This is the second post for this week. This post is by Dr. Bryan Cross, Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Mount Mercy University.
The imperative from Jesus to love our enemies is grounded on two premises: the premise that even those whose character is evil are loved by God, as shown by the daily benefits God gives such persons (e.g. physical life, breath, sunlight, rain), and the imperative to be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect. Jesus says to his disciples that if we were to love only those who love us, or to greet only our brothers, we would be no better than "tax collectors" and "Gentiles." Thus to love only those who love us is to fall short of the ethical standard demonstrated in God's love for both the just and the unjust.
But when as at present love is so widely conceived not as a choice but primarily as a feeling, the imperative to love one's enemies becomes unintelligible. That is because the imperative seems to translate into a requirement to deny or suppress one's feelings toward those who have harmed oneself or others one loves, or who intend to do so. Yet even the Gentile, Plato, argued that just persons would not want to make their enemies less just. Only unjust persons would want such a thing. Rather, he argues, just persons seek to make unjust persons become just. And from the broader Catholic intellectual tradition we learn that love at the level of the will by its very nature seeks two things. Love seeks both the good for the one loved, and seeks to bring about with the one loved the fullest kind of virtuous union fitting for the respective stations in life of the person loving and the person loved. Therefore love for one's enemies seeks for their attainment of their true good, and ultimately, inasmuch as possible, reconciliation and virtuous friendship with them.
In this way Jesus's imperative to love our enemies contains within itself the implicit truth that those we think of as enemies are not in essence our enemies but rather are in essence our neighbors, whatever the magnitude of their opposition to our well-being. This imperative thereby broadens and redefines our conceptual paradigm of the arena of goods and evils, by reconceiving within it what is truly our enemy and what is at worst a kind of prisoner of war, in the conflict between good and evil. Just as the imperative to love our neighbor as we love ourselves teaches us to see our neighbor as another self, so the imperative to love our enemy teaches us to see our enemy as still in essence our neighbor, and thus as another self. Those fellow humans who seek our harm still share our human nature, but they seek our harm because at worst they lack moral or intellectual goods, i.e. virtues. Since this lack can potentially be rectified, and since love pursues the good for the one loved, the imperative to love our enemies obliges us to seek to benefit them by helping them obtain the goods they lack. Thus in the light of the ontological truth within this divine imperative, our wrestling is not ultimately against "flesh and blood," because every fellow human being is in essence our neighbor, not our enemy.
Of course we may need to defend ourselves and others from grave harm by fellow humans who by demonstrated disposition or intention are a threat to ourselves or to the common good. Certainly we have an ethical obligation to protect the common good, and to prevent actions that gravely harm the common good. And loving our enemies does not undermine or oppose our obligation to prevent injustice, to seek justice in our societies, including justice for victims of injustice. Nor are we capable of rectifying every privation of good. And in some unique cases our presence can be a cause of stumbling or distress, in which case love requires that our benevolence remain at a distance.
But the divine imperative to love our enemies does not permit us to categorize, conceive, or scapegoat any human or group of humans as in essence our enemy. This divine imperative, so embraced, thereby perspectivally and necessarily transforms a social, political, religious, or ethnic polarization from that in which the other group is conceived as the essential or ultimate enemy, to one in which the other is seen as constituted by our brothers and sisters from whom we are now estranged. In this way embracing this divine imperative breaks down such dividing walls.
We also have to keep in mind that the underlying reason why those we count as enemies seek to harm us may turn out to be that we are the ones lacking moral or intellectual goods. In such a case we may need to learn something from those we count as our enemies. So we cannot rightly assume a priori that those who oppose us do so because of an intellectual or moral flaw on their part. But whether my flaw is the cause of the conflict or my enemy's flaw is that cause, neither nullifies the truth that those who seek our harm are not in essence our enemies but are so only at most by contingent privations of goods.
In the epistemic light of this divine imperative our goal cannot be to harm or destroy those who threaten our well-being, or in indifference exile them from our sight. Instead loving our enemies elevates our goal to one in which we seek to become a means of well-being to our enemies, and ultimately if possible to be reconciled with them. That remains true whatever the level of culpability our enemies bear for their own condition, whether moral or intellectual. It remains true even when they persecute us, as Jesus teaches. To love our enemies calls us first to see our enemies as at worst our neighbors ensnared, even if culpably ensnared, in ignorance, error, or vice. In such cases, loving our enemies requires seeking to benefit them insofar as is in our power by the patient effort needed to free them from such ignorance, error, and vice, as we would want others to do for us if we were in their condition.
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