“Natural Affections” and the Biblical Ordering of Our Loves (Part 1)
In January, Vice President JD Vance’s viral moment sparked controversy as he spoke of the Christian doctrine of ordo amoris in the context of defending the administration’s view on illegal immigration. The ordo amoris concerns rightly ordering, or prioritizing, different loves and obligations in life between family, church, nation, etc. Overnight, countless online hacks claimed to be experts on Christian ethics and morality, as debate around immigration often sparks more attacks than actual understanding.
Likewise, over the last several years, a movement in the Reformed community arose stressing the primacy of “natural” affections in ordering our loves. In short, our “natural” relations (e.g., family, nation, etc.) are in some ways more important than others. To be fair, those arguing for this view vary from those who are wrestling with the tension between obligations to family, nation, ethnicity, and church to the more troubling beliefs of Kinists who are dead set on a form of racial essentialism[1] that seeks to divide everyone by racial categories. The rise of abhorrent beliefs like Kinism is found in individuals like Corey Mahler. Mahler promotes the belief that racial biology makes some “races” more righteous (or sinful) than others. Upon this foundation, Mahler promotes the goodness of separating racial groups from one another. Sadly, as a pastor, I now regularly hear reports of such thinking infiltrating otherwise solid churches. These reports are as striking as they are vile.
To be clear, I do not believe that those seeking to work out the ordo amoris and “natural affections” are in the same league, or equal in error, with people like Mahler. Rather, these varying schools of thought, though distinct, have arisen in response to the same cultural crisis. If we don’t understand the origin of this crisis, then we will not be able to properly identify these errors or offer a biblical solution. Muddled thinking marks many of these responses, but I do believe there is a biblical way to address our moment that rejects both Kinism and the globalist impulses of leftism.
How should Christians think about natural affections? How do we parse through the different obligations we have in different spheres of life? How do we respond to the clear abuses of immigration in the West and the absurdity of anti-Christ philosophies like critical race theory? Over the next two blog posts, I seek to answer these questions from the biblical worldview.
Before we can rightly address these concerns, we need to understand two things. First, how did we get here? And, second, how the extremes of this debate have adopted the same dualistic understanding of life. Only by removing this underlying dualism can we hope to offer a distinctly Christian solution. This article addresses these two questions to clear the way for the second article that offers a biblical model for how to rightly shift through our obligations.
How Did We Get Here?
The main cultural factor that has spawned this crisis is the West’s escape from reason. I cannot examine all the backstory of how society has steadily lost its mind, but we must recognize that the West feels like it is teetering on the brink. This societal upheaval has been intentional. It spawns from anti-Christ worldviews like secularism, postmodernism, and cultural Marxism. These ideologies have undermined the foundations of the West for generations. They have created a wasteland fertile only for the spread of cancerous ideas. Living in these absurdities has pushed many to search for new solutions. The question today is, “How can the West be saved and rebuilt from this ruin?”
Leftism has destroyed much of what made the West great, and it has also infiltrated the church. The compromise of Christian leaders has furthered a distrust between the pulpit and the pews. Many Christians are searching for leaders who understand our cultural plight, and who can speak to what they witness daily—the intentional destruction of our society. Sadly, much of evangelicalism’s “intellectual elite” offers only compromised and cowardly responses. Nature hates a vacuum, and so new voices are emerging.
It is into this context that a renewed focus on “natural affections” and the ordering of our loves seems appealing. It is argued that if Western society is to be saved, then we must order our loves correctly and prioritize our own people. Of course, there is much truth in these sentiments, but there is ironically a new disordering of obligations as racial essentialism becomes paramount for both some of the cultural left and the cultural right.
Four Forces Shaping the Crisis
There are at least four present realities that contribute to this present moment. Two of these realities are centered in culture, while the other two are found within evangelicalism.
First, perhaps the most obvious issue is the same one that prompted Vance’s viral moment—immigration. Leftism, in its service to a globalist agenda, has intentionally used immigration to not only gain power but to undermine and destroy the West. Immigration policy seems intent on bringing in those who either hate the West or whose beliefs are incompatible with the West’s core beliefs. Those on the left bring in allies to aid in their quest to destroy the West and rebuild it in the image of their socialist fantasies. Leftism, as it advances the ideology of cultural Marxism, seeks to tear down society and to usher in its dystopian goals. The genius of this movement is how it uses the morality and compassion of the West against itself.[2] From Europe to America, immigration (both legal and illegal) is being used to fundamentally remake nations, all in the name of compassion. Much could be said about this, but the attack on the West is ultimately aimed at destroying its Christian foundations. Marxism knows that Christianity is its chief adversary, and it aims to use Christian terms to eradicate Christianity’s cultural impact and legacy. Without Christianity’s enduring impact, the West would have fallen long ago.
In this context, immigration is used to lessen the cultural dominance of Christianity. It is clear to many that the left uses immigration to further its power and cultural agenda. Yet, few leaders have dared to say it. All the while, every day, people watch as their communities are transformed, and their way of life belittled. The unwillingness of leaders to address this problem has sent people searching for new leadership. Christian leaders should take note, if we hope to squash evil ideologies like Kinism, we must acknowledge what our people see—an immigration crisis. Once we acknowledge that, we must offer a better, more biblical solution.
Second, another issue driving this crisis is the West’s willingness to fritter away billions of dollars on foreign wars and nation-building to the detriment of our own people. Why do our governments prioritize wars and rebuilding other nations while our cities crumble? Why should we enslave our children and grandchildren with massive national debt to fight in conflicts that do not appear to be in our national interest? Again, the allegiance and priorities of our leaders appear out of order. In this context, the discussion of properly ordering our loves and only caring for our “natural” relations appears very appealing.
Third, our attention must shift to movements within the church that contribute to this crisis. For decades, critical race theory exerted tremendous influence within American evangelicalism. This reached a boiling point in the last 8–10 years, and the fights and skirmishes are well-documented. Critical race theory (CRT) stresses a form of racial essentialism as it applies the oppressor/oppressed schema to race relations. You are, irrespective of your own beliefs and actions, either an oppressed person or an oppressor based on your skin color. As recent events in the “conservative” PCA reveal, this is still a live issue within evangelicalism. If it is righteous for minorities to have “racial affinity” groups that exclude whites based on their skin color, then some reckon what is good for the goose is also good for the gander—racial separation in society. At their foundation, both of these opposing thoughts are, in essence, the same.
Racial affinity groups are logically no different than racial affinity nations (that is, nations determined by race). Both operate by the same logic—race is essential and determinative. The race hustling that has marked the left wing of evangelicalism has produced a predictable counteroffensive in the other direction. Ideas have consequences, and terrible racist ideas like CRT have helped to produce the response of terrible racist ideas like Kinism. Such cause and effect does not negate personal responsibility, but it does help us better understand why these ideas can be appealing. If we want to defeat Kinism, then we need to eradicate the wokeness from our churches and denominations (I’m looking at you, PCA, SBC, and NAB).
Fourth, the American church has often downplayed, or outright attacked, the good of “natural” affections. For too long, Christian teachers have guilted their congregants for loving their nation, prioritizing caring for their family, and have encouraged disdain for such “fleshly” obligations. If you want to serve God, it is argued, then you must care more about nonphysical and “spiritual” realities than your own family. For generations, pastors led the way in this compromise as they would sacrifice their own families on the altar of pastoral ministry. On the cultural front, this thinking led to unbalanced and uncritical teaching from the pulpit on issues like immigration, racism, etc. For example, Christians have been told to feel guilt and shame for their nation’s history, but never honor or love for it. CRT pushes group guilt, but never group honor. Such teaching is as absurd as it is unbiblical.
Underlying these arguments is often a dualistic and unbiblical understanding of life. Francis Schaeffer labels this dualism as the upper versus lower story divide. In the upper story, we have the spiritual and immaterial, and in the lower story, we have the physical and material parts of life. These two areas are constantly in tension. As Schaeffer notes, this dualism can be expressed in many ways, including a system that is often alluded to in this discussion—nature versus grace. In this framework, nature is the lower story, and grace is the upper. In evangelicalism, the upper story has directed Christian teachers to train their congregants to prioritize their spiritual family, even to the detriment of their lower story physical family. In this, evangelicals have defied God’s created order.
It should come as no surprise that many voices are now calling for a prioritization of the “natural” obligations found in the lower story over and against those in the upper story. While I disagree with this solution, it comes in response to a damaging teaching that has dominated evangelicalism—the physical doesn’t matter. What many in the “natural affections” camp miss is that they have adopted the same fundamental worldview as their opponents.
Dooeyweerd’s Warning
The more we pit nature against grace, the clearer the problem becomes—our framing of it. How we understand a problem inevitably shapes where we search for a solution. Undergirding this discussion, especially in the church, is Aquinas’s nature/grace dualism. In this, all of life is divided into either nature or grace. In Aquinas’s thought, nature is good and sufficient on its own, yet grace perfects it. Thus, grace tends to become an “add-on” to nature that is not necessary. It is natural (pun intended) for some camps to prioritize nature and others grace. The belief in the goodness and sufficiency of nature is a driving force in elevating so-called “natural affections.” As long as we pit the two against one another, we are doomed to bounce between them.
In evangelicalism, some stress the upper story of grace, while others stress the lower story of nature. It is here that the warning of Herman Dooyeweerd, in his book Root of Western Culture, rings true. Dooyeweerd, who inspired the work of Schaeffer, warned that any ideology built on a dualism will constantly shift between whatever it identifies as the two fundamental realities. When the dualism is the form/matter of Plato, then some people will prioritize form, and others will emphasize matter. Both sides are fundamentally the same, as they accept the same starting point. This is true in many of the debates about immigration, natural affections, etc., in the church, as one side pushes for the preeminence of nature, and the other the preeminence of grace. Fundamentally, the two sides have more in common than they want to admit, as both accept the dualism of nature versus grace.
All dualistic understandings of life will constantly ping-pong back and forth between their two poles. In our discussion, we had decades of teachers emphasizing grace over nature, and now the ball is being thrown back in the other direction with an emphasis on nature over grace. This problem is inescapable if we continue with a dualistic understanding of life. As long as the nature/grace division remains intact, we are doomed to endlessly bounce back and forth between these two camps.
Toward a Biblical Solution
Christians must exile this nature/grace schema and search for a unified vision of life. Dooyeweerd reminds us that the foundation of the Christian faith is not nature/grace, but the storyline of creation, fall, and redemption. In Scripture, there is unity within creation. Creation itself is an act of God’s grace, and it is always dependent upon him. There is a fundamental unity to it. Division comes through the fall and the introduction of sin. Therefore, the aim of redemption is a renewed unity bought by the blood of Christ (Col. 1:20).
In the context of our discussion, man is created one (Gen. 1:26–28) and from our one father all nations descend (Acts 17:26). Man begins as one. Yet, through sin, humanity is divided and scattered (Gen. 11). The tension is moral, not nature/grace, or between different races. Through the work of Christ, all nations are being united into one new man (Matt. 28:19–20; Rev. 7:9–17; Acts 10:1–48; Eph. 2:15; 1 Cor. 15:45). Nature and grace are inseparable; both are found at creation and redemption. Thus, our Christian obligations are not divided into two baskets—nature and grace—but are unified under the creative and redemptive work of Christ, who is Lord of all.
Christians need to cast out Aquinas’s dualism and replace it with creation, fall, and redemption. We don’t need to wrestle over which is more important, but rather, we must have a redemptive outlook on all of life. Of course, this does not remove all the tension of life in a fallen age, but it does provide a stable, unified foundation to live from. Our obligations must be shaped by the storyline of the universe as summarized in creation, fall, and redemption, not by partitioning life into either nature or grace.
In part two of this series, I will examine how Scripture helps us work through the ordering of our loves and obligations by exploring key texts, the importance of covenant, and the doctrine of sphere sovereignty.
Pastor Levi Secord
Christ Bible Church
[1] Racial essentialism is the belief that race, as defined by things like skin color, hair type, and face shape are essential to a person or group’s identity. For some, these racial distinctions are determinative and must not be violated.
[2] Tom Holland, even if inadvertently, makes this point in his discussion of wokeness in Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (New York: Basic Books, 2019), 515–542.
