the Week of Christ the King / Proper 29 / Ordinary 34
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Bible Dictionaries
Hatred
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or In the time of Nero the Christians of Rome ‘were accused, net so much on the charge of burning the city, as of hating the human race’ (‘haud proinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani generis convicti sunt’ [Tac. Ann. xv. 44]). The indictment was the opposite of the truth. Christianity is amor generis humani. Christ’s new commandment is ‘that ye love one another’ (John 13:34, 1 John 2:8), and it is fulfilled when an outward categorical imperative (e.g. Leviticus 19:18) is changed into an inward personal impulse, the dynamic of which is His own self-sacrificing, all-embracing love. ‘We love, because he first loved us’ (1 John 4:19), and it would be as right to insert ‘the human race’ as ‘him’ (Authorized Version ) after the first verb. By precept and example Christ constrains men to love one another as He has loved them. To be Christlike is to love impartially and immeasurably. Love is the sole and sufficient evidence that a man ‘is in the light’ (1 John 2:10). There is a silencing finality in St. John’s judgment of that profession of Christianity which is not attested by love: ‘He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in the darkness even until now’ (1 John 2:9). The negative μὴ ἀγαπᾶν is displaced by the positive μισεῖν, for there is no real via media, cool indifference to any man being quickly changed under stress of temptation into very decided dislike. ὁ μισῶν τὀν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ is guilty of an unnatural hatred, and though ‘brother’ refers in the first instance to those who are members of the body of Christ, it is impossible to evade the wider application. ‘The brother for whom Christ died’ (1 Corinthians 8:11) is every man. In the searching language of the Apostle of love, hatred is equivalent to murder (1 John 3:15): the one concept lacks no hideous element that is present in the other; the animating ideas and passions of the hater and the murderer are the same. The Christians of the Apostolic Age could not but love the world which ‘God so loved’ (John 3:18), and for whose sins Christ is the propitiation (1 John 2:2). Their ‘world’ hated them, and, in many instances, ended by murdering them; but persecution and bloodshed only constrained them to love the more, in accordance with the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:44). The early Church extorted from that pagan world the beautiful tribute, ‘See how these Christians love one another!’ The Spirit of Christ moved His followers to ‘put away all bitterness and wrath … with all malice,’ to be ‘kind one to another’ (Ephesians 4:31 f.), and ‘put on love as the bond of perfectness’ (Colossians 3:14). While they could recall the time when they were ‘hateful, hating one another’ (στυγητοί, μισοῦντες ἀλλήλους, Titus 3:3; Vulgate ‘odibiles, odientes invicem’), the spirit of the new life was φιλαδελφία (love of the brethren), to which was added a world-wide ἀγάπη (2 Peter 1:7).
To orthodox Judaism, as well as to cultured Hellenism and the hard pagan Roman world, it seemed natural to love only one’s friends. When the Rabbis quoted Leviticus 19:18, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour,’ they did not hesitate to add, on their own account, the rider, ‘Thou shalt hate thine enemy’ (Matthew 5:43). To Aristotle the only conceivable objects of love were the persons and things that were good, pleasant, or useful (Nic. Eth. viii. 2). Sulla, a typical Roman, wished it to be inscribed on his monument in the Campus Martius that ‘none of his friends ever did him a kindness, and none of his enemies ever did him a wrong, without being fully repaid’ (Plut. Sulla, xxxviii.). Into a world dominated by such ideas Christianity brought that enthusiasm of humanity which is the reflexion of Christ’s own redeeming love. Associating the ideas of hatred and death, it opposed to them those of love and life. ‘We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not abideth in death’ (1 John 3:14).
Cicero defines hatred (odium) as ‘ira inveterata’ (Tusc. Disp. iv. 9), a phrase which Chaucer borrows in Persones Tale, ‘Hate is old wrathe.’ But ira is in itself a morally neutral instinct, which becomes either righteous or unrighteous according to the quality of the objects against which it is directed. The θυμὸς καὶ ὀργή which the Christian has to put away include all selfish kinds of hatred. But he soon discovers that in his new life he must still be a ‘good hater’ if he is to be a true lover. He must, with Dante, ‘hate the sin which hinders loving.’ ‘What indignation’ (ἀγανάκτησις) is wrought in him by a sorrow after a godly sort! (2 Corinthians 7:11). The love which he feels as he comes nearer God is hot with wrath against every ‘abominable thing which God hates.’ The capacity for hatred is set down by Christ to the credit of the Church of Ephesus: ‘Thou hatest the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate’ (Revelation 2:6). To Christ Himself the words of Psalms 45:7 are applied, ‘Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity’ (Hebrews 1:9). The writer of Revelation does not conceal his loathing of pagan Rome, calling it ‘a hold of unclean and hateful birds’ (Revelation 18:2), and Jude (Judges 1:23) bids evangelists who snatch brands from the burning ‘have mercy with fear, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.’
If hatred not merely of evil things but of wicked persons is anywhere ascribed to God, a difficulty is at once felt. It is probably a mistake to take ἐχθροί in Romans 5:10 (cf. Colossians 1:21, James 4:4) in a passive sense, though Calvin, Tholuck, Meyer, and others do so. The meaning is ‘hostile to God,’ not ‘hateful to God’ (Ritschl, Lightfoot, Sanday-Headlam). God, who hates the sin, loves the sinner, and it is only in the alienated mind of man that a καταλλαγή needs to be effected. But in Romans 9:13 the words are quoted which Malachi (1:2f.) attributes to Jahweh: ‘Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.’ The saying may be interpreted in the light of Luke 14:26, where ‘hate’ evidently means ‘love less’; or it may be taken as an imperfect OT conception, which St. Paul uses in an argumentum ad hominem without giving it his own imprimatur.
James Strahan.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Hatred'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/h/hatred.html. 1906-1918.
