177. Hating God
177. HATING GOD
Many people hate the Church, and many atheists passionately hate religion. Do they hate God? Is that possible? How can anyone hate the only absolutely, perfectly good, and lovable being?
Whether it is possible for anyone to hate God?
God can be apprehended by man in two ways: first, in Himself, as when He is seen in His essence; secondly, in His effects. . . . Now God in His essence is goodness itself, which no man can hate, for it is natural to the good to be loved. Hence it is impossible for one who sees God in His essence to hate Him.
Moreover some of His effects are such that they can in no wise be contrary to the human will, since to be, to love, to understand, which are effects of God, are desirable and lovable to all. Wherefore again God cannot be an object of hatred if we consider Him as the Author of such effects.
Some of God’s effects, however, are contrary to an inordinate will, such as the infliction of punishment, and the prohibition of sin by the divine law. Such effects are repugnant to a will debased by sin, and as regards the consideration of them God may be an object of hatred to some in so far as they look upon Him as forbidding sin and inflicting punishment (II-II,34,1).
The best is the opposite of the worst, according to the Philosopher. But hatred of God is contrary to the love of God, in which man’s best consists. Therefore hatred of God is man’s worst sin. . . . (However,) not everyone who hates his punishment hates God the author of punishments. For many hate the punishments inflicted on them and yet they bear them patiently out of reverence for the divine justice. Wherefore Augustine says that God commands us to bear with penal evils, not to love them. On the other hand, to break out into hatred of God when He inflicts those punishments is to hate God’s very justice, and that is a most grievous sin (II-II,34,2).
St. Thomas assumes that there is such a thing as human nature and that that nature is “by nature” attracted to whatever appears good. That may not seem to be a very controversial assumption, but many philosophers today deny it, because they deny either the existence of any such things as universal natures (Nominalism), or that we can know them, or that they are teleological (purposively ordered to a natural good). These assumptions cannot be proved by science, only by philosophy.
Some “effects” of God are as impossible to hate as God is, for they are to God as sunlight is to the sun; they are made of the same realities, so to speak: truth and goodness, understanding and love. To meet these realities is to love them, unless one is demon—possessed and has lost his essential humanity.
What is hated by people who say they hate God is His commandments, and the obligation they place on the human will to obey them rather than our own will, i.e., to stop playing God, to admit that God is God and we are not—that is, to obey the first commandment, to worship God alone.
When we are addicted to sin (and we all are!), God’s commandments appear as unwelcome as a family intervention appears to a drug addict. What is hated especially is the punishment that sin must entail, for all punishment, by the very nature of punishment, is unpleasant rather than pleasant.
St. Thomas distinguishes, in his last paragraph, between hating our just punishments, which is a fault but quite natural given our present fallen state, and hating God and justice itself because of these punishments, which is contrary to our very nature. Yet free will enables us to do just that. Nothing else can hate its own nature because nothing else has free will.
Think of two convicts in prison. Both hate prison, but one admits his fault and serves his time as his just desserts, while the other hates the very system of justice itself and would sooner enthrone injustice in power than justice, in order to justify himself. That attitude is more dangerous than the sin that put the prisoner in jail in the first place.