Does God Hate?

A Thought on Virtue

I want to ask a question and talk about it in this weeks post. The question is, can God hate? It’s a question that a lot of Christians have heard the answer to, whether they know it or not. The purported answer comes in a phrase commonly used by Christians; hate the sin, love the sinner. This phrase stems from the belief that God hates sin. I have also heard a semi-divisive quote that goes along with this idea:

This idea that God hates sin is interesting, but I actually think it’s wrong based on definitions of love and hate. I think that the definitions of these abstract concepts have been forgotten, which leads to wrongly attributing them to God. In order to explain myself, I have to talk about love. Love is widely considered the opposite of hate, so I cannot neglect love in this conversation. Christianity sees love as a virtue, along with most other major religions and beliefs — Buddhism does not, since it’s end goal is detachment from the material. A virtue is a desirable character trait that promotes good morality, ethics, and behavior. Another definition of a virtue is that of Alasdair Macintyre, he defines it as “an acquired human quality … which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving any such goods”. If love is a virtue, then it’s opposite — hate — would be a vice. A vice is a negative character trait that at best prevents virtuous behavior, and at worst promotes immoral behavior. As I say this you may be realizing the implications.

We cannot attribute a vice to God, as His character is where virtue comes from. God is the definition of good, and He cannot act outside of His character. This means that He quite literally cannot possess a vice — He cannot be Goodness itself if He lacks Goodness, or is Evil itself. I want to add here that it is often found that virtues are merely the balanced point between two vices, which may still be true here. You have perfect love in the middle, perfectly balancing grace and truth; then on one side you have enablement, and the other side hatred. The following passage from the Catholic Bible provides evidence of these claims:

We can say then that God does not hate, but then what do we make of some of His actions? I propose that God’s hatred, as we see it, is actually still God’s love. The easiest way of explaining this is the commonly used analogy of a living parent who disciplines their child. The child may perceive these disciplinary actions at hateful, when in reality they are out of love and protection by the parent. It is more likely that we are projecting our own fallen nature onto God.

We constantly hate God by despising Him, His commandments, His Son, His saving work, and His people. We are the ones who hate, and then we project that onto God, perceiving His loving discipline and actions as hate. You could attempt to argue that God hates sin, but then how can you explain mercy if not by saying that God shows love in the face of sin. God is the perfect balance between two vices — God is the virtue of love. As John says in 1st John 4:8, “He who does not love does not know God; for God is love”. With this understanding of God’s love, we can revisit the quote we opened with:

We can now see that this is still true, but perhaps for different reasons than we thought first. It is true we must hate as God hates in order to love as He loves, but that is only true because God’s hate IS love. God cannot actually hate, as it is a vice, and so we must learn to be more like God in His expression of love, which we perceive as hate. If we want to love like God loves, we must learn to abandon our hatred altogether, as it is outside the character of God. Instead we must adorn ourselves with the virtue of love, balancing grace and truth as Jesus did.

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