God is love by His very Nature. God is three Persons, but one Nature. As concerns the One Nature, the Godhead is entirely thoroughly One. Therefore, the Divine Nature is not divided into being and doing. God is not divided into His many qualities and His many acts. All that God is and all that God does is One Divine Eternal Act. The act of God answering the prayer of a small child is the very same Act by which God exists. Being and doing are One in God, as concerns His Nature.

So when we say God is Love, he is literally Love as his very nature. And in God, love and existence are the same. If a human person ceases to love, they don’t cease to exist. If God were to cease to love — which of course is not possible — He would literally cease to exist, since in God love is existence. There is no difference between the perfect infinite existence that is God, and the Love that is God.

Since Love is the Nature of God, and that Nature is One, God cannot hate. He cannot be or do hate. He cannot even hate sin or evil. We say that God hates sin as, at most, a figure of speech. Sin is so diametrically opposed to the very Nature of God who is Love that this disparity between the two, between perfect infinite Love on the one hand, and sin on the other hand, is so severe that we use the term hate. But in fact, God does not hate anyone or anything.

Christine Niles on the ChurchMilitant.com show called “The Download” stated the following:

“God hates the lukewarm soul, way more than he hates the one that, that um hates the Catholic Church and you know, you know, it’s rather be hot or cold, but the lukewarm He will vomit out of His mouth. And most Catholics, I’m sorry, are lukewarm.”

Wrong, so very wrong. IF God hates the lukewarm soul, and IF most Catholics are lukewarm, that would imply that God hates the lukewarm souls of most Catholics. Here’s a clip from that show and then the full show itself.

But in truth, God does not hate the lukewarm soul. God does not hate most Catholics, nor does He hate their supposedly lukewarm souls.

Notice also the assertion that God also (supposedly) “hates the one…that hates the Catholic Church”. This was stated in a discussion on Islam, implying that Muslims who “hate” the Catholic Church are therefore hated by God.

What kind of Christian thinks God hates anyone? Also, lukewarm has a different meaning in that passage, Rev 3:16, than in ordinary parlance. It doesn’t mean lukewarm faith or lukewarm devotion. It uses the figure of something taking on the temperature of the things around it to refer to going along with the crowd in doing evil.

[Revelation]
{3:15} I know your works: that you are neither cold, nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot.
{3:16} But because you are lukewarm and are neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit you out of my mouth.

To be hot is to stir up those around you to do good. To be cold is to cool down those around you to cease from doing evil. A thing is lukewarm when it is the same temperature as its environment. A person is lukewarm when they go along with whatever the crowd is doing, even when it is wrong.

[Exodus]
{23:2} You shall not follow the crowd in doing evil. Neither shall you go astray in judgment, by agreeing with the majority opinion, apart from the truth.

Does God “hate” the lukewarm soul? No. God does not hate anything or anyone. Can we use hate as a figure for the lukewarm soul, as we do for sin? No. The human person is created by God; human nature is good. The soul remains good in its nature, even if the person is unrepentant from actual mortal sin and is in Hell. That is why God does not cause the denizens of Hell to cease to exist. Their nature is still good, in some sense; though it lacks goods that it ought to possess.

The lukewarm soul is not hated by God. Even the sinner unrepentant from actual mortal sin is loved by God, which is why the prevenient grace of God is received by such persons, and actual graces are offered and sometimes cooperated with by such persons. And a lukewarm soul is not necessarily unrepentant from actual mortal sin, though this lukewarm behavior tends to lead to grave sin, as we live in a sinful society.

Michael Voris has a video titled, “Hate is a Family Value”. That’s from Voris’ Strength and Honor Conference here. But hate is not a family value, not even in a figurative rhetorical sense. People who try to impute hate to God are projecting their own faults on the Almighty.

by
Ronald L. Conte Jr.
Roman Catholic theologian
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