Love - The Opposite of Love Is Not Hate, It Is Indifference

Elie Wiesel:

It has been stated before, it bears repeating: the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.

(Elie Wiesel, A Jew Today, trans. Marion Wiesel, [New York: Random House, 1978], p. 183.)

Note: (1.) Love and hate are binaries (or corollaries) not opposites. (2.) Hate is a by-product of love; it grows out of and exists because of love. (3.) Hate cannot exist independently of, or in the absence of, love. (4.) Hatred is not the absence of love as there can be no hatred unless love is simultaneously present. (5.) The antithesis of love is not hate, it is apathy.

Thomas Aquinas:

…love consists in a certain agreement of the lover with the object loved, while hatred consists in a certain disagreement or dissonance. Now we should consider in each thing, what agrees with it, before that which disagrees: since a thing disagrees with another, through destroying or hindering that which agrees with it. Consequently love must needs precede hatred; and nothing is hated, save through being contrary to a suitable thing which is loved. And hence it is that every hatred is caused by love.

(Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II.29.2; trans. The “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas: Part II (First Part): QQ. I.—XLVIII.: Second Edition, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, [London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., 1927], P. I-II, Q. 29, A. 2, p. 340.)

Note: Love and hatred are ultimately predicated upon our agreement or disagreement with something. Love necessarily precedes hatred because we must first agree with something (love) before we can disagree with that which opposes or contradicts it (hate). Everything we hate, we hate precisely because it stands in opposition to that which we love. Therefore, hatred is causally dependent upon love; and cannot begin to exist or continue to exist without the prior presence and continued existence of love.

Cf. Petrus Van Mastricht:

First, the love of God (John 3:16) is his willing that which agrees with himself, or that which is his own, so to speak, and his operating in regard to it just as the affection of love in man does: embracing union with it or embracing its presence, blessing it, and resting in its goodness. …On the other hand, second, his hatred (Ps. 5:4) is his willing, or negatively willing, what is repugnant to himself, and doing against it the same works that hatred does in the creatures; that is, obliterating and punishing it.

(Petrus Van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology: Volume 2: Faith in the Triune God, trans. Todd M. Rester, ed. Joel R. Beeke, [Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2019], Part 1, Book 2, Chapter 15, §. 20.) Preview.

Thomas Aquinas:

     Love and hatred are contraries if considered in respect of the same thing. But if taken in respect of contraries, they are not themselves contrary, but consequent to one another: for it amounts to the same that one love a certain thing, or that one hate its contrary. Thus love of one thing is the cause of one’s hating its contrary.

(Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II.29.2, ad 2; trans. The “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas: Part II (First Part): QQ. I.—XLVIII.: Second Edition, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, [London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., 1927], P. I-II, Q. 29, A. 2, Reply Obj. 2, p. 341.)

Note: Love and hatred may be considered opposites when we are speaking of particular objects or people. However, when we are speaking universally (of opposites), love and hatred are not opposite but rather causally related—the one (hatred) is necessarily dependent upon the existence and continuation of the other (love). Loving one thing causes us to hate that which opposes it.

Peter Kreeft:

     The opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference. For we can love and hate the same person at the same time, but we cannot love and be indifferent to the same person at the same time. Hate does not necessarily drive out love, but indifference does.

(Peter Kreeft, Love Is Stronger Than Death, [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992], p. 19.)

Note: God is said to both love (Romans 5:8) and hate (Proverbs 6:16-19; Ephesians 2:3) the elect (simultaneously) before they believed. The fact that love and hatred can both be expressed upon the same individual simultaneously, demonstrates that love and hatred are not antithetically opposed to one another. However, just as one and the same individual cannot receive both mercy (i.e. forgiveness) and justice (i.e. judgment) simultaneously—for the one necessarily precludes the other—so too one cannot be the object of both love and indifference. Therefore, the antithesis of love is not hate, but apathy.

Cf. Petrus Van Mastricht:

If you should say, How could he love the workers of iniquity? (Hab. 1:13; Ps. 5:4-5), then I will say, He loved the workers while he hated their works; he loved them by his love of benevolence, not by his love of complacency (Ezek. 16:5).

(Petrus Van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology: Volume 2: Faith in the Triune God, trans. Todd M. Rester, ed. Joel R. Beeke, [Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2019], Part 1, Book 2, Chapter 17, §. 7.) Preview.

Note: See further, Wrath and Love: Ephesians 2:3 and Romans 5:8.

Isaiah 14:12-14:

“How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, You who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation On the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’

(New King James Version.)

Cf. Richard A. Muller:

Superbia, pride, is the direct opposite of humilitas, humility, and may be defined as an inordinate valuation of self or an inordinate love of self (amor sui).

(Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology, [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998], p. 280.)

Note: All hatred is ultimately motivated by and dependent upon love. Even the Devil’s hatred of God and Humankind stems from his excessive and misplaced love for himself (Isaiah 14:12-14). For pride is nothing but “an inordinate valuation of self or an inordinate love of self”. All hatred, whether righteous or unrighteous, flows from some form of love.

Cf. St. Augustine of Hippo:

But we wished to show that the Scriptures of our religion, whose authority we prefer to all writings whatsoever, make no distinction between amor, dilectio, and caritas; and we have already shown that amor is used in a good connection. And if any one fancy that amor is no doubt used both of good and bad loves, but that dilectio is reserved for the good only, let him remember what the psalm says, “He that loveth (diligit) iniquity hateth his own soul;”[Ps. xi. 5.] and the words of the Apostle John, “If any man love (diligere) the world, the love (dilectio) of the Father is not in him.”[1 John ii. 15.] Here you have in one passage dilectio used both in a good and a bad sense. And if any one demands an instance of amor being used in a bad sense (for we have already shown its use in a good sense), let him read the words, “For men shall be lovers (amantes) of their own selves, lovers (amatores) of money.”[2 Tim. iii. 2.]

     The right will is, therefore, well-directed love, and the wrong will is ill-directed love. Love, then, yearning to have what is loved, is desire; and having and enjoying it, is joy; fleeing what is opposed to it, it is fear; and feeling what is opposed to it, when it has befallen it, it is sadness. Now these motions are evil if the love is evil; good if the love is good.

(Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, 14.7; PL, 41:410; trans. NPNF1, 2:266-267.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Petrus Van Mastricht:

The object of the will is the good.

XVIII. The object of the will, as we have said, is the good, that is, whatever is agreeable to the propensity of the one willing, whether this good is truly good, that is, conducive to the health of the one willing, or not, as long as it agrees with his propensity, such that it stirs up his appetite. And moreover, the final judgment of the practical intellect shows it to be so. On the contrary, the object of negative will is evil, or that which is repugnant to that propensity. The object of the divine will, considered inwardly, is nothing but the infinite goodness of God as it most fully satisfies him, and considered outwardly, it is whatever agrees with that goodness, just as the object of his negative will is whatever is discordant with that goodness.

(Petrus Van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology: Volume 2: Faith in the Triune God, trans. Todd M. Rester, ed. Joel R. Beeke, [Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2019], Part 1, Book 2, Chapter 15, §. 18.) Preview.

A. G. Hebert:

For the opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference. On the level of human love, it is an elementary fact of experience that love is liable to turn to anger and even to hate, just because it cares intensely for the loved person. On the level of divine love, the Love of God demands as its correlative the Wrath of God, just because God does care, and because He is man’s true Good, and He has called man to fellowship with Himself, and man’s rejection of that fellowship is his ruin and perdition. Because the New Testament emphasizes the Love of God, it emphasizes His Wrath; the evangelists repeatedly show our Lord as righteously angry. Job, with all his impatience, stands on the same line. The trouble is that God is so persistent in His attentions to him, and the burden is more than he can bear. At least he knows that God is not indifferent.

(A. G. Hebert, The Authority of the Old Testament, [London: Faber and Faber Ltd, 1947], pp. 251-252.)

Stephen Charnock:

     The justice of God is a part of the goodness of his nature. God himself thought so, when he told Moses he would make all his goodness pass before him: Exod. xxxiii. 19. He leaves not out in that enumeration of the parts of it his resolution by no means to clear the guilty, but to visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, Exod. xxxiv. 7. It is a property of goodness to hate evil, and therefore a property of goodness to punish it: it is no less righteousness to give according to the deserts of a person in a way of punishment, than to reward a person that obeys his precepts in a way of recompense.

(Stephen Charnock, Discourses Upon the Existence and Attributes of God: First American Edition, In Two Volumes: Vol. II., [Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1840], Discourse XII: The Goodness of God, p. 277.)

Stephen Charnock:

A love of holiness cannot be without a hatred of every thing that is contrary to it. As God necessarily loves himself, so he must necessarily hate every thing that is against himself: and as he loves himself for his own excellency and holiness, he must necessarily detest whatsoever is repugnant to his holiness, because of the evil of it. Since he is infinitely good, he cannot but love goodness, as it is a resemblance to himself; and cannot but abhor unrighteousness, as being most distant from him, and contrary to him. If he have any esteem for his own perfections, he must needs have an implacable aversion to all that is so repugnant to him, that would, if it were possible, destroy him, and is a point directed not only against his glory, but against his life. If he did not hate it, he would hate himself; for since righteousness is his image, and sin would deface his image, if he did not love his image, and loathe what is against his image, he would loathe himself, he would be an enemy to his own nature. (Stephen Charnock, Discourses Upon the Existence and Attributes of God: First American Edition, In Two Volumes: Vol. II., [Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1840], Discourse XI: The Holiness of God, p. 139.)

Note: Thomas Aquinas correctly observed that “every hatred is caused by love”.(Summa Theologica, I-II, q. 29, a. 2.) In order to hate something, one must first love something else that is perceived as being threatened or contradicted. For example, God’s hatred for injustice stems from His profound love for justice. Similarly, God’s “love of holiness cannot be without a hatred of every thing that is contrary to it.” This interdependence underscores the fact that love and hate are intertwined. Hatred is an active response to anything that opposes what one loves and is causally dependent upon that love.

Celia Brewer Sinclair:

The opposite of love is not hate, but apathy. We argue with those whom we love because we love them. We strive to stay engaged and connected when the easy way is letting go.

(Celia Brewer Sinclair, Interpretation Bible Studies: Genesis, [Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999], p. 79.)

John R. Claypool:

The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference, because we do not hate something that is of no importance to us. Hatred always has a component of interest in it. The worst way that we can show disrespect for another person is simply to treat them as if they do not exist. Do you remember the parable of the last judgment in which Jesus described how the human race is finally going to be judged? He said that it is not the abuse of power, but the neglect of power, that is the opposite of love. To paraphrase, Jesus said, “I was hungry and thirsty, but you acted as if I did not even exist.” (Matthew 25:42)

(John R. Claypool, The First to Follow: The Apostles of Jesus, ed. Ann Wilkinson Claypool, [Harrisburg: Morehouse Publishing, 2008], p. 140.)

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria