Vice President JD Vance is getting schooled by theologians over his inverted theology expressed in a Jan. 29 interview on Fox News.
What Vance said: “There’s this old school — 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 and your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.
“A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders. That is no way to run a society. And I think the profound difference that Donald Trump brings to the leadership of this country is the simple concept of America First. It doesn’t mean you hate anybody else, it means that you have leadership. And President Trump has been very clear about this — that puts the interests of American citizens first. In the same way that the British prime minister should care about Brits and the French should care about the French, we have an American president who cares primarily about Americans, and that’s a very welcome change.”
Politics aside, numerous Christian theologians took to social media to point out the vice president — who is a conservative Catholic — misrepresented the teachings of Jesus and the Gospels.
“Actually no. This misses the point of Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan.”
“Actually no,” wrote Jesuit priest and author James Martin. “This misses the point of Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10: 25-37). After Jesus tells a lawyer that you should ‘love your neighbor as yourself,’ the lawyer asks him, ‘And who is my neighbor?
“In response, Jesus tells the story of a Jewish man who has been beaten by robbers and is lying by the side of the road. The man is helped not by those closest to him (a ‘priest’ and a ‘Levite’), but rather by a Samaritan. At the time, Jews and Samaritans would have considered one another enemies.
“So Jesus’ fundamental message is that everyone is your neighbor, and that it is not about helping just your family or those closest to you. It’s specifically about helping those who seem different, foreign, other. They are all our ‘neighbors.’
“But Jesus’ deeper point can only be understood from the point of view of the beaten man: Our ultimate salvation depends, as it did for that man, upon those whom we often consider to be the ‘stranger.’”
Other responses:
Joash Thomas, author of the forthcoming book The Justice of Jesus: “I am a theologian trained at one of America’s top conservative evangelical theological seminaries. This is not a Christian concept; it’s a Western individualistic one.”
Zack Lambert, author and pastor of Restore Austin: “It’s important to point out that this is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10), the sermon in his hometown synagogue (Luke 4), and basically every other time he opened his mouth.”
Some conservative evangelicals — especially Calvinists — jumped in to defend Vance’s biblical interpretation and to castigate those who mocked him.
Some conservative evangelicals — especially Calvinists — jumped in to defend Vance’s biblical interpretation and to castigate those who mocked him. Vance himself weighed in. on X later, declaring: “Just google ordo amoris. Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does (another commenter) 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?”
From that, other supporters of Vance picked up his argument that because parents have a greater obligation to care for their children than for strangers — a concept not taught in the New Testament — therefore Americans have a responsibility to care for their own first.
Ordo amoris is a Latin phrase that translates as “ordered love.” The concept as defined by Augustine describes the idea that people are most successful when their loves are in order. Augustine believed people are compelled by love and that love should be ordered to align with what God loves.
This Latin phrase is commonly used in classical schools and in homeschooling and has become code language for a certain conservative view of Christian duty.
Within various movements of conservative American Christianity, the Parable of the Good Samaritan has been disregarded or reinterpreted to make a case against empathy. This ideology has been promoted by John MacArthur and John Piper and other Calvinist pastors but also has a following among conservative Catholics.
Vance’s interpretation of what is “common sense” runs afoul of traditional Catholic teaching on social justice. Vance is part of a movement within Catholicism that seeks to shift the church to a pre-Vatican II stance and disregards Catholic social teaching.
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