Platitude or Command?

What this page is asking

The author of this site set down a thesis to be tested: “Mocking ‘People should forgive,’ ‘You shall love your neighbor,’ and ‘You shall love your enemies’ as platitudes, on the basis of Proverbs 15:2, is out of step with Scripture and with the historic Church, which have always treated these words as central commands of Christ.”

The material comes from a sermon he heard in a modern evangelical church. He has given it from memory, as a paraphrase, and attributes it to no one. This page names no preacher and no church, and no one should be guessed.

He put the question in a form that can be checked: these are themes central to Christianity, and two of them are word-for-word commands of Jesus. Does Proverbs 15:2 support treating them as foolish when spoken plainly? How did the historic Church handle these commands? Did it subject them to “secondary analysis,” and if so, what kind?

He also set the scope. The page stays with one question: whether these commands may be mocked as platitudes, and how Scripture and the historic Church treated them. It does not attempt a full theology of forgiveness; whether forgiveness always requires repentance, for example, is left open. It does not judge the preacher’s motives. And it takes seriously the possibility that the preacher was aiming at a real misuse of these words, and weighs that possibility fairly.

Three ways of handling the words, labelled so they can be told apart

The page compares three ways a church can handle “love your enemies,” “love your neighbour” and “forgive.” They are given letters so that it can refer to them briefly.

The page holds Position C, and agrees with the preacher in rejecting Position S. The question is whether Position M is a legitimate way to reject S, or a different thing altogether: whether one can oppose the slogan by mocking the command.

What both sides agree on

So the disagreement is not about whether the words can be misused, or whether a preacher may warn against misuse. It is about what is placed in the dock: the careless use of Christ’s words, or the words themselves.

What the page concludes, stated up front

The prompt behind this page

Everything below was produced by giving the following brief to a frontier language model with web search, which assembled and checked the sources. It is published so you can run it yourself, change it, sharpen it, or reverse it and see what comes back. Three experiments are worth more than reading this page. First, reverse it: ask for the strongest case that a preacher should ridicule “love your enemies” when it is used as a slogan, and see whether the case survives without turning on the command itself. Second, narrow it: give the model one real misuse you have witnessed, and ask how a preacher in the tradition of Chrysostom or Gregory the Great would have corrected it. Third, widen it: ask the same question of another command of Christ that is often said lightly, such as “Judge not” or “Take no thought for the morrow,” and see whether the same rules apply.

Write a detailed, source-first, interactive article, in British
English, for a general reader who is willing to work. Quote Scripture
from the Authorised Version. Date and attribute every other
quotation: give the work, the edition or translation, and the
section. Verify every quotation against a reliable published source;
where a quotation cannot be verified, cut it, or say that it is
given at second hand. Do not invent quotes. Do not take verses out
of context.

  WORKING TITLE. Platitude or command? When the pulpit mocks "Love
  your enemies". (Propose a title that will resonate with readers.)

  THESIS TO TEST. Mocking "People should forgive," "You shall love
  your neighbor," and "You shall love your enemies" as platitudes,
  on the basis of Proverbs 15:2, is out of step with Scripture and
  with the historic Church, which have always treated these words as
  central commands of Christ.

  SOURCE OF THE MATERIAL. The remarks were heard from the pulpit of
  a modern evangelical church. They are not attributed to any one
  preacher, and no names should be supplied or guessed. They are
  paraphrased from memory.

  WHAT WAS SAID. The preacher mocked three statements: "People
  should forgive." "You shall love your neighbor." "You shall love
  your enemies." The text given was Proverbs 15:2: "The tongue of
  the wise commends knowledge, but the mouths of fools pour out
  folly." The point being made was that it is foolish to say these
  things without secondary analysis, and that a wise person does
  not repeat them as slogans.

  QUESTION TO TEST. These are themes central to Christianity, and
  two of them are word-for-word commands of Jesus. Does Proverbs
  15:2 support treating them as foolish when spoken plainly? How did
  the historic Church handle these commands? Did it subject them to
  "secondary analysis," and if so, what kind?

  SCOPE. Stay with this one question: whether these commands may be
  mocked as platitudes, and how Scripture and the historic Church
  treated them. Do not attempt a full theology of forgiveness (for
  example, whether forgiveness always requires repentance). Do not
  judge the preacher's motives. It is possible the preacher was
  aiming at a real misuse of these words, and that possibility
  should be weighed fairly.

  POINTS TO TEST.
   1. These are Christ's own words, not folk sayings: Matthew 5:44;
      Luke 6:27-36; Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:39-40; Luke 6:37;
      Matthew 6:14-15; Mark 11:25; Romans 13:8-10; Galatians 5:14;
      James 2:8. Does a saying stop being a command of Christ
      because people repeat it often?
   2. What Proverbs 15:2 actually says (in Hebrew, the tongue of the
      wise "makes knowledge good"), read in its own setting (15:1,
      15:4, 15:23). Is it about how one speaks, or about which
      truths are foolish? Connect to the separate thesis on
      eisegesis.
   3. Proverbs itself commands love of enemies: 25:21-22 (quoted in
      Romans 12:20); 10:12; 19:11; 24:17; 20:22. How can the same
      book be used to dismiss what it plainly teaches?
   4. Jesus refused "secondary analysis" that shrinks the command:
      the lawyer "desiring to justify himself" (Luke 10:29) and the
      Good Samaritan; Peter's "seven times" and the unforgiving
      servant (Matthew 18:21-35). Who, in the Gospels, asks for
      qualifications, and how does Jesus respond?
   5. "You have heard that it was said ... but I say to you"
      (Matthew 5:43-44). A tradition had added "and hate your
      enemy." Does modern "secondary analysis" risk adding
      qualifications that Christ removed?
   6. The early Church was known for these words: Didache 1.3;
      Justin Martyr, First Apology 14-15; Tertullian, To Scapula 1;
      Polycarp, To the Philippians 12.
   7. Love as the rule for reading Scripture: Augustine, On
      Christian Doctrine 1.36.40; Homilies on 1 John 7.8.
   8. The historic Church analysed these commands in order to obey
      them, not to dismiss them: Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 18;
      Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II q.25 a.8-9; Calvin, Institutes
      3.7.6; Luther, Large Catechism on the Fifth Petition, and
      Temporal Authority (1523) with Romans 13:1-4. The difference
      between "how do I obey this?" and "should I take this
      seriously at all?"
   9. Forgiveness tested at the cost of life: Luke 23:34; Acts 7:60;
      the martyrs of the early Church.
  10. "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive" (Matthew 6:12);
      Ephesians 4:32; Colossians 3:13; 1 John 4:20. Can a
      congregation that hears these commands mocked on Sunday pray
      the Lord's Prayer sincerely?
  11. Is mockery the right tone? Proverbs 15; Ephesians 4:29 and
      4:15. Even if the teacher had a point about misuse, does
      ridiculing the commands themselves teach something different?
      Connect to the separate thesis on the self-important preacher.
  12. The strongest case for the other side: Proverbs 26:9 and
      26:7; 25:20; Job's friends (Job 42:7); James 2:15-16; 1 John
      3:18; "just forgive" used to silence victims of abuse, protect
      wrongdoers and skip repentance; Luke 17:3-4; Matthew 18:15-17;
      Bonhoeffer on "cheap grace"; forgiveness is not reconciliation,
      trust, or the removal of legal consequences. Is the problem the
      commands, or the careless way they are used?
  13. What the narrow point does and does not prove. Proverbs 15:2
      can support a warning against quoting these words foolishly.
      It cannot support the claim that the commands themselves are
      foolish. Let readers decide whether what they heard was a
      warning against misusing Christ's words or a mockery of them.

OBJECTIONS. Answer objections inside the argument, where each one
arises, at full strength, with the case for the other side given
its own Part. Where the evidence corrects or qualifies the brief,
say so in a marked box.

NAMING. No preacher or church named or hinted at; the remarks are
the author's paraphrase from memory and must be presented that way.
No living individual named as an example. Every modern remark
composed by the page labelled as composed. Deceased writers quoted
from dated, published works.

INTERACTIVES. A priors quiz. Sayings sorted into Scripture and folk
wisdom. Proverbs 15 tapped verse by verse, with 15:2 in Hebrew.
Lines assigned to Proverbs or the New Testament. The people who
asked Jesus for qualifications, and his answers. A machine that adds
qualifications to "Love your enemies" and sorts those that explain
from those that shrink. The wise and foolish builders. Early
Christian writers identified by their words. Readings tested by
Augustine's rule. Chrysostom's ladder of steps. Forgiveness at
rising cost. One Sunday's order of service. Ways of making the
preacher's point, from warning to mockery. Misuses sorted from
legitimate uses. An objection drill the reader answers first. Claims
sorted by whether the argument proves them. A test for any sermon
that criticises a saying, and the reader's own verdict.

OUTPUT: a single self-contained interactive HTML page, professional
and readable, light theme by default with a dark switch, stating
the question at the top, publishing this prompt in full, repeating
the key points in prominent boxes for readers who skim, explaining
every technical term in a box where it is used, and giving the
reader something to do in every major section. Also produce a
plain-English quick version of about fifteen minutes with three
short exercises, and a Simple English version with no exercises.

The page you are reading is the output of that brief after the sources were checked. The brief quoted several passages from modern versions; the page gives them from the Authorised Version, as it does everywhere on this site. Eight things qualified the brief. They are listed here, and all but the second are marked again where they arise.

What do you currently think?

Ten questions. Each has a determinate answer, and you can check every one yourself in the texts listed in Part XVI. Answer them before reading and lock them in. They come back in Part XV with the sources beside them.

What follows

Whose words are these?

Start with the three sentences themselves, and ask where each comes from. A platitude is usually a folk saying: nobody’s in particular, true enough, and worn smooth. If these three were sayings of that kind, mocking them as slogans would be one thing. They are not.

The apostles treat the second of these as the summary of the whole moral law. Paul: “Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law … love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:8, 10). And again: “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Galatians 5:14). James calls it “the royal law” (James 2:8). The word “hang” in Matthew 22:40 is a strong one: the Law and the Prophets are suspended from these two commandments as from a peg. Take the peg away and nothing stays up.

Does repetition demote a command?

The author put the question this way: does a saying stop being a command of Christ because people repeat it often? It is worth answering slowly, because the honest answer has two parts.

The first part is simple. A command does not lose its authority by being repeated. “Thou shalt not steal” is said very often, and nobody thinks it has become a platitude. If anything, the commands Jesus singled out as greatest are the ones a church should repeat most.

The second part is more interesting. Words of this kind can sound like platitudes, and the reason is instructive. They sound easy only to people who are not, at that moment, trying to obey them. C. S. Lewis made exactly this point in a wartime broadcast.

Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive … And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger.

… in Christian morals “thy neighbour” includes “thy enemy,” and so we come up against this terrible duty of forgiving our enemies.

C. S. Lewis, “Forgiveness,” first published in Christian Behaviour (1943); Mere Christianity (1952), Book III, chapter 7.

“This terrible duty” is the opposite of a platitude. A platitude costs nothing to say and nothing to hear. Lewis’s point is that “forgive your enemies” costs nothing only while it is abstract; the moment there is someone in particular to forgive, it becomes the hardest thing in the Christian life. A church that hears these words as easy has not mistaken a platitude for a command. It has heard a command without yet trying to keep it.

Søren Kierkegaard made a related point in Works of Love (1847), in a chapter built on the two words “You shall”: what distinguishes Christian love from the love poets praise is that it is commanded. Love that depends on feeling comes and goes; love that is a duty does not wait to be felt. On that reading the “shall” is the whole point, and it is the very word that turns a sentiment into something no one can say lightly.

Try it: Scripture or folk wisdom?

Ten sayings, all heard in churches. Which are in Scripture, and which are not?

0 of 10 sorted

What Proverbs 15:2 says

The sermon’s text was Proverbs 15:2. In the Authorised Version it reads:

The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright: but the mouth of fools poureth out foolishness.

Proverbs 15:2. The brief quoted a modern version: “The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouths of fools pour out folly.”

Word by word

The verse is eight words in Hebrew, four on each side of the contrast. Read right to left, as Hebrew is written.

Transliterations are simplified. The two highlighted words are the verbs.

Look at what the verse contrasts. On one side, the wise tongue does something good with knowledge. On the other, the fool’s mouth pours out folly. Two things differ: what is said (knowledge, or folly) and how (handled well, or gushed). The verse does not say that knowledge becomes folly when it is said plainly, or that true sayings are foolish because foolish people also say them. Its subject is what each mouth produces.

The second verb is worth noticing. It is the word for water bubbling up from a spring. Proverbs uses it of the wicked a few verses later: “the mouth of the wicked poureth out evil things” (15:28). But it also uses the same root of wisdom: “the wellspring of wisdom as a flowing brook” (18:4). So pouring out is not itself the fault. Wisdom flows too. The fault in 15:2 is that what the fool pours out is folly.

That matters for the sermon. To use this verse against “love your enemies,” one has to treat “love your enemies” as folly: as what flows from the fool’s mouth. If it is knowledge instead, the verse asks only that the wise say it well. That is a good sermon. It is not the one reported.

Try it: read the verse in its own chapter

Proverbs 15 is largely about speech. Tap each verse to see what it adds. Together they describe the wise tongue the sermon appealed to.

That does not make Proverbs humourless. Its portrait of the sluggard is comic: “The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way” (26:13); “As the door turneth upon his hinges, so doth the slothful upon his bed” (26:14). But its humour is aimed at folly, laziness and pride. Nowhere does Proverbs ridicule its own instruction, and nowhere does it ridicule mercy.

Proverbs commands it too

The sermon drew its text from Proverbs. It is worth asking what Proverbs itself says about enemies, offences and forgiveness, because the book is not silent. It says a great deal, and almost all of it is what the sermon mocked.

The New Testament treats these as part of its own teaching. Paul quotes Proverbs 25:21–22 directly, at the climax of a passage that reads like a commentary on the Sermon on the Mount: “Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not … Recompense to no man evil for evil … Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:14, 17, 20–21). Peter echoes 10:12: “charity shall cover the multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). Behind them both stands the Law: “If thou meet thine enemy’s ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again” (Exodus 23:4).

The historic Church read Proverbs the same way. When Thomas Aquinas asked what showing love to an enemy requires, the text he cited was Proverbs 25:21: “If thy enemy be hungry, give him to eat; if he thirst, give him … drink” (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 25, a. 9). And when Augustine met the puzzling “coals of fire,” which might be read as a clever way of hurting an enemy, he refused that reading on the ground of love.

Do not doubt, then, that the expression is figurative; and, while it is possible to interpret it in two ways, one pointing to the doing of an injury, the other to a display of superiority, let charity on the contrary call you back to benevolence, and interpret the coals of fire as the burning groans of penitence by which a man’s pride is cured who bewails that he has been the enemy of one who came to his assistance in distress.

Augustine, On Christian Doctrine III.16.24 (begun c. 396, completed 426/7); trans. J. F. Shaw, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 2 (1887).

Try it: Proverbs, or the New Testament?

Ten lines about enemies, offences and forgiveness. Five come from Proverbs and five from the New Testament. Which is which?

0 of 10 sorted

Who asks for a qualification?

The sermon’s point was that these words should not be said without secondary analysis. The Gospels record several occasions on which someone asked Jesus for exactly that: a definition, a limit, a number. It is worth looking at who asked, and what they were given.

The lawyer

A lawyer asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus asks him what the Law says, and he answers well, with the two great commandments. “Thou hast answered right,” says Jesus: “this do, and thou shalt live” (Luke 10:28). Then comes the request for analysis: “But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?” (10:29). Luke tells us the motive. The question was a request for a boundary: whom, exactly, am I obliged to love, so that I may know whom I am not?

Jesus answers with a story in which the neighbour is a Samaritan, a member of a people with whom, as John puts it, “the Jews have no dealings” (John 4:9). And he turns the question round. The lawyer asked, “Who is my neighbour?” Jesus asks, “Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?” (10:36). The lawyer wanted to know whom he must love. Jesus tells him to become a neighbour to anyone in need. “Go, and do thou likewise” (10:37).

Peter

Peter’s question was generous by any ordinary standard: “Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?” Jesus’s answer: “I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:21–22).

Then the parable. A servant owes his king ten thousand talents, an unpayable sum, and is forgiven it all. He goes out and throttles a fellow servant who owes him a hundred pence. The king hands him over. “So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses” (18:35). Peter asked for a limit, and was given a story with no limit in it.

Try it: who asked, and what were they given?

Five people who asked Jesus for a qualification, a limit or a permission. Choose how you think he answered.

The pattern is consistent. Jesus does not refuse questions. When a lawyer asks which commandment is greatest, he answers directly (Matthew 22:36–40). He refuses only one kind of analysis: the kind whose aim is to find the edge of the command, so as to stand just outside it. Every time it is offered, he answers with a wider command than the one the questioner started with.

“Ye have heard that it hath been said”

In Matthew 5:43 Jesus quotes something his hearers had been taught: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.” The first half is Leviticus 19:18. The second half is not in the Law at all.

The Law in fact points the other way. Leviticus 19:18 begins: “Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” A few verses later it extends the same love to the foreigner: “the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself” (19:34). Exodus requires a man to return his enemy’s straying ox and to help with the ass “of him that hateth thee lying under his burden” (23:4–5). Proverbs, as Part III showed, says to feed him.

So the tradition had done something quite natural. It had taken a command and added a clause that marked its limit. Neighbours, yes; enemies, no. The addition was so reasonable that it was taught as though it belonged to the text. Jesus removes it: “But I say unto you, Love your enemies.” And he gives his reason, which is the character of God: “That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?” (5:45–46).

The author asked whether modern “secondary analysis” risks doing what that tradition did: adding qualifications that Christ removed. The honest answer is that it depends on the qualification. Some qualifications explain how to obey a command. Others shrink it. They can be told apart by a single question: does this qualification reduce what love requires of me toward the person who has wronged me?

Try it: the gloss machine

Start with the command as Jesus gave it. Add qualifications by pressing them. Each is marked as a distinction (it explains how to obey), a reduction (it shrinks the command), or it depends. The meter shows how much of what the command asks is still standing.

Run through the machine and a pattern appears. The distinctions are all about what forgiveness and love are not: they are not trust, not silence about wrong, not the abolition of the magistrate, not a feeling one must manufacture. Every one of them leaves the full weight of the command on the person who has been wronged: no revenge, no hatred, good will, prayer, and help when help is needed. The reductions are all about who is excluded or what is no longer required: the enemy outside the fellowship, the enemy who has not earned it, the enemy whom one may love “in one’s heart” without lifting a finger. The tradition’s “hate thine enemy” is the first and simplest reduction.

The sermon’s own qualification, “not without secondary analysis,” falls in the middle. If the analysis is the kind that asks how far the command reaches and how to keep it, it is a distinction, and the historic Church practised it constantly (Part IX). If it is the kind that treats the plain command as foolish until the wise have finished with it, it is a reduction, and the tradition Jesus corrected practised that.

Jesus’ own definition of the fool

The sermon reported on this page used Proverbs to define the fool: the man who says “love your enemies” plainly, without analysis. It is worth setting beside that the definition Jesus gave, because he gave one, and he gave it about these very words.

“Love your enemies” is in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:44). So is “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (6:12), and “if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (6:15). The Sermon ends with two builders.

Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

Matthew 7:24–27. Luke places the same parable directly after “Love your enemies” and “Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven,” and introduces it: “And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46).

“These sayings of mine” are the sayings of the Sermon, and “love your enemies” is among them. In Jesus’ own terms, then, wisdom and folly are not divided by how carefully the sayings are analysed. They are divided by whether the sayings are done. James draws the same line: “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22).

That gives the preacher’s warning its proper target. A person who says “people should forgive” about other people’s injuries, and never forgives his own, is a builder on sand. So is a person who can explain the command and has not spoken to his brother in years. The folly in both is not in the sentence. It is in the distance between the sentence and the life.

Try it: which builder?

Six people, all composed by this page. Using Jesus’ own definition, which house is each one building?

0 of 6 sorted

The early Church and these words

If these words were platitudes, the early Church would have been the first to find them embarrassing. It was a small, despised and periodically persecuted community, and it needed to explain itself to a hostile world. What it chose to put first, again and again, was this.

The first lesson

The Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, is a short manual of Christian life, usually dated to the late first or early second century. It begins: “There are two ways, one of life and one of death.” The way of life is the two great commandments, love of God and love of neighbour. And the very next words, the first instruction a new Christian received, are these:

Bless those who curse you, and pray for your enemies, and fast for those who persecute you. For what reward is there, if you love those who love you? Do not also the Gentiles do the same? But love those who hate you, and you shall not have an enemy.

The Didache 1.3 (late first or early second century); trans. M. B. Riddle, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7 (1886).

“And you shall not have an enemy” is the Didache’s own addition, and it is not naive. It does not say that no one will hate you. It says that if you love those who hate you, you will not be anyone’s enemy, whatever they are to you.

What they told the emperors

The apologists of the second century wrote to emperors and governors to explain who Christians were. Over and over, they offered the love command as the evidence.

… we who hated and destroyed one another, and on account of their different manners would not live with men of a different tribe, now, since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them, and pray for our enemies …

Justin Martyr, First Apology 14 (c. 155), addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius; ANF, vol. 1. In chapter 15 Justin quotes the sayings themselves: “But I say unto you, Pray for your enemies, and love them that hate you, and bless them that curse you, and pray for them that despitefully use you.”

But among us you will find uneducated persons, and artisans, and old women, who, if they are unable in words to prove the benefit of our doctrine, yet by their deeds exhibit the benefit arising from their persuasion of its truth: they do not rehearse speeches, but exhibit good works; when struck, they do not strike again; when robbed, they do not go to law; they give to those that ask of them, and love their neighbours as themselves.

Athenagoras of Athens, A Plea for the Christians 11 (c. 177), addressed to the Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus; trans. B. P. Pratten, ANF, vol. 2 (1885).

Athenagoras’s passage is the most striking answer to the sermon on this page. The people he holds up as the Church’s proof are precisely those who could not do secondary analysis: the uneducated, the tradesmen, the old women, who “are unable in words to prove the benefit of our doctrine.” They did not rehearse speeches. They loved their neighbours as themselves, and did not strike back. The early Church did not think the plain words needed a wise man to make them respectable. It thought the plain people who kept them were its best argument.

For our religion commands us to love even our enemies, and to pray for those who persecute us, aiming at a perfection all its own, and seeking in its disciples something of a higher type than the commonplace goodness of the world. For all love those who love them; it is peculiar to Christians alone to love those that hate them.

Tertullian, To Scapula 1 (c. 212), addressed to the proconsul of Africa during a persecution; trans. S. Thelwall, ANF, vol. 3 (1885).

Tertullian’s contrast is the exact opposite of the sermon’s. He sets the command to love enemies against “the commonplace goodness of the world.” Loving those who love you is the platitude; loving those who hate you is what marks a Christian out.

Try it: who said it, and to whom?

Six early Christian voices, all on loving enemies. Can you tell them apart?

Love as the rule for reading

Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine is the most influential handbook on reading the Bible the Western Church produced. Its first book ends with a rule. The whole of Scripture, he argues, aims at love of God and love of neighbour. So love is not only a subject the Bible teaches; it is the test by which any reading of the Bible is to be judged.

Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.

Augustine, On Christian Doctrine I.36.40; trans. J. F. Shaw, NPNF, First Series, vol. 2 (1887).

He applies the rule himself, as Part III showed: faced with the “coals of fire” of Proverbs 25:22, he will not let it be read as a way to hurt or humble an enemy, because “charity” must “call you back to benevolence.” He goes further, and says that a reader who arrives at love by a mistaken reading of a particular text is less badly wrong than one who reads accurately and arrives at something else; he should still be corrected, but he has not missed the point of Scripture.

For Augustine, then, the love command is the measure, not the thing measured. A proverb is read in the light of the love of neighbour. The love of neighbour is not read in the light of a proverb, and certainly not cast into doubt by one. To take Proverbs 15:2 and use it to make “love your enemies” sound foolish is to run Augustine’s rule backwards.

Augustine also left the Church the phrase that most Christians use when they want to distinguish a person from what the person has done. It comes from a letter of about 423 setting out a rule of life for a community of women. Discipline, he says, must be carried out “with due love for the persons and hatred of the sin, in observing, forbidding, reporting, proving, and punishing of all other faults” (Letter 211.11; trans. J. G. Cunningham, NPNF, First Series, vol. 1, 1886). Notice the list. Love for the person does not exclude reporting, proving or punishing. It governs how they are done. That is secondary analysis of the kind this page is looking for: it says what love does with wrongdoing, and never says love is optional.

Try it: does this reading build up love?

Eight readings of Scripture. Apply Augustine’s rule to each.

0 of 8 sorted

Analysed in order to obey

The author asked whether the historic Church subjected these commands to secondary analysis. It did, constantly and in detail. The question is what kind. This Part looks at five teachers from five centuries and asks of each: what did his analysis set out to discover?

Chrysostom’s ladder

John Chrysostom, preaching on Matthew 5 at Antioch around 390, did not treat “love your enemies” as a single instruction. He broke it into steps, starting from the bottom, and showed how far up the command reaches.

Seest thou how many steps He hath ascended, and how He hath set us on the very summit of virtue? … A first step is, not to begin with injustice: a second, after he hath begun, to vindicate one’s self by equal retaliation; a third, not to do unto him that is vexing us the same that one hath suffered, but to be quiet …

John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 18 (c. 390); NPNF, First Series, vol. 10 (1888).

Aquinas’s three senses

Thomas Aquinas asked the question most precisely: is love of enemies necessary for salvation? His answer distinguishes three things the phrase could mean.

Love of one’s enemies may be understood in three ways. First, as though we were to love our enemies as such: this is perverse, and contrary to charity, since it implies love of that which is evil in another. Secondly love of one’s enemies may mean that we love them as to their nature, but in general: and in this sense charity requires that we should love our enemies … Thirdly, love of one’s enemies may be considered as specially directed to them … Charity does not require this absolutely … Nevertheless charity does require this, in respect of our being prepared in mind, namely, that we should be ready to love our enemies individually, if the necessity were to occur.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 25, a. 8 (c. 1271–72); trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (2nd ed., 1920).

Calvin and the image of God

John Calvin faced the obvious objection: some people do not deserve love. His answer moved the question from the enemy’s merit to something the enemy cannot lose.

But Scripture subjoins a most excellent reason, when it tells us that we are not to look to what men in themselves deserve, but to attend to the image of God, which exists in all, and to which we owe all honour and love. … In this way only we attain to what is not to say difficult but altogether against nature, to love those that hate us, render good for evil, and blessing for cursing, remembering that we are not to reflect on the wickedness of men, but look to the image of God in them, an image which, covering and obliterating their faults, should by its beauty and dignity allure us to love and embrace them.

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion III.7.6 (1559); trans. Henry Beveridge (1845).

“Not to say difficult but altogether against nature”: Calvin knew exactly how hard the command is. His analysis does not soften it. It gives a reason strong enough to carry it.

Luther: the prayer and the sword

Martin Luther tied the command to forgive directly to the Lord’s Prayer, and refused to let it float free of the believer’s own need of forgiveness.

For just as we daily sin much against God and yet He forgives everything through grace, so we, too, must ever forgive our neighbor who does us injury, violence, and wrong, shows malice toward us, etc. If, therefore you do not forgive, then do not think that God forgives you; but if you forgive, you have this consolation and assurance, that you are forgiven in heaven, not on account of your forgiving … but in order that He may set this up for our confirmation and assurance for a sign alongside of the promise …

Martin Luther, Large Catechism (1529), Part III, the Fifth Petition; trans. F. Bente and W. H. T. Dau, Triglot Concordia (1921).

But Luther was also the theologian who drew the sharpest line between what a Christian suffers for himself and what he may permit to be done to others. Writing on the authority of rulers in 1523, with Romans 13 open before him, he put it this way:

In what concerns you and yours, you govern yourself by the gospel and suffer injustice toward yourself as a true Christian; in what concerns the person or property of others, you govern yourself according to love and tolerate no injustice toward your neighbor.

Martin Luther, Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (1523), Part One; trans. J. J. Schindel, rev. W. I. Brandt, Luther’s Works, vol. 45 (1962).

This is the most important piece of secondary analysis on the page, because it answers the hardest misuse of “just forgive.” For Luther, the same love that forbids me to avenge myself forbids me to stand by while my neighbour is wronged. Forgiveness of my own injury does not mean tolerating injury to another. That distinction protects victims. It is drawn from the love command, not against it.

Gregory: the same word, fitted to the hearer

Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Rule, written about 590 and read by bishops for a thousand years, is a long manual of exactly what the sermon asked for: how to say true things wisely. Its third book begins with the principle:

… one and the same exhortation does not suit all, inasmuch as neither are all bound together by similarity of character. For the things that profit some often hurt others … Therefore according to the quality of the hearers ought the discourse of teachers to be fashioned, so as to suit all and each for their several needs, and yet never deviate from the art of common edification.

Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule III, prologue (c. 590); trans. James Barmby, NPNF, Second Series, vol. 12 (1895).

Gregory would have agreed with the preacher that “forgive” said in the same way to a man nursing a grudge and to a woman being beaten is not wisdom. But his answer is to fit the word to the hearer, “and yet never deviate from the art of common edification.” He does not suggest that the word itself is the problem.

Try it: two kinds of analysis

Eight questions or remarks about “love your enemies.” Each is a kind of secondary analysis. Does it ask how to obey, or whether to take the command seriously?

0 of 8 sorted

At the cost of life

A platitude is a sentence that costs nothing. The surest test of whether “forgive your enemies” is one is to look at who has said it, and what it cost them at the time.

The Gospel of Luke records that Jesus, being crucified, prayed: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (23:34).

Stephen, the first Christian to die for his faith, prayed as he was stoned: “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge” (Acts 7:60). Among those watching was a young man named Saul, “consenting unto his death” (8:1), who would become the apostle Paul.

Hegesippus, writing about 180, records the death of James, the leader of the church in Jerusalem, around 62. Thrown from the temple and not yet dead, James “turned and knelt down and said, ‘I entreat thee, Lord God our Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’” (quoted in Eusebius, Church History II.23.16; trans. A. C. McGiffert, NPNF, Second Series, vol. 1, 1890). A priest standing by cried out: “Cease, what do ye? The just one prayeth for you.”

In 177, in Lyons and Vienne in Gaul, Christians were tortured and killed in the arena. The letter the survivors sent to the churches of Asia, preserved by Eusebius, describes how the martyrs behaved:

They defended all, but accused none. They absolved all, but bound none. And they prayed for those who had inflicted cruelties upon them, even as Stephen the perfect witness, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” But if he prayed for those who stoned him, how much more for the brethren!

The Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons (177), in Eusebius, Church History V.2.5; trans. A. C. McGiffert, NPNF, Second Series, vol. 1 (1890).

Try it: how much can forgiveness cost?

Move the slider from a small injury to the greatest. At each level, someone in Scripture or in the Church’s history forgave.

The fourth level comes from the last century. In 1947, in a church in Munich, Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Christian whose family had hidden Jews from the Nazis and whose sister had died at Ravensbrück, was approached after she had spoken about forgiveness. The man holding out his hand had been a guard at Ravensbrück. She described, twenty-five years later, what happened inside her: “And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart.” She prayed, “Jesus, help me!” and took his hand. “I forgive you, brother!” she cried. “With all my heart!” (Corrie ten Boom, “I’m Still Learning to Forgive,” Guideposts, November 1972). The title she gave her account is worth noticing. Even for her, it was not a sentence that could be said once and filed away.

“As we forgive”

There is one prayer that Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans, Reformed, Baptists, Pentecostals and independent evangelical churches all pray. It contains one petition with a condition attached, and it is this one. And when Jesus finishes teaching the prayer, the only line he stops to explain is this one: “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14–15).

The early Church prayed it constantly: the Didache tells Christians to say the prayer three times a day (8.3). The Book of Common Prayer adds, in its Litany, a petition prayed by English-speaking congregations for centuries: “That it may please thee to forgive our enemies, persecutors, and slanderers, and to turn their hearts; We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord” (The Litany, Book of Common Prayer, 1662). Luther, as Part IX showed, made the petition the place where the believer learns that forgiving and being forgiven belong together.

The apostles kept the link: “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:32). “Even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye” (Colossians 3:13). And John put it at its most blunt: “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 John 4:20). Jesus tied worship itself to it: “if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother” (Matthew 5:23–24).

Try it: one Sunday, one congregation

Below is an order of service, composed by this page from texts that many churches use. The sermon is placed where the author heard it. Tap each part to see what it asks of the people in the pews.

The author asked whether a congregation that hears these commands mocked on Sunday can pray the Lord’s Prayer sincerely. The fairest answer is that it can, if it understood the sermon as a warning against careless use, and many in the pews may have done so. The danger is subtler. Ridicule attaches to words, and the words of the sermon’s mockery are the words of the prayer’s condition. A hearer who has learned that “people should forgive” is something only a fool says plainly is then asked, a few minutes later, to say plainly: as we forgive. Either the prayer will feel naive, or the sermon will be quietly set aside. Neither is what a preacher would want.

Is mockery the right tone?

Proverbs 15 is largely about tone: “A soft answer turneth away wrath” (15:1), “A wholesome tongue is a tree of life” (15:4), “a word spoken in due season, how good is it!” (15:23). The New Testament says the same. Speech should “minister grace unto the hearers” (Ephesians 4:29). Truth should be spoken “in love” (4:15). “Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man” (Colossians 4:6). And teachers are warned twice over: “be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation” (James 3:1), and “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:19).

Does Scripture ever mock?

It does, and an honest page should say so. Elijah mocked the prophets of Baal: “Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked” (1 Kings 18:27; see Dossier 60). Isaiah ridiculed the man who burns half a log to cook his dinner and bows down to the other half (44:15–17). Jesus could be biting: “Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel” (Matthew 23:24). Paul used irony against his opponents at length (2 Corinthians 11).

But look at the targets. Scripture mocks idols, the pride of idolaters, and the hypocrisy of religious teachers who “say, and do not” (Matthew 23:3). It never mocks a command of God. When Jesus is sharpest, he is attacking exactly the people who used God’s words as a cover for not keeping them. If a preacher wants biblical precedent for ridicule here, it is available, and it points at a particular target: not “love your enemies,” but the man who says it and does not do it.

What a congregation hears

A sermon teaches by its tone as well as by its argument. A careful qualification, “not without secondary analysis,” is abstract and easily forgotten. Ridicule is vivid and easily remembered. So when three sentences are held up to mockery, the congregation is likely to remember that these sentences were mocked, long after it has forgotten why.

Consider who is sitting there. A man nursing a grudge against his brother hears that “people should forgive” is what fools say: permission. A woman who has forgiven someone at great cost hears that she was naive. A teenager deciding what Christianity is hears that its central commands are for simpler people than the preacher. None of them was the intended target. All of them were taught something.

There is also a quieter lesson in the posture. To mock plain words as foolish places the speaker above them: the wise man who sees what the simple cannot. That posture is a risk for every preacher, and earlier dossiers examined it: Nobody Else Is Worthy (Dossier 59) on whether the modern pulpit rewards self-importance, and Proud of Our Humility! (Dossier 35). This page draws no conclusion about the preacher’s motives. It notes only that Athenagoras’s old women (Part VII) were the Church’s proof precisely because they could not analyse, and did obey.

Try it: five ways to make the point

The preacher’s legitimate concern was that these words are said carelessly. Below are five ways of making that point. The first four are composed by this page; the fifth is the remark as reported. Move the slider and watch two things: how well each version addresses the misuse, and how much it weakens the command.

The two meters do not move together. The first version addresses the misuse most fully, because it names it: the grieving friend, the person in danger. As the versions move toward mockery, they name the misuse less and the words more. By the end, the misuse has disappeared and only the words are left to be laughed at. That is the difference between a warning and a mockery, and it is audible.

The case for the other side

The author asked that the strongest case for the other side be presented fairly. It is strong. These words can be, and have been, used badly, and Scripture itself says so. Here is the case, in five parts.

1. Proverbs knows that true sayings can do harm

“The legs of the lame are not equal: so is a parable in the mouth of fools” (26:7). “As a thorn goeth up into the hand of a drunkard, so is a parable in the mouth of fools” (26:9): the drunk waves the thorn about and hurts himself and others with it. And: “As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to an heavy heart” (25:20). Nitre is soda; vinegar poured on it fizzes and is spoiled. A true word, said at the wrong moment to a grieving person, is like that.

2. Job’s friends said true things

Much of what Job’s friends said was true in itself; Paul even quotes Eliphaz as Scripture: “He taketh the wise in their own craftiness” (1 Corinthians 3:19, from Job 5:13). Yet God’s verdict was: “ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath” (Job 42:7). True words, wrongly applied to a sufferer, were rebuked by God. (Their best moment was before they spoke: they “sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great,” 2:13. See Dossier 16.)

3. Words without deeds

“If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?” (James 2:15–16). “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18). “Love your neighbour,” said by someone who will not cross the road, is exactly what James mocks.

4. “Just forgive” has been used to silence the wronged

This is the most serious point, and it should be stated plainly. Words about forgiveness have been used to tell victims of abuse to stay silent, to send them back into danger, to protect wrongdoers from consequences, and to skip over repentance altogether. Scripture does not support any of it. Jesus attaches repentance to his own instruction: “If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him” (Luke 17:3). He gives a process for dealing with sin in the church, which begins with telling the brother his fault (Matthew 18:15–17). Paul says the ruler “beareth not the sword in vain” (Romans 13:4). And love “rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the Nazi regime in 1945, named the counterfeit:

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (Nachfolge, 1937), chapter 1; trans. R. H. Fuller (1948).

The author’s brief draws the distinctions that follow: forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation, or trust, or the removal of legal consequences. The historic Church drew them too, as Part IX showed: Augustine’s love for the person “in observing, forbidding, reporting, proving, and punishing”; Luther’s refusal to tolerate “injustice toward your neighbor.” Whether forgiveness always requires the wrongdoer’s repentance is a real question on which Christians differ, and this page leaves it open, as the author asked.

5. The preacher may have meant exactly this

It is entirely possible that the preacher had these misuses in mind, and said so, and that a paraphrase from memory has compressed the sermon. The page cannot know, and does not assume otherwise.

Weighing it

Put the five together and ask the author’s question: is the problem the commands themselves, or the careless and self-serving way they are sometimes used? The case for the other side answers it. Every one of its points is about the speaker. The proverb in 26:9 is fine; the drunkard is the problem. The friends’ words were often true; their application was wrong. The words of James’s talker are kind; his hands are empty. The abuser’s protector quotes the Bible correctly and uses it to do evil. Not one of the five points is a fault in the words “love your enemies.”

And Scripture prescribes a remedy for each, which is never ridicule of the words. For the wrong season: the right one (Proverbs 15:23). For the friends: silence first, and then truthful speech. For James’s talker: deeds. For the abuser’s protector: justice, the magistrate and the truth, alongside forgiveness and not instead of it. A preacher who named those misuses and those remedies would have preached Position C against Position S, and preached it well.

Try it: misuse of the words, or the words themselves?

Eight situations, all composed by this page. Is each one a misuse of the command, or a legitimate use of it?

0 of 8 sorted

What the narrow point proves

The author asked that the page be exact about what the argument proves. It is fair to say that the commands to forgive and to love can be quoted foolishly: at the wrong time, to the wrong person, or as a way of avoiding justice. Proverbs 15:2 can support that point, and Proverbs 26:9 and 25:20 support it better. It cannot support the claim that the commands themselves are foolish. Proverbs teaches the same things, Christ commands them without the qualifications his hearers wanted, and the historic Church treated them as the heart of the faith.

Try it: does the argument prove this?

Eight claims. Does the argument of this page establish each one, or not?

0 of 8 sorted

How the point could have been made

The preacher’s concern was legitimate. Here is one way it could be made from the pulpit without mocking the words.

Every legitimate point the sermon could have wanted to make is in that paragraph. The words are not mocked. The misuses are named. The hearer leaves more ready to forgive, not less.

A test for any sermon that criticises a saying

Seven questions to ask when a sermon, a book or a speaker criticises a familiar Christian saying. Think of one you have heard and answer each. The page records nothing.

Your verdict

Two questions. Nothing is recorded.

Your answers, revisited

Here are the ten questions you answered before reading, with what the sources say. If you skipped them, go back to the quiz, lock in your answers, and return.

Check it yourself

Sixteen items. Nearly everything here is free and online. If you read only three, read the first three. If you do only one thing, do the last.

1. 1. Proverbs 15. Read this first. Ten minutes. Read the whole chapter and mark every verse about speech. Then read verse 2 again.
2. 2. Matthew 5:38–48 and 7:24–27. Read these first. Ten minutes. Note who Jesus says is wise and who is foolish.
3. 3. Luke 10:25–37 and Matthew 18:21–35. Read these first. Fifteen minutes. Note what each questioner asked for, and what he was given.
4. 4. Proverbs on enemies and offences: 10:12; 17:9; 19:11; 20:22; 24:17–18, 29; 25:21–22. Then Romans 12:14–21, and Exodus 23:4–5.
5. 5. The love command: Leviticus 19:17–18, 33–34; Matthew 22:34–40; Romans 13:8–10; Galatians 5:13–14; James 2:8; 1 John 3:16–18; 4:19–21.
6. 6. Forgiveness: Matthew 6:9–15; Mark 11:25; Luke 6:27–38; 17:3–4; Ephesians 4:29–32; Colossians 3:12–13; Acts 7:54–8:1.
7. 7. Misused words: Proverbs 25:20; 26:7–9; Job 2:11–13 and 42:7–8; James 2:14–17; Matthew 23:1–4.
8. 8. The Didache, chapters 1–2 and 8. About ten minutes. Free at New Advent and CCEL.
9. 9. Justin Martyr, First Apology 14–16; Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 11; Tertullian, To Scapula 1; Polycarp, To the Philippians 12. Free in the Ante-Nicene Fathers.
10. 10. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine I.35–40 and III.16; Homilies on 1 John 7.8; Letter 211.11. Free in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers.
11. 11. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 18, on Matthew 5:38–48. Free at New Advent.
12. 12. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 25, aa. 8–9. Free at New Advent.
13. 13. John Calvin, Institutes III.7.6; Martin Luther, Large Catechism, the Fifth Petition, and Temporal Authority (1523), Part One; Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule, Book III, prologue and chapter 1.
14. 14. Eusebius, Church History II.23 (James the Just) and V.1–2 (the martyrs of Lyons). Free at New Advent.
15. 15. Earlier dossiers: 05 and 57 (reading into a text), 59 and 35 (the self-important pulpit), 37 (the pulpit used against people), 16 (Job’s friends), 34 (dismissal by label), 60 (mockery in Scripture).
16. 16. One name. Do this one. Think of one person who has wronged you, and whom you have not forgiven. Read Matthew 5:44 with that person in mind, and then pray the Lord’s Prayer. Notice whether the words still sound like a platitude.

The remarks examined on this page were heard from the pulpit of a modern evangelical church and are given as the author’s paraphrase from memory; no preacher or church is named, and none should be inferred. Every other modern remark attributed to a pastor, a church member or anyone else is composed for illustration and quoted from no one. No living individual is named on this page as an example of anything. This page judges no one’s motives, sincerity or faith.