While patristic writings address the issue of nearest versus neediest more fully and directly than does Scripture, later Christian literature treats the question much more fully still. In this literature, Aquinas figures as the chief seminal figure and his Summa Theologica as the most influential single work, with its most pertinent sections being those that discuss almsgiving and the order of charity. Subsequent authors, developing these sections, produced the most thorough treatments of our theme in Christian or nonchristian literature. I shall start with Aquinas, then pass to his successors, and finally dwell on three problematic aspects of the Thomistic tradition. If that tradition is right about self-preference, about the relation of self-preference to nearest-preference, and about the importance of social standing, there is reason to reconsider the Fathers' implicit assessment of a case such as EC.

THE ORDER OF CHARITY

By the time of Peter Lombard and Philip the Chancellor, the “order of charity” had taken the following general form: “First, God is to be loved, second ourselves, third our parents, fourth our children, fifth members of our household, sixth strangers.” Aquinas inherited this doctrine, and his authority established it for centuries to come. With respect to parents and children he also refined it: “A father naturally loves his son more [than his father] because the son is more closely joined to him, but a son naturally loves his father more as representing a higher good.”