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.
Read Chapter 11
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
We must try, with God"s help, to reconcile the truth of this text, "You despise nothing that you have made," with that other, "I loved Jacob and hated Esau." If, in fact, God hated Esau, because he was made as a vessel for common use, and the same potter made a vessel for noble use and another for common use, how can it be that "you despise nothing that you have created"? He in fact hates Esau, whom he himself made for common use. This difficulty is resolved bearing in mind that God is the creator of all creatures. Now, every one of God"s creatures is good, and every person is a creature"as a person, not as a sinner. God is therefore the creator of the body and the soul of the person. Neither of these two realities is evil, and God does not hate them, since he hates nothing that he has created. Now the soul is superior to the body. But God, author and creator of both, hates only sin in human beings. A person"s sin is disorder and perversion, that is, separation from the supreme Creator...
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 ...
The Lord is true and merciful, and he does not delight in the destruction of the living. What is the ruin of the living if not death? But the death of the living who live badly, who will perish in the second death, not that of the living who are righteous, that is, who seek God and are not subject to the second death but only to the first, which is a result of the sin of Adam with which they were born. If then God were the author of death, he should rejoice in the destruction of the living as though it were one of his good works, since it is written, "The Lord will rejoice in his works," and he made nothing out of hate, but everything that he made was very good, as it is written, "Since you love everything that exists, and you despise nothing that you have created. If you had hated something, you would not have created it." - "Hypomnesticon 1.1"
