2098 words, 10 minute read.
At first sight, this maxim may seem entirely unproblematic. Love the sinner – of course! Everyone is a sinner and everyone is another I, to be loved like God loves them and like I would want to be loved if I was them. Hate the sin – but certainly! Sin is a failure to love and therefore an obstacle to relating to God and to others. By sinning, I cut myself off from others and when others sin, they too isolate themselves and ultimately hurt themselves and others.
The difficulty comes when this principle is pulled out like a clobber verse – a statement to be used not for aligning oneself well, but for beating others over the head with it. More often that not it is dusted off and pulled out precisely when love or even just tolerance of someone whose life is deemed as objectionable is proposed. “Certainly we must love them!” they’d say. “It’s just that we need to make sure we are not misunderstood as endorsing their perverted lives”, after which the wielder of this phrase will add, in pectore of course, “which so contrast with my own righteousness.” For, “As the saying goes: love the sinner, hate the sin!”
I have recently had the pleasure of spending time with a group of consecrated persons, among whom there were various moments of sharing about how we each put the Gospel into practice. Seeing how others, whom I had not known previously, were striving to live for the good of others was a true gift and source of joy. On one such occasions I spoke about my close friendships with some gay couples and my appreciation for their love for each other and others around them. This was followed by two others speaking about their experiences and when the third person had shared theirs, they turned to me and proceeded to pull out the “love the sinner, hate the sin” maxim to make a cautionary point.
Were they right to address that point to me? While my first reaction was one both of disappointment and frustration, I soon thought that, yes, they were right to say that to me. They were, however, not right to not say it to everyone else, and to themselves too. It seemed to me that the problem was not that this admonition was directed at my conduct, but that my experience was singled out as meriting it. How about loving those who are jealous, angry, impatient, greedy, selfish? Who do not share their possessions with the poor, who don’t pay a fair wage, who use others for their own pleasure, who look down on others, who let the actions of others frustrate them and who allow disappointment to inhibit their love. Like me, for example … Love of sinners and hatred of sin is the right attitude so long as it doesn’t transform into a sieve by which some sins and the sinners who commit them are singled out while other sins and their perpetrators are considered to not merit this warning.
Like all one–liners, there tends to be more to them than they suggest at first sight, and knowing that the origin of this one is St Augustine, I became curious about the context in which this idea arose and the spirit in which it was pronounced.
To get a better sense of this, we have to go back to 423 AD when Augustine wrote a letter of admonition to the nuns in the monastery in which his sister previously served as prioress, where the nuns then rebelled against her successor. The letter is a pretty strong telling-off of the nuns who have gotten themselves into a bit of a twist about food, clothing, male attention, comfort and privilege, and who have turned against each other and their new prioress in the process. Augustine proceeds with setting out rules for them, in the context of which he adds that a certain rule is to be applied “with due love for the persons and hatred of the sin.”
But, let’s proceed step by step to get a better sense of the spirit in which Augustine added the clause, and let’s also take a closer look at how it differs from the variant popularly attributed to him today.
To begin with, Augustine’s focus is mercy and charity, not punishment, as is explicit from the opening line of the letter:
“As severity is ready to punish the faults which it may discover, so charity is reluctant to discover the faults which it must punish. This was the reason of my not acceding to your request for a visit from me, at a time when, if I had come, I must have come not to rejoice in your harmony, but to add more vehemence to your strife.”
Reading these sentences gave me a great sense of joy as they make plain Augustine’s love for the nuns and his desire to bring them back to a harmonious life rather than amplify their discord. In the second paragraph he returns to his decision not to visit and presents it as mirroring a choice that St. Paul made with regard to the Christians of Corinth. To my mind this both emphasizes the importance he placed on conducting himself in a maximally charitable way and on placing Scripture at the basis of his actions:
“The apostle, writing to the Corinthians, says: “Moreover, I call God for a record upon my soul, that to spare you I came not as yet to Corinth. Not for that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your joy.” 2 Corinthians 1:23 I also say the same to you; to spare you I have not come to you.”
Augustine then proceeds to set the scene for his rules by first pointing to the irrationality of the nuns’ rebellion against the prioress, who has a stellar track record both as his younger sister Perpetua’s massistant and then as her successor. Her governance has both been long-lasting and fruitful and the idea of suddenly demanding her resignation, which happens to coincide with the arrival of a new prior whom the nuns “love in Christ” and who is himself minded to leave on account of their rebellion. Augustine wraps up his setting out of the background with a rather sharp rebuke:
May God therefore calm and compose your minds: let not the work of the devil prevail in you, but may the peace of Christ gain the victory in your hearts; and do not rush headlong to death, either through vexation of spirit, because what you desire is refused, or through shame, because of having desired what you ought not to have desired, but rather by repentance resume the conscientious discharge of duty; and imitate not the repentance of Judas the traitor, but the tears of Peter the shepherd.
Yikes! Be like Peter, not like Judas.
Then follow several paragraphs that all respond to issues arising from the fact that some nuns came from wealthy families while others entered the monastery from poverty and that argue for need to be the basis of justice, not equality in how the nuns live the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience. He is critical both of laxity and of excessive zeal and keeps bringing all rules to a life of the Gospel and of charity. An example of admonition to the nuns of wealthy origin here is: “what avails it to lavish money on the poor, and become poor oneself, if the unhappy soul is rendered more proud by despising riches than it had been by possessing them?”
Coming back to the passage in question, it appears in the midst of rules on how to dress and deal with inappropriate attention from both men and women:
In walking, in standing, in deportment, and in all your movements let nothing be done which might attract the improper desires of any one, but rather let all be in keeping with your sacred character. Though a passing glance be directed towards any man, let your eyes look fixedly at none; for when you are walking you are not forbidden to see men, but you must neither let your desires go out to them, nor wish to be the objects of desire on their part.
Augustine then turns from those in danger of breaking their vows of chastity to their fellow sisters, who have a duty to help them, along the lines of the advice Jesus himself gives in Matthew 16, where a sequence of widening reprimand is prescribed from starting one on one, via involving a witness to bringing the issue to the whole community. Augustine again roots his advice in Scripture and fills it with compassion:
And if you perceive in any one of your number this frowardness of eye, warn her at once, so that the evil which has begun may not go on, but be checked immediately. But if, after this admonition, you see her repeat the offense, or do the same thing on any other subsequent day, whoever may have had the opportunity of seeing this must now report her as one who has been wounded and requires to be healed, but not without pointing her out to another, and perhaps a third sister, so that she may be convicted by the testimony of two or three witnesses (Matthew 18:16), and may be reprimanded with necessary severity. And do not think that in thus informing upon one another you are guilty of malevolence. For the truth rather is, that you are not guiltless if by keeping silence you allow sisters to perish, whom you may correct by giving information of their faults. For if your sister had a wound on her person which she wished to conceal through fear of the surgeon’s lance, would it not be cruel if you kept silence about it, and true compassion if you made it known? How much more, then, are you bound to make known her sin, that she may not suffer more fatally from a neglected spiritual wound.
Next we arrive at the key passage:
Moreover, what I have now said in regard to abstaining from wanton looks should be carefully observed, with due love for the persons and hatred of the sin, in observing, forbidding, reporting, proving, and punishing of all other faults.
Notice how it speaks about persons in the plural rather than about a person and how it, crucially!, does not brand those persons as sinners. This is also clear in the original Latin text: cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum. Augustine makes this call for love about the community in which sin is beginning to spread and where its members need to compassionately be helped back to a life of charity. Love here is due to the whole wounded community. Sin then is to be rejected (hated) by all, since it is an impediment to the community living its vows, directed at living the Gospel. Important is also the admonition that the process of communitarian correction applies to all faults (sins) and not only to those regarding chastity.
I also find Augustine’s instructions at the end of the letter, addressed to the prioress, particularly illuminating as to the spirit in which the community is to conduct itself and have authority exercised:
But let [the prioress] count herself happy not in exercising the power which rules, but in practising the love which serves. In honour in the sight of men let her be raised above you, but in fear in the sight of God let her be as it were beneath your feet. Let her show herself before all a “pattern of good works.” (Titus 2:7) Let her “warn the unruly, comfort the feeble-minded, support the weak, be patient toward all.” (1 Thessalonians 5:14) Let her cheerfully observe and cautiously impose rules. And, though both are necessary, let her be more anxious to be loved than to be feared by you; always reflecting that for you she must give account to God. For this reason yield obedience to her out of compassion not for yourselves only but also for her, because, as she occupies a higher position among you, her danger is proportionately greater than your own.
Overall it seems to me that Augustine’s advice is to treat people with love, care and compassion, while rejecting sin and to do so within the communities that we are members of, rather than by separating ourselves from others, branding them as sinners and humble-bragging about loving them in spite of their flaws.
eyebeleave 