Whosoever hates his brother is a murderer: and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
Lest ye should think it a light matter, brethren, to hate, or, not to love, hear what follows: Every one that hates his brother, is a murderer. 1 John 3:15 How now, if any made light of hating his brother, will he also in his heart make light of murder? He does not stir his hands to kill a man; yet he is already held by God a murderer; the other lives, and yet this man is already judged as his slayer! Every one that hates his brother is a murderer: and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. As he said before, "He that loveth not abideth in death." S. John counts "not loving" and "hating" as the same thing, by miosis, when little is said, but more is meant, and also because want of love is counted as constructive hatred. Moreover, he who hates his brother is in will and desire a murderer. See S. Jerome (Epist. xxxvi. ad Castorin.) and S. Matthew 5:28, and hatred moreover disposes to murder, as desire disposes to adultery.
Mystically. He who hates his brother murders his own soul. As S. Ambrose says, "He who hates murders himself in the first place, slaying himself with his own sword." And S. Gregory (Hom. x11) says the same thing more at length. Again, " he who hates his brother, ofttimes destroys his soul, by provoking him to anger and contention."
[Pseudo]-Alexander says, "He who calumniates his brother is a murderer, and no murderer hath any part in the kingdom of God." For, as Dionysius says, there are three kinds of murde...
With the Lord in the day of judgment; but the quarrelsome and disunited, and he who has not peace with his brethren, in accordance with what the blessed apostle and the Holy Scripture testifies, even if he have been slain for the name of Christ, shall not be able to escape the crime of fraternal dissension, because, as it is written, "He who hateth his brother is a murderer ".
E darkness of jealousy? why do you enfold yourself in the cloud of malice? why do you quench all the light of peace and charity in the blindness of envy? why do you return to the devil, whom you had renounced? why do you stand like Cain? For that he who is jealous of his brother, and has him in hatred, is bound by the guilt of homicide, the Apostle John declares in his epistle, saying, "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer; and ye know that no murderer hath life abiding in him."
