The Intersection of Scripture, Augustinian Thought, and Practical Ministry
Preliminary Reflections: Questions for the Heart
The Survival Test (Finding the Summum Bonum): If you were to lose every earthly comfort, relationship, and achievement, what one thing remaining could sustain your joy? This forces us to identify our Summum Bonum (Highest Good)—that one Thing that gives all other “goods” their meaning. Is your Summum Bonum a Person (Christ) or a preference?
The Schedule Test (Tracking Desire): Does your daily schedule reflect a hierarchy of duty (what you must do), or a hierarchy of delight (what you love to do)? Often, our calendars reveal our real masters more clearly than our confessions.
The Guilt Test (Valuing the Soul): Why do we often feel more immediate, visceral “guilt” for ignoring a neighbor’s physical hunger than we do for ignoring their spiritual bankruptcy? What does this reveal about whether we value their temporary physical comfort or their eternal spiritual state?
I. Introduction: The Restless Soul and the Weight of Love
What determines the final quality of a human life? Is it the sum of our visible, outward actions, or something far more primal? For St. Augustine of Hippo, the definitive answer was found in the intrinsic “weight” of our love (pondus meum amor meus). Augustine’s key insight was that humans are not primarily what they think (homo sapiens) or what they do (homo faber), but what they desire (homo liturgeticus).
The Concept of Ordered Love (Ordo Amoris): Imagine your heart is like a literal weight scale. Every person, object, relationship, or goal you value represents a specific “weight” placed upon that scale. The scale has a design capacity. If you put a massive, heavy weight (like your career or a child) on a scale designed only for a secondary “good” (like a simple hobby), the scale will break. The Ordo Amoris, or “Order of Love,” is simply the theological principle that our moral health is determined by whether the “weights” in our heart are in their proper, God-ordained priority. When love is ordered—loving God supremely and everything else proportionately—the soul experiences the “tranquility of order” (tranquillitas ordinis). When love is disordered—loving a finite thing (a creature) with an infinite, absolute love (idolatry)—the soul enters a state of perpetual, exhausting and destructive restless fragmentation.
II. Philosophical Arguments in Support of the Argument
While the Ordo Amoris is rooted in the sovereign revelation of Holy Scripture, it is also supported by rigorous philosophical inquiry, proving that the ordered heart is a rational imperative for human flourishing.
1. The Teleological Argument: The “Restless Heart” and Infinite Desire
Teleology comes from the Greek word telos (end, goal, or purpose). It studies what a thing is “meant to do.”
The Logic of Thirst: If we see a creature with hunger, we assume food exists. If we see a human heart possessed by an “infinite reach”—a thirst for ultimate meaning and beauty that no amount of money, status, or even healthy familial love can satisfy—then logic dictates that the heart was “made for” the infinite, the eternal (God). This is the logic of the Restless Heart. For the common man, this restlessness (inquieta) is not merely physical fatigue. It is the existential and deep spiritual agitation that occurs when we attempt to force a creature—a person, object, or achievement—to deliver an abstract peace that it was never designed to give. We ask a finite substance to provide an infinite stability, which only generates an ever-deepening anxiety.
The “Next-Item Syndrome”: When we ask a human spouse or career to provide “ultimate peace,” we are committing what philosophers call a “Category Error” of the soul. We are trying to fill an infinite, God-sized hole with a finite, limited key. This is like trying to fuel a jet engine with AA batteries. The inevitable failure forces the restless heart back onto the “Hedonic Treadmill,” a perpetual, exhausting cycle of chasing the next “thing,” hoping it will finally be enough, only to find the satisfaction evaporates just moments after it is achieved.
2. The Paradox of Idolatry: Loving the Creature Better
A Paradox is a truth that sounds like a contradiction. The profound paradox of the Ordo Amoris is that putting God first does not decrease your love for your family; it actually allows you to love them more safely, fully, and genuinely.
De-divinization of the Creature: To “de-divinize” means to stop treating a human like a god. If a man loves his wife as a goddess (an absolute, ultimate good), he will inevitably grow to resent her. She is a human; she will tire, make mistakes, age and get sick. If his expectation is divine, her humanity feels like a personal failure and a betrayal of his disordered love and misplaced “worship”
Freedom through Subordination: By “subordinating” her—admitting she is a finite, fellow image-bearer to be valued in God, not worshiped as a god—he saves her from the crushing, impossible weight of his own expectations. This freedom through subordination allows us to truly enjoy our spouse, children and our labor without the terrifying fear that their loss will end our existence, because our true Summum Bonum (Highest Good) remains absolute and safe in Christ.
3. Ethical Utility: The Necessity of a “Ruling Love”
Logic requires a hierarchy for the sake of ethical decision-making in a complex and demanding world. Making the decision, however, is rarely easy.
The Logical Model for Conflict Resolution: Take the intricate tension between labor/provision and domestic presence of the . The Ordo Amoris does not solve this by automatically defaulting to one over the other. The family is the heart-priority, but vocation is often the instrument of that provision. Scripture simultaneously severely warns that a man must provide (1 Tim 5:8) and nurture (Eph 6:4).
The Logic of Integration: When a job provides for the family, “working late” can be an act of love, not abandonment. But when the instrument becomes the end—when a man uses “providing” as an excuse to avoid the higher, non-physical demands of presence—he has disordered his love. He has prioritized physical provision over spiritual and even emptional nurture. The Ordo Amoris teaches us to ask: “Is this extra labor truly an act of sacrifice for their provision, or is it an act of escape to serve my ego or security?” This creates a “Unity of the Self,” pulling our fractured desires into a single identity that acts with integrity in the office and at the dinner table.
III. Critical Analysis: Tensions Between Augustine and Scripture
To ensure our argument is biblically airtight, we must always go to Scriptures as our final and utlimate authority to correct some of Augustine’s more rigid philosophical background.
1. Gospel Integrity: Reforming the “Enjoyment” vs. “Use” Distinction
Augustine argued that God is the only object to be “enjoyed” (frui) for His own sake, while everything else is to be “used” (uti) as a means to “get to God.” We must correct this with the Gospel. Scripturally, we do not “get to God” through our effort or by using our neighbor. Jesus explicitly declares in John 14:6 that He alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Access to the Father is a purely gracious gift through the person and work of Christ, not a result of our structured desire or meritorious work.
A Biblical Refinement of “Instrument” Language: While the New Testament uses the language of “instruments” (skeuos), it is always vertical—we are tools useful to the Master (Acts 9:15, 2 Tim 2:21). Horizontally, from image-bearer to image-bearer, we never “use” our neighbor. We love them as ourselves (Matthew 22:39). Our neighbors are absolute ends in themselves—they are image-bearers of God whom Christ has already died to reach, not tools to help us reach Him in any way.
2. Physical Value: Correcting the Neo-Platonic Error on Creation
Augustine’s background in Neo-Platonism sometimes caused him to view the material world as a “lesser,” shadowy reality to be transcended. However, Genesis 1:31 and 1 Timothy 4:4 confirm that the physical creation is “very good.” Even in it’s fallen state, there is still much beauty in God’s creation to enjoy. We love the body and the earth not as a distraction from God, but as a theater of His glory where we worship the Giver by enjoying the gift.
IV. The Exegesis: The Sovereignty of Love
We define the authoritative “spine” of the Ordo Amoris through the authoritative revelation of Holy Scripture.
1. The Primacy of the Vertical (Matthew 22:34–40)
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart…’ This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'”
The Vertical Foundation. Jesus creates a “Two-Story” structure of love, and in doing so, He establishes the only sustainable architecture for human affection. In this model, the First and Greatest Commandment (loving God) is the “first floor.” This floor is not merely a prioritized desire; it serves as the critical, load-bearing foundation upon which the rest of the entire building is constructed. Our love for God, similarly, acts as the logical and spiritual foundation for all of our human relationships, which form the second floor of the building. The Second Commandment (loving the neighbor) is “like it” precisely because it shares the same substance—sacrificial desire—but it must rest upon the vertical foundation. This horizontal, second-story love can only be sustained when it is anchored in the vertical, foundational priority of God’s glory.
To love a neighbor properly certainly does not mean to ignore them; rather, it means to love them through your foundational love for God. This ordered love protects the neighbor. If you violate this architecture—attempting to build the second floor without the foundational first floor—the structure collapses into disordered desire. If you love a finite person more than God, you have structurally shifted them from the second floor down to the foundation. You are forcing a human to do what only God can do: to be your source of ultimate peace and security. In this logic, you have turn them into a “pseudo-god,” an idol of function, which inevitably destroys the relationship because a human cannot sustain the immense, foundational weight of your expectations and misplaced “worship.” The ordered heart, therefore, is the act of maintaining the stability of the foundation.
2. The Comparative Cost of Discipleship (Matthew 10:37–38)
“The one who loves a father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; the one who loves a son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever doesn’t take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”
The Order of Worthiness. This passage addresses the family—the relationship we assume to be the highest earthly good. Jesus is not commanding His followers to “hate” their parents. If he were, he would be contradicting the demand for family nurture (Ephesians 6:1-4). This is not a command to reduce our love for family, but a command to align it. Jesus is challenging a “flat” heart where all loves are equal in absolute priority. Disordered love manifests when family opinions, traditions, or needs come into conflict with God’s clear will (the Greatest Commandment). If a child feels a call to missions, but a disordered parental love demands they stay for the parent’s emotional security, the parent has prioritized a finite “good” over the Infinite Good. “Worthiness” here is not an ontological meriting of salvation, but an ontological “fitness”—it is being congruent with the Kingdom of God, which is defined by the absolute sovereignty of Christ over everything.
3. The Domestic Hierarchy: Spouse and Children (Ephesians 5 & 6)
Covenantal and Positional Priority. Among all horizontal relationships between image-bearers, Scripture creates a clear, undeniable, and binding hierarchy of position and obligation.
The Spouse (Covenantal Priority): The Spouse is the top priority horizontally. Marriage is the only “one flesh” union among image-bearers (Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:6)—a union that mirrors the vertical covenant between Christ and His Church (Ephesians 5:25, 32). This covenantal unity is not just a preference; it is a structural priority.
The Children (Positional Priority): Children are a priority Stewardship (Psalm 127:3). We are commanded to nurture, provide for, and leading them into the instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). However, children are secondary to the marriage covenant. They are members of the home and family, whereas the spouse is a partner in the covenant. Biblically, children have a positional claim on the resources and instruction of the parent, but they do not have a covenantal claim on the one flesh union. The marriage covenant has positional priority over parent child relationship.
The Logic of Nurture and Provision: Loving children properly does not mean making them the center of the household. That is a common disorder of love that stunts their spiritual development by turning them into idols of function. Maximum love for children means maintaining the ordered heart: tecahing them that God is first (the foundation), the marriage is second (the covenantal priority), and they are prioritized and loved within that secure, ordered framework. To prioritize the whims or emotional comfort of a child over the foundational stability of the marriage is logically and biblically disordered.
4. The Priority Within the Neighbor Category: The Household of Faith (Galatians 6:10)
“As we have opportunity, let us work for the good of all, especially for those who belong to the household of faith.“
Covenantal Necessity. We are commanded to love all image-bearers, but Scripture establishes a fundamental covenantal priority within the category of neighbor. We are commanded to work for the good of fellow believers “malista”(especially).
The Logic of Family First: For the common man, this is not a preference for some people over others based on merit; it is a priority of proximity and covenant. Just as a father has a prioritized, binding obligation to provide for his family, the Church (the Household of Faith) has a prior claim on the love, attention, and resources of its own members.
This logic is explicitly stated in 1 Timothy 5:8, which warns that any man who does not provide for those of his own household, has denied the faith and is “worse than an unbeliever.” The Church is the larger Household of Faith. If the church cares only for outsiders, while ignoring the needs of its own members in need—material and spiritual—its attempts to love the “outside world” are logically and biblically disordered. This ordered, prioritized love is necessary to ensure the Church remains a healthy, unified community that can then effectively fulfill the Evangelistic Imperative to love the stranger and the enemy (the holistic integrity).
V. The Defense: Biblical Soundness and Reclaiming Augustine
1. The Necessary Distinction on “Use”
We must now work through an intricate tension between biblical truth and fallible terminology.
We have already mentioned the necessary logical and biblical critique of Augustine’s Neo-Platonic vocabulary (uti and frui) in Section III (Gospel Integrity). These standard arguments, based on John 14:6 and the insufficiency of Christ, are included to explore the widest possible range of interpretations and to provide maximum clarification. To remove that critique would be to validate a Neo-Platonic logic that turn neighbors horizontally into stepping-stones which is biblically incorrect.
However, historical and logical fidelity requires clarification. We must not “straw-man” Augustine, who vehemently fought against the heresy of synergistic works-righteousness (Pelagianism) his entire life. The synthesis is this: The critique is logically TRUE regarding the functional logical consequences of Augustine’s fallible vocabulary, but exegetically FALSE regarding his intended theology. We need to work through this carefully and with integrity: When Augustine speaks of “using” the creature horizontally to satisfy the vertical end (enjoyment of God), he is using teleological (goal-oriented) language, not manipulative or legalistic language. The ordered heart is the expression of grace already active. We order our loves vertically not to receive Christ; we order our loves because Christ has sovereignly received us. This critique uses the infallible Word of God to correct the logical inconsistency of a fallible theologian, defending the clarity of the Gospel.
2. The Logic of Active Participation in Grace
The final resolution, therefore, is found in the exegetical priority of the vertical foundation (Matthew 22): We love the neighbor through our foundational, all-encompassing love for God. The vertical ordering is the mandatory fruit, not the root, of the Summum Bonum (Christ). Uti, properly understood in this way, is not a work or a horizontal manipulation; it is the dynamic means by which we actively rest and participate in the grace we have already sovereignly received. Augustine’s Ordo Amoris is the active, necessary expression of a heart transformed by God’s unilateral grace, not a ladder to merit it. This understanding provides the authoritative, biblical foundation necessary to ensure maximum clarity.
VI. The Holistic Dual Imperative: Maximum Love in Word and Deed
A critical dimension of the Ordo Amoris is the Evangelistic Imperative, which should never be separated from Practical Mercy. We must work through this distinction logically, avoiding Gnosticism or hypocrisy. Separating them causes us to be obedient to only some commands while ignoring others, it falls short of the full biblical mandate and violates holistic integrity.
1. Preaching the Gospel as the Ultimate Love (Matthew 28:19-20)
Eternal Priority. The soul is eternal; the body is temporary. Therefore, the maximum love we can possibly show a neighbor through a single act is to share the Gospel, desiring their eternal reconciliation with God through Christ. Absolutely. To prioritize their temporary physical comfort while ignoring their eternal peril is a catastrophic disorder of love. It is to value the physical over the spiritual—a logical and theological error.
2. The Holistic Dual Imperative: Word and Deed (Holistic Integrity)
However, to prioritize the soul must never be an excuse to neglect the body. Helping meeting physical need decreases suffering, AND sharing the Gospel increases eternal love shown towards people. To separate them creates a fragmented love. Preaching the lost and helping meet a need when possible is not an absence or reduction of love; it actually increases the love shown. It is more loving and biblical to simply do both, and we must be doers of the Word (1 John 3:18). Scripture provides clear teachings on loving our neighbors and the family of faith that make physical mercy an ethical demand that is a binding duty on believers.
For the Household of Faith: James and John mock the fragmented “love” that neglects a brother’s visible need while preaching the Gospel (James 2:15-16, 1 John 3:17). To do one without the other when both are possible is disobedience.
For the All Neighbors and Enemies: Jesus uses a non-believing Samaritan as the model for physical mercy to all (Luke 10:33-34). Romans 12:20 commands us to help even an enemy who is hungry or thirsty.
Maximum Expression of Love: Separation is strategically foolish and biblically disobedient. Preaching while ignoring need is a form of hypocrisy that undermines the very message we proclaim. We are completely and faithfully living out our faith only when we do both. This biblical and holistic love confirms the integrity of the message we proclaim, and others will see our good works and give glory to our Father in heaven. Separation violates this holistic integrity of “word and deed.”
VII. The Internal War: Sanctioning the Emotional Heart
We must be honest with ourselves: The Ordo Amoris is not a dry intellectual exercise; it is an intimate, internal battleground. To maintain this order is a grueling Discipline of the Soul that demands a learned, functional, and deeply embedded biblical worldview. This discipline directly conflicts with our experience and emotions, which frequently serve as the major obstacles to obedience.
1. The Conflict with Emotions and Experience
The greatest challenge is that our emotions (feelings of attachment, urgency, fear, or delight) and our experiences (our history of pain, love, or lack) frequently demand to be the “Top Weight” on our heart’s scale. They are the strongest antagonists to the “tranquility of order.”
2. The Negative Role of Emotions and Experience
Emotions and experiences are fundamentally unreliable foundations for truth or ultimate love.
Emotions as Tyrants: A feeling of visceral attachment (e.g., intense romantic love or anxiety for a child) can mimic the “absolute” weight of worship. This emotion creates a powerful illusion of priority, convincing us that the loved person is our Summum Bonum. If this emotional heat is not submitted to biblical truth, it leads directly to idolatry and eventual resentful exhaustion when the creature cannot provide divine peace.
Experiences as Distorting Lenses: Our past experiences frequently warp our perception of God’s order. A person raised in poverty may find that the emotion of “financial security” demands a prioritized love over God, creating the disorder of loving money supremely (1 Tim 6:10). Similarly, a person who was physically neglected may develop a disordered, all-consuming attachment to physical affection. In these cases, past experiences create emotional vacuums that demand to be filled by turning finite things into absolute necessities. They are Gnostic filters that prevent us from loving God for who He is, forcing Him to compete with our past pain.
3. The Negative Role of “Noble” Emotions
Even positive, “noble” emotions can become obstacles. The feeling of intense compassion for the poor is good; however, if that emotion becomes our Ruling Love, we will prioritize practical mercy over evangelism. In our emotional haste, we will reduce real biblical love to humanitarian aid, violating the “Word and Deed” imperative. Compassion Fatigue is often the result of this emotional disorder—it is when we serve the poor out of our own limited emotional fuel, rather than out of the inexhaustible glory of God.
4. The Positive Role of a Sanctified Heart
We must not fall into the error of Stoicism either and try to kill emotions. Emotions are not the enemy; disordered emotions are. The Ordo Amoris is not the absence of affection, but the sanctification of affection.
Sanctified Feelings: When our love is ordered vertically, our horizontal emotions find their safest and most powerful expression. Loving God first doesn’t steal affection from a child; it protects that child from being turned into an idol. When we love God supremely, we have the emotional stability to love our neighbor—even our enemy (Romans 12:20)—not because they merit our emotion, but because our properly ordered love compels it.
The Discipline of Sanctification: Maintaining the Ordo Amoris is the discipline of commanding the emotions to submit to truth. As C.S. Lewis masterfully noted, “Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.” We do not love based on our feelings; we order our feelings based on who we know God to be according to Scripture.
VIII. Major Obstacles to the Discipline of the Soul
Beyond our raw emotions and experiences, several structural obstacles make this discipline particularly grueling.
1. Anxiety and the Need for Control
The fundamental root of disordered love is fear. We elevate finite things (money, people, reputation) to absolute status because we are afraid of being out of control. We turn our spouse into a savior because we are afraid of loneliness. We turn our career into a Summun Bonum because we are afraid of insignificance. Anxiety is often the engine of idolatry.
2. The Noise and Demand of the Immediate
The world we live in is not “flat,” but “democratic.” Here, “democratic” describes the practical experience of daily life, where immediate physical demands (“a deadline,” “a noise,” “an urgent email”) all “vote” simultaneously, demanding to be the master. Everything (vocation, family, sports, social media, charity) demands to be “top weight” simultaneously. Our disordered world creates a fragmented self. True “ruling love” (God) is often not the most “urgent” or “noisiest” demand in the room. Saying “no” to the immediate to say “ses” to the eternal requires a disciplined focus.
3. A “Spiritualized” Gnosticism in Ministry
In missions and ministry, the major obstacle is often a subtle Gnosticism that creates a fragmented love. We can fall into the trap of loving the body and the soul in competition. We might reduce practical mercy to humanitarian aid, loving the body instead of the soul (the deed without the Word), or we may fall into legalism, only loving the soul if the body’s needs have been sufficiently ignored (the Word without the deed). As established in the Holistic Integrity section, true maximal love must integrate both Word and deed in response to the Master’s commands, teachings and example.
4. Cultural “Flat Loves”
Our modern culture fiercely rejects hierarchy in favor of a “flat, democratic love.” Here, “flat” and “democratic” describe the philosophical assault on the Ordo Amoris itself. This philosophy rejects the logical necessity of any divine priority, making all desires equally valid preferences. We are told to “love everyone equally” or “follow our hearts.” This cultural philosophy fractures the self into a legion of competing, equally prioritized desires. It rejects the very idea of a single “Ruling Love”, condemning the common man to perpetual emotional instability and paralysis when his values come into conflict.
IX. So What? The Practicality of Ordered Love
Anxiety Relief: Most of our daily stress and anxieties come from “loves out of place.” When God is your God, a bad meeting is, well, just a bad meeting. It’s not the end of the world. An ordered heart is a stable, peaceful heart because it is anchored in the unchanging Person of Christ.
Decision Making: The Ordo Amoris provides a filter for every “Yes” and “No.” It allows a minister to say “No” to a good ministry project or activity without guilt, because it means saying “Yes” to a primary duty to his spouse and children. It removes the guilt of “not doing enough” by defining what “enough” is in God’s order.
Missional Power (Holistic Witness): We decrease physical suffering to increase missional integrity, and we share the Gospel to increase eternal love. We can meet their physical needs (the body) so that we may introduce them to the Savior (the soul). This dual commitment is the most powerful argument for the truth and application of the Gospel in a hurting world.
X. Final Thought-Provoking Questions
The Mission Test: Are you loving your neighbor in both word and deed, or are you neglecting the body while claiming to love the soul—or vice-versa? To separate them is to fail obedience to a clear scriptural imperatives.
The Provider Test: When you work late, is it an act of sacrificial love for your family’s provision, or an act of escape from your family’s presence?
The Emotional Test: When you feel an intense emotional urgency for a creature, is that feeling submitted to the Truth of God’s Word and established order, or are you allowing your tyranny of emotion to disorder your heart?
The Symphony Test: Is your love for God a strict ladder you are climbing, or a symphony where God is the conductor and your family, work, and neighbors are the instruments playing His music?
“Virtue is the order of love.” — St. Augustine
Bibliography & For Further Study
Augustine of Hippo. The City of God. Translated by Henry Bettenson. London: Penguin Classics, 2003.
Augustine of Hippo. On Christian Doctrine. Translated by R.P.H. Green. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1948.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. New York: HarperOne, 1954.
Lewis, C.S. The Four Loves. New York: Mariner Books, 2012.
Piper, John. Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2011.
Piper, John. Let the Nations Be Glad! The Supremacy of God in Missions. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010.
Smith, James K.A. You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2016.
Smith, James K.A. Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2009.
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