For thou lovest all the things that are, and abhorrest nothing which thou hast made: for never wouldest thou have made any thing, if thou hadst hated it.
All Commentaries on Wisdom of Solomon 11:24 Go To Wisdom of Solomon 11
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
The love with which God loves is incomprehensible and must not be thought of as subject to change. He did not begin to love us only when we were reconciled to him through the blood of his Son. Rather, he loved us before the foundation of the world, calling us to be his children together with the Only-Begotten, when we were as yet absolutely nothing. The fact, then, that we "have been reconciled to God through the death of his Son" should not be heard and understood in the sense that he began to love what he had previously hated, as when an enemy reconciles with his enemy and the two become friends and begin to mutually love one another just as they once hated one another. We have been reconciled with one who already loved us, one with whom, due to sin, we had become enemies. The apostle will show whether or not I speak the truth. He says, "God shows his love toward us because, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." God felt love for us even when, behaving as his enemies, we committed sin. And yet with all truth it was said of him, "Lord, you detest all who do evil." Therefore, in a way both wonderful and divine, he loved us even when he hated us. He hated that in us that he did not make, but since our iniquity had not completely destroyed his work, he knew how to hate in each of us what was our own work and at the same time to love what was his work. And this can be applied to everything else, given that this was said to him in all truth, "You despise nothing that you have created." If in fact he had hated something he would not have willed it, nor could something exist that the Almighty had not called into existence"and he would not have called it if, in the thing he hates, there were not at least something that he could love. Rightly he hates and condemns evil, because it is contrary to the principle of how he does things. Nevertheless, even in what is contaminated by evil, he loves either the love with which he heals it or his judgment with which he condemns it. Therefore God hates nothing that he has created, since as the author of nature, and not of sin, he hates only the evil that he did not create. And he is moreover the author of the good that he draws from evil, whether healing it by his mercy or making it serve his secret plans. Granted therefore that God hates nothing of what he has made, who can speak adequately of the love that he feels for the members of his Only-Begotten? And, above all, who can speak worthily of the love that he bears for his Only-Begotten, in whom all things visible and invisible were made, things that he loves in a way that corresponds perfectly to the place each one occupies in the plan of creation?
