The use of Augustine in presidential political rhetoric has shifted from Obama’s global liberal realism to the brash nationalist integralism of J.D. Vance’s most recent invocation of ordered love to justify the current administration’s policies on immigration and deportation. These two views appeal to conflicting faces of Augustine’s view of neighbor love and threaten to empty Augustine’s famous notion of properly ordered love and the virtue of humanity. Such opposing appeals do not indicate incoherence in Augustine’s view of neighbor love but rather stem from an inadequate grasp of the complexity of Augustine’s view of horizontally ordered love of neighbor. Augustine adapted the Stoic ethical concept of oikeiosis to depict the competing concentric circles of affection that social and political leaders must mediate in fulfillment of their role-specific obligation to those near and far. This adapted notion not only provides a picture but also an injunction to widen the sphere of one’s affection and to zealously draw those from distant circles into the circumference of one’s own self-regard. This appeal highlights the often neglected social dimensions of ordered love (ordo amoris) and the varying degrees of moral responsibility we have for those placed under our care. The moral obligations of Christian political and social leaders often feel in conflict with the radical Christian call to love the relationally-distant neighbors Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:38-48). Sometimes in his letters Augustine challenges social and political leaders to temper their aspirations for extraordinary neighbor love for the foreigner, enemy, and stranger with their more concrete responsibility for the welfare of those nearest at hand (e.g. Letter 262). Just as routinely however Augustine chastises Christian social and political leaders for having too narrow a scope of neighbor love – challenging them to see every stranger, foreigner, and even enemy as a neighbor whom they’ve been commanded to love (e.g. Letter 155). But how is one to know when to put the accent mark on natural circles of affinity – family, household, and state – and when to put the emphasis on radical, self-sacrificial hospitality toward all?The most we can hope for, in Augustine’s views, is for those holding social or political office to tend the wellbeing of the household and state with an eye toward the universal justice enshrined in the command to love one’s neighbor and to practice the virtue of humanity. Augustine’s letters are filled with colorful vignettes where he challenges social and political leaders to re-imagine their social and political responsibilities in the wider horizon of the common humanity. The paper concludes with a critical analysis of J.D. Vance’s appeal to Augustine’s view of ordered love and an Augustinian reminder challenging recent nationalist instincts expressed in evangelical and Catholic political circles.
The use of Augustine in presidential political rhetoric has shifted from Obama’s global liberal realism to the brash nationalist integralism of J.D. Vance’s most recent invocation of ordered love to justify the current administration’s policies on immigration and deportation. These two views appeal to conflicting faces of Augustine’s view of neighbor love and threaten to empty Augustine’s famous notion of properly ordered love and the virtue of humanity. Such opposing appeals do not indicate incoherence in Augustine’s view of neighbor love but rather stem from an inadequate grasp of the complexity of Augustine’s view of horizontally ordered love of neighbor. Augustine adapted the Stoic ethical concept of oikeiosis to depict the competing concentric circles of affection that social and political leaders must mediate in fulfillment of their role-specific obligation to those near and far.