candidates for not-neighbor.

Jesus not only insists that the Samaritan cannot be thrown down the garbage chute of ordo amoris, but Jesus so subverts expectations that the Samaritan becomes the exemplar of what it is to be neighbor. Jesus had a habit of doing this. Another parable makes a prostitute the exemplar of love (Luke 7:36-50). Another parable makes a dishonest steward the exemplar of faith (Luke 16:1-13). In Jesus’ ministry, there is a great reversal of those who think they are the good guys and those whom Jesus justifies.

Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry.

Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.

Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets. (Luke 6:24-26)

Jesus ends the parable of the Good Samaritan not by answering, “Who is my neighbor?” It was and is always the wrong question. Rather, Jesus turns the question around. “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” (Luke 10:36). Jesus’ question directs us to mercy.

Mercy, we note, is not a matter of just desserts. Mercy gives us better than we deserve. It is also key to Jesus’ ethics. “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). But mercy was the very thing Jesus’ opponents did not think they needed. The lawyer who sparked the Good Samaritan parable was “desiring to justify himself” (Luke 10:29).

This is the Greek philosophical assumption behind the ordo amoris epicycle. The nationalists do not recognize their need for mercy. They believe they are The Good Guys. They are self-justified. The Good Samaritan parable tries to get us to see the world differently—not where we are the people who may or may not help, but rather that we are the ones for whom a stranger came to help. “He who is forgiven little, loves little” (Luke 7:47). Recognizing mercy given to you inspires the giving of mercy to others. On the other hand, when you try to order loves, you undercut the mercy that is a wellspring of love.

This is why James teaches that the partiality of Greek ordo amoris, of J.D. Vance, is unchristian.

My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory…. If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors…. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. (James 2:1, 8-9, 12-13).

What, then, of our instinct to want to feed our child before a stranger? Is that wrong? It’s not that a strong love for those near to us is wrong. It’s that a weak love for others is wrong. We should want to feed both the child and the stranger.

Indeed, the Bible does set out the very scenario that the defenders of ordo amoris use to show how “obvious” their claim is. In 1 Kings 17, the prophet Elijah was sent to a starving widow in a foreign land. The widow was challenged to feed both her starving son and the political refugee. She had only enough flour and oil for one meal. Miraculously, though, as she fed both, the oil and flour never ran out. The Christian’s call to love often challenges our faith that God will provide for such expansive love. That faith, when weak, is often rewarded by seeing all the Lord mercifully does. That faith, when strong, can move mountains that the state only sees as natural borders.

Jesus, as we said, makes radical claims upon His disciples to love broadly and deeply. When Jesus spoke of the widow of Zarephath to His hometown, “all in the synagogue were filled with wrath” (Luke 4:26-30). When Jesus’ teachings unsettle us, challenging us to reconsider the easier paths we naturally choose, we should lean into the unsettling. When, instead, Jesus’ claims are sent spinning into the epicycle of ordo amoris, we self-justify, blinding ourselves to our own daily need for—and reception of—mercy. That in turn undercuts the Christian motivation to grow in love.

True Christian preaching confronts our hearts with our need for mercy and Christ Jesus’ fulsome, loving, daily response. When the church, instead, takes political sides, mercy is eclipsed, and we all put on our team hats, certain our side is The Good Guys.

Takeaways

As a pastor, I am not writing to influence American immigration policy. There are occasions when the orbits of the church and the state intersect, and we have things we must say to each other. As of Transfiguration Sunday 2025, I don’t see a requirement for a pastor to speak to United States immigration policy. I do see a call for the Church to keep a clear voice calling for love for all those made in the image of God. That clear voice will lead, through the working of God’s Word, Law and Gospel, to growth in love that benefits church, state, and all.

Second, we recognize that our responsibilities will run differently in different orbits. An American citizen could support deportation of illegal immigrants while also volunteering at church soup kitchens that feed immigrants. Another citizen could oppose policies deporting any immigrants while personally teaching her family to respect and obey all border laws. These are no more inconsistencies than recognizing how one light in the sky orbits us, others orbit the sun, and others are not even in this galaxy.

Third, we recognize ordo amoris to be a pre-Christian concept with little value to believers who have access to proper teaching on vocation. As Galileo’s epicycles disappeared once Kepler saw ellipses, the only value to referencing ordo amoris now is in conversation with classical philosophy or in political overtures to nationalists.

Finally, the church must follow Christ in refusing to grasp for earthly power (Matthew 4:8-10, John 18:36). American Christians should ask, when did the church have more political power than during the time of the Inquisition? Did that power spread the kingdom of Christ? Did it inspire greater love? Traditionally, you would expect the Lutheran to throw that question in the pope’s face, but today, it is a question for the not-protesting-enough Protestants excited by a vice president’s claim that shuttering church charities for immigrants is doing the Lord’s work.