A reader writes:
Somebody’s been quoting this passage on a board I frequent often (www.bolt.com): Proverbs 6:16-19 "These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: {17} A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, {18} An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, {19} A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren."
Is it then proper to say that god Hates.
Also, What is youre take on the Hebrew notion of Hatred. I am aware that it doesn’t have certain kinds of catagorically discriptive terms. So if you have a first and a second choice, they may be discribed as "first and last" or if you like one option more than the other one may be "loved" and the other "hated".
Any thoughts. Is it correct to say "God Hates,"?
Since Scripture uses the term in regard to God, it is possible to say that in some sense God hates. The question is: What sense? (Or senses.)
Since God is Love, and since he is very different from us, it is not to be expected that God hates in the same way we do. As Aquinas notes, God doesn’t have passions the way we do.
In an obvious sense, to say that God hates something (because it is evil, e.g., shedding innocent blood) may be taken to mean that it is inconsistent with his goodness.
In other cases, to say that God hates something (e.g., "Jacob I loved but Esau I hated") or that God wishes something to be hated (e.g., "If anyone comes to me but does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters, and yes, even his own life–he cannot be my disciple") then it may be understood that he prefers something to it (Jacob rather than Esau) or that something else is to be preferred to it (having one’s first loyalty to Jesus rather than to any other).
It may also be possible to find places where divine justice is said to be administered in terms of God’s hatred of sin. In these cases, Aquinas would tell us (though I don’t have the reference handy) that God is willing a non-moral evil (e.g., pain) for purposes of a greater good (upholding justice, correcting behavior).
What cannot be said is that God commits the sin of hatred, i.e., willing evil against someone for its own sake.
As far as the Hebrews’ conception of hatred (which at times may have been expressed in Aramaic or even Greek rather than Hebrew), it may have been broader than ours, at least in the sense that the term could be used in senses that we today would never use it in English (e.g., Jesus’ statement about hating your family, though this may have been as shocking to its original audience as it is to us, so a broader understanding is not clear from that verse alone).
I am dubious of our ability at this late date to come up with a refined, carefully nuanced understanding of the meaning of the relevant Hebrew vocabulary. When you don’t have speakers of the dialect alive to question about what terms do and do not include (and biblical Hebrew is not identical to modern Hebrew, so the Israelis don’t count) it is difficult to reconstruct the exact parameters of words.
I suspect that the ancient Hebrews had a largely anthropomorphic understanding of God’s hatred, and the distinctions we would now draw are based on the revelation Christ gave us, as meditated upon throughout the centuries of Christian reflection.
Not too long ago I read Riccioti’s book “The Life of Christ”. Riccioti mentions (as you have above) that one of the meanings of the verb “to hate” in Aramaic is “to prefer less”. So the phrase “I love coffee but I hate tea” can mean that “I love coffee much more than tea”. Riccioti also mentions that this sense of the verb “to hate” survives in regional Arabic dialects.
My question is: how standard is this interpretation? Is this the most accepted view?
I’ve heard it in many places, but haven’t run it to ground.
As I’m getting together with my Aramaic instructor tonight, I’ll try to remember to ask him. (He’s a native-speaker.)
One should also note that some of these hate are not hating something. Murder is not an existent, free-floating thing. It is an action.
As Aquinas notes, God doesn’t have passions the way we do.
Yes. But doesn’t Aquinas go further and take the view that God doesn’t have passions at all?
“Objection 1. It seems that love does not exist in God. For in God there are no passions. Now love is a passion. Therefore love is not in God.”
“Reply to Objection 1. The cognitive faculty does not move except through the medium of the appetitive: and just as in ourselves the universal reason moves through the medium of the particular reason, as stated in De Anima iii, 58,75, so in ourselves the intellectual appetite, or the will as it is called, moves through the medium of the sensitive appetite. Hence, in us the sensitive appetite is the proximate motive-force of our bodies. Some bodily change therefore always accompanies an act of the sensitive appetite, and this change affects especially the heart, which, as the Philosopher says (De part. animal. iii, 4), is the first principle of movement in animals. Therefore acts of the sensitive appetite, inasmuch as they have annexed to them some bodily change, are called passions; whereas acts of the will are not so called. Love, therefore, and joy and delight are passions; in so far as they denote acts of the intellective appetite, they are not passions. It is in this latter sense that they are in God. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. vii): “God rejoices by an operation that is one and simple,” and for the same reason He loves without passion.”
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/102001.htm
Remembered from Sesame Street:
“I love ice cream!” but “I don’t like my brother. He pinches.”