Love for Enemies in Augustine’s Ethics: An Examination and Analysis

By Omid Moludy

Introduction

The concept of ‘love for enemies’ is one of the paradoxical teachings in Christian ethics, rooted in the words of Jesus Christ: ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ (Matthew 5:44, ESV). This radical command calls believers to extend love to those who have wronged them. Such love surpasses natural affection for friends and family and is regarded as one of the highest Christian virtues (Augustine, n.d., The Enchiridion, chap. 73).

Saint Augustine (Augustinus Hipponensis) (354-430), one of the most influential theologians of the early Church, played a significant role in the development and clarification of this concept. Amid the transformations of the fourth and fifth centuries – when Christianity transitioned from a persecuted minority to the official religion of the Roman Empire – Augustine sought to reconcile fidelity to this ethical command with social realities such as war and heresy.

This article first explores the theoretical foundations of ‘love’ (caritas) and ‘enemy’ (inimicus) within the Christian tradition. It then examines and analyses Augustine’s perspective on love for enemies. Subsequently, the criticisms directed at Augustine’s interpretation of this teaching are discussed, along with possible responses to these objections. Finally, the conclusion summarises the discussion, reflecting on the enduring impact of Augustine’s view on Christian moral tradition and the extent to which this lofty ethical standard is realised in practice.

Theoretical Foundations: Love and the Enemy in the Christian Tradition

In Christian tradition, ‘love’ is a fundamental concept, rendered in Greek as ἀγάπη (agápē) and in Latin as caritas. It denotes a selfless, unconditional, and sacrificial love modelled upon God’s love for humanity (Chambers, 2023, p. 17). Distinct from erotic desire or self-serving affection, agápē embraces all human beings irrespective of their worthiness.

By contrast, the term ‘enemy’ signifies one who opposes or mistreats another (Youngblood et al., 1986, p. 342), extending to personal adversaries, hostile nations, or even entire armies (Goldberg, 1998, p. 526). Within the Christian tradition, the concept of the enemy encompasses both personal foes – whom believers are commanded to love and forgive (Matthew 5:44) – and those who stand in spiritual opposition to God’s will. As Conrad (1982, p. 81) observes, ‘Anyone who is hostile to God and His Son is an enemy’. The biblical notion of an enemy includes oppressors, persecutors, and those who inflict suffering upon the faithful.

Christ’s injunction to love one’s enemies represents the highest expression of Christian moral excellence, supremely demonstrated in his own act of forgiveness towards his executioners from the cross (Luke 23:34). The early Christians took this command with the utmost seriousness. Historical evidence indicates that the early Church equated love of one’s enemy with a complete renunciation of violence and retaliation. Tertullian (c. 155/160-220), for instance, wrote: ‘If we are enjoined, then, to love our enemies, as I have remarked above, whom have we to hate? If injured, we are forbidden to retaliate, lest we become as bad ourselves: who can suffer injury at our hands?’ (Thelwall, 1885, p. 45). He further emphasises: ‘the Christian does no harm even to his foe’ (Thelwall, 1885, p. 51).

Similarly, Origen (c. 185–c. 253), the Alexandrian theologian, insists that Christ’s teaching nowhere permits his disciples to employ violence, regardless of the wickedness of their opponents: ‘He nowhere teaches that it is right for his own disciples to offer violence to any one, however wicked’ (Crombie, 1885, p. 467).

Such testimonies suggest that many early Christians, shaped by this doctrine, regarded military service and participation in warfare as impermissible, choosing instead to pray for the salvation of their enemies rather than take their lives. Contemporary theologian Lisa Sowle Cahill, in her study of the writings of the Church Fathers, concludes that the early Church, particularly during its first three centuries, mostly inclined towards pacifism, viewing non-retaliation against enemies as a fundamental moral standard. She states: ‘The Christian Fathers of the first three centuries were generally adamant that discipleship requires close adherence to the non-violent and counter-cultural example of Jesus’ own life and of his sayings about the nature of the Kingdom as the present in-breaking of God’s reign’ (Cahill, 1994, p. 41). In contrast, Darrell Cole challenges the notion that the early Church was universally pacifist, arguing:

We have little evidence that an early Church Father (besides Tertullian, who was later declared a heretic) held an unambiguously negative view of war. In fact, there's little evidence of any unified Christian attitude toward war during the earliest years of the Church era. It simply cannot be demonstrated that early Christians, in general, viewed either the military or the state as inherently evil, and hence completely off-limits to their participation (Cole, 2002, p. 8).

With the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire in the early fourth century, new questions emerged for theologians: Can a Christian ruler or soldier, bound by the command to love their enemy, justifiably defend their land and people against invaders? How should heretics and those who deviate from the faith be dealt with? It was in this context that thinkers such as Augustine entered the scene, seeking to provide a systematic exposition of Christian love – one that remained faithful to the lofty ideals of moral virtue while also addressing the exigencies of communal life.

Before delving into Augustine’s perspective, it is essential to recognise that he lived in a world where the status of the Church had undergone a radical transformation: it was no longer a small and persecuted community but had become an influential institution, bearing the responsibility of safeguarding the truth of the faith and maintaining public order (Harvey & Hunter, 2010, pp. 457–462). Thus, Augustine endeavoured to construct a bridge between the ideal of unconditional love and the demands of social justice.

In his Enchiridion, Augustine (Harbert, 2008, p. 100) explicitly states that forgiving wrongdoers and loving one’s enemies are among the highest Christian virtues. He writes that ‘the most generous goodness is to love your enemy also and to will good, and when possible to do good, to a person who wills you ill and does it if he can’. According to Augustine, this is an act of obedience to the divine command: ‘when you do this you are listening to the voice of Jesus saying, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you’ (Harbert, 2008, p. 100).

Nevertheless, Augustine also employs a distinct sense of realism. He acknowledges that only the ‘perfect children of God’ can attain such a state of love (Harbert, 2008, p. 101),^[1] ‘which each one of the faithful must strive for, training his human spirit in this disposition by prayer to God and discipline and struggle within himself’, for their ‘prayers we believe are heard when the prayer is made, Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors’ (Harbert, 2008, p. 101). In other words, for Augustine, perfect love for one’s enemies is an ideal to which all should aspire. However, a believer who has not yet attained this level should not be regarded as lacking Christian love altogether. At the very least, when an enemy repents and seeks forgiveness, the believer must forgive them wholeheartedly (Harbert, 2008, p. 101). Augustine derives this minimal expectation from the Lord’s Prayer. Thus, from his perspective, the first step in loving one’s enemy is the absence of resentment and a willingness to seek reconciliation.

Does Augustine Settle for a Minimal Love of Enemies?

Does Augustine merely advocate a minimal form of love – extending forgiveness only when the enemy repents? A closer examination of his works suggests otherwise. While he acknowledges degrees of this virtue, he nonetheless exhorts believers to go beyond the bare minimum and actively seek the good of their enemies. Augustine argues that true love for an enemy means loving their humanity and the image of God within them, rather than condoning their wrongdoing. He states: ‘Hence it comes to pass that we even love our enemies: for we do not fear them since they cannot snatch from us what we love’ (Arendt, 1998, pp. 42–43). In other words, one must ‘hate the sin but love the sinner’ – a phrase that succinctly captures Augustine’s position on the matter. This idea later became well known through the Latin dictum cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum (‘With love for people and hatred of sin’) (Bash & Percy, 2025, p. 53).

Following this principle, Augustine even applied it to his dealings with religious heretics, such as the Donatists, who were perceived as enemies of the truth. He maintained that the use of moderate and lawful coercion could be justified in guiding them back to the right path, framing such compulsion as an act of love for their souls (Brown, 2007, pp. 274–275). Initially, Augustine opposed the use of state power against heretics, but when persuasion proved ineffective, he changed his stance. He likened coercing the wayward back into the Church to a father disciplining his disobedient child for the child's own good. In a letter to a Roman official, he explicitly affirmed that punishing heretics, if done with the intent of correction and out of love, is not contrary to the spirit of the gospel (Augustine, n.d., Letter 93, ch. 5).

Augustine’s perspective on love for one’s enemy can also be observed within the framework of his Just War theory, which is directly linked to this discussion. Augustine was never an advocate of war; on the contrary, he regarded war as a tragic consequence of human sin and believed that even a just war was ultimately a reflection of the absence of true peace. He maintained that as long as individuals and societies were driven by greed, ambition and the lust for power, war would remain an unavoidable reality (Dean, 1963, p. 155).

Nevertheless, Augustine insisted that ‘or peace is not sought in order to the kindling of war, but war is waged in order that peace may be obtained. Therefore, even in waging war, cherish the spirit of a peacemaker, that, by conquering those whom you attack, you may lead them back to the advantages of peace’ (Augustine, n.d., Letter 189, sec. 6). This statement, found in a letter to the Roman commander Boniface, underscores Augustine’s insistence that war must be motivated by love and the genuine good of the enemy. In other words, the Christian soldier, even while engaged in battle, must regard their enemy not as an object of personal hatred but as a misguided human being – one whose ultimate good is either their correction or, at the very least, the prevention of their wrongdoing. In this light, Augustine viewed killing an enemy in a just war as morally defensible (Hartigan, 1966, pp. 201–202), provided that it was devoid of personal hatred and was carried out with the right intention – either to protect the innocent or to correct the wrongdoer. This seemingly paradoxical notion – of loving one’s enemy while wielding the sword – was, in Augustine’s view, entirely coherent. Love, he argued, is fundamentally an inward disposition (voluntas benevolentiae, the will to seek the good), which can be preserved even when one undertakes severe external actions, such as punishment or warfare.

In sum, Augustine does not conceive of love for one’s enemy as a fleeting emotional sentiment but as a deliberate act of the will, rooted in divine grace, which seeks the eternal good of the enemy – even when, in the pursuit of justice, it may temporarily require the use of force.

Criticisms of Augustine’s View on Loving Enemies

Augustine’s teaching on love for enemies, while widely admired, has also faced substantial criticism. This section reviews the principal objections raised against his position and explores possible responses – both from Augustine himself and later defenders of his legacy.

A Critique of Christian Love and the Legitimisation of Corrective Violence

One of the most significant criticisms of Augustine’s thought concerns the relationship between Christian love and the legitimisation of corrective violence – a tension particularly evident in his response to the Donatist crisis and his acceptance of state intervention in religious matters. Critics argue that Augustine’s interpretation of love for one’s enemy transformed this gospel command from a socially and politically revolutionary summons into a mechanism of control aimed at preserving religious and political order.

According to this critique, Augustine reconfigured love from a prophetic and counter-cultural principle into one compatible with existing power structures, especially during the formative period of the Church’s ascendancy within the Roman Empire. As a result, the Church, under his influence, not only refrained from opposing military and political injustices but also actively collaborated with secular rulers. In certain instances, this cooperation extended to legitimising war and suppressing heresy. Augustine argued that preserving the unity and doctrinal purity of the Church justified the use of legal measures against heresy and impiety. ‘Should adulteries be punished by the laws, and sacrilege allowed?’ (Augustine, n.d., Letter 185, sec. 20). While such reasoning may be understood as a defence of religious integrity, it also contributed to the Church's instrumentalisation by the state – thereby distancing it from its original prophetic vocation.

The Church’s eventual adoption of Just War theory further accentuated this shift. Early Christian communities emphasised martyria (witness) and peaceful resistance in the face of violence. However, with the growing acceptance of coercion under certain conditions, the Church began to normalise state-sanctioned violence. Augustine himself permitted the use of ‘fear and coercion’ to bring heretics back to the Church (Letters 185.28). According to critics, this outlook marked a clear departure from the gospel’s counter-cultural stance. Rather than remaining a voice crying in the wilderness, the Church became a pillar of emerging Christian empires.

Although Augustine upheld the doctrine of love for one’s enemies as central to Christian ethics, in practice – especially during the Donatist controversy – he defended state coercion as a means of guiding those who err back to the truth. This shift, particularly evident in Epistula 93, has raised serious questions regarding the compatibility of his views with the radical ethic of the gospel:

But we are precluded from this rest by the Donatists, the repression and correction of whom, by the powers which are ordained of God... Yet these same persons, under some indescribable bondage of custom, would in no way have thought of being changed to a better condition, had they not, under the shock of this alarm, directed their minds earnestly to the study of the truth (Augustine, n.d., Letter 93, chap. 1).

Contemporary theologians such as John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas have argued that by legitimising lawful violence, Augustine distanced himself from the critical stance of early Christianity and aligned the Church with worldly powers. Yoder, for instance, writes:

It is not at all surprising that Augustine, for whom the Constantinian Church was a matter of course, should have held that the Roman Church was the millennium... the next step in the union of church and world was the conscious abandon of eschatology... God’s goal, the conquest of the world by the Church, had been reached (via the conquest of the Church by the world)... [Augustine] seriously overestimated the adequacy of the available institutional and sacramental means for overcoming [sin] (Yoder, 1994, p. 66).

From this standpoint, the Augustinian tradition is often said not to challenge violence but rather to provide it with a theological framework for legitimacy. However, this reading may not do full justice to the internal coherence and intentions of Augustine’s thought. He never denied the primacy of love or the call to tolerance, nor did he abandon the teachings of Scripture. Instead, he sought to interpret and apply those teachings within the context of a fallen and fractured world. The response to this critique, then, is less concerned with the internal logic of Augustine’s theology and more with the historical consequences of its reception. As Herbert A. Dean stresses: ‘Augustine never glorifies war; his reflections are consistently marked by sorrow and a deep awareness of the suffering it inflicts, especially on the innocent’ (Dean, 1963, p. 154). Augustine was neither a militarist nor an advocate of violence. Nonetheless, his acceptance of the Just War theory contributed to the Church’s shift from a radically non-violent community to a socio-political institution that, under certain conditions, acknowledged the legitimacy of limited violence. According to Augustine, this transformation was not a betrayal of the gospel but a necessary development. The universality of the Christian message demanded its presence in every sphere of human life – including politics and law. A gospel confined to private piety, in his view, would fail to address the structural realities of a broken world.

Thus, for Augustine, the adoption of stringent measures to restrain evil or protect the innocent did not imply personal hatred towards the wrongdoer. It was, rather, an expression of responsibility within a communal and providential order. Responding to critiques like that of John Howard Yoder, Peter Leithart observes: ‘This does not count as a fair summary of Augustine by any standard’ (Leithart, 2010, p. 285). Likewise, Dragoş Boicu (2014) insists that this development in Augustine’s thought is not evidence of contradiction, but rather a manifestation of the practical application of his theology in response to the social conditions of his time (Boicu, 2014, p. 180). To justify his approach, Augustine draws upon analogies such as the physician, the teacher, and the parent: Violence exercised with compassion and the intent to correct can be an expression of true love. Boicu further notes that Augustine avoids the term coercitio (coercion), instead employing words like correctio and correptio (correction and rebuke), thereby highlighting the pedagogical rather than the retaliatory dimension of such action. In this framework, the state is not simply a political institution but serves as the brachium saeculare – the ‘secular arm’ – of the Church, through which divine justice may be enacted (Boicu, 2014, p. 173).

Even so, from the perspective of contemporary Christian ethics, this interpretation of love for one’s enemy remains contentious. While Augustine emphasised purity of intention and the avoidance of hatred in the exercise of justice, his theory has, at times, been interpreted in ways that paved the way for the legitimation of religious violence.

Hannah Arendt’s Critique: The Loss of the Enemy’s Personhood in Augustine’s Theology of Love

Another significant critique of Augustine’s conception of love for enemies is articulated by the contemporary political philosopher Hannah Arendt. Arendt contends that in Augustine’s thought, love is not directed toward the individual as a unique and irreplaceable person, but rather toward humanity as a species – either as God’s creation or as a member of the ecclesial community. In her view, Augustinian love possesses a kind of ‘sublime indifference’ – that is, the Christian who follows Augustine ‘loves their neighbour regardless of who or what they are’. According to Arendt, this mode of love overlooks the individuality of the enemy, reducing them to their status as a generic creature of God, rather than recognising them as a singular person. She writes:

He loves his neighbor in sublime indifference regardless of what or who he is... I love men because they are men and not animals... The result is that [Augustine] had to declare love derivative and to claim that there is no other alternative for relating to a desired object except either use (uti) or enjoyment (frui). This clearly results in a degradation of love, which contradicts the central place love occupies in Augustine's thought (Arendt, 1996, p. 43).

On this basis, love for one’s neighbour, rather than being grounded in a personal and relational encounter, becomes founded upon a shared humanity. In this view, the neighbour becomes a kind of instrumentum – a means towards eternal beatitude – since loving the neighbour is ultimately framed as a path to loving God. From this perspective, Augustine’s attitude towards the other is instrumentalist, and thereby stands in tension with the very nature of authentic love, which ought to be for the person themselves and not for what they represent or facilitate (Smith, 2016, p. 4).

Response to Hannah Arendt’s Critique: Recovering the Depth of Augustinian Love

In response to Arendt’s critique, defenders of Augustine have argued that her interpretation overlooks the theological nuances and pastoral depth of his thought. First, Augustine never advocated indifference toward the particularities of individuals. On the contrary, he insisted on recognising the divine image in each human being – a dignity that bestows immeasurable worth. To love ‘in God’, in Augustine’s terms, does not mean ignoring the individual, but rather seeing them through the light of divine love, as a creature beloved by God. Far from diminishing love, this perspective deepens it by grounding it in a motive beyond fleeting affection.

As J. Warren Smith explains, Augustine’s concept of uti-love, though seemingly instrumental, is neither egoistic nor exploitative. Rather, it reflects a redemptive form of love that imitates God's providential engagement with creation for its ultimate good: ‘The holy use of the neighbour is not a form of exploitation,’ he writes, ‘but carries an implicit reciprocal commitment to each other for the sake of fulfilling our respective roles in the economy’ (Smith, 2016, p. 12). Thus, to love the enemy is not to use them as a means in a utilitarian sense, but to will their salvation in the same way one wills one’s own – not as a stepping stone, but as a fellow pilgrim toward the same eschatological end (Smith, 2016, p. 11).

Arendt’s reading appears to rely on a form of philosophical reductionism that neglects the theological, biblical and pastoral context of Augustine’s moral vision. Eric Gregory, an ethicist and philosopher of religion, argues that Arendt, in portraying Augustinian love as a form of desire or instrumentalisation, imposes false dichotomies on his thought – dichotomies that Augustine himself never affirmed. Gregory writes: ‘She pushes Augustine into false dichotomies that he and others who share his theological commitments might otherwise avoid’ (Gregory, 2001, p. 167). These false dichotomies include desire versus love, individual versus universal, use versus respect, and personalism versus theocentrism. By extracting Augustine’s framework of love from its Trinitarian and doctrinal context, Arendt offers a partial and distorted picture of his understanding of love for the enemy.

In truth, Augustine’s distinction between uti (use) and frui (enjoyment) is not a moral reduction but a principled effort to order human relationships according to the final end (telos) of the human being. As Gregory clarifies, in the Augustinian tradition, love for the other – even when expressed in the form of use in the service of God – is never devoid of respect or personal regard: ‘The spirit of Augustine’s ‘use’ and ‘enjoyment’ distinction captures this disposition even as it secures love as an appropriate political virtue that does not violate central elements of liberal politics’ (Gregory, 2001, p. 168).Here, Gregory points to a crucial insight: for Augustine, love is not merely a private, spiritual disposition but also has social and political dimensions. It can form the basis of political virtue without degenerating into a means for domination or a denial of the other’s personhood.

Arendt also claims that Augustine’s response to the question ‘Proximus quis?’ (Who is my neighbour?) is abstract and depersonalised. However, Gregory, in his interpretation of Augustine’s Confessions and City of God, argues that Augustinian love entails not only a cosmic relationship with God but also an emotional and social recognition of the concrete other. In other words, Augustine does not advocate sublime indifference, but rather affirms the eternal significance of the other as a unique and beloved creature.

In conclusion, although Augustine’s language may sound utilitarian to modern ears, its theological meaning is rich with spiritual, soteriological, and even social significance. His concept of love not only opposes sublime indifference but gives rise to a commitment, recognition, and compassionate solidarity with the person of the enemy.

Conclusion

Augustine’s theology of love for one’s enemy represents an attempt to reconcile the radical command of the gospel with the complex realities of political and social life. By upholding the primacy of caritas – even within contexts involving coercion or legally sanctioned violence – Augustine preserved this principle as a moral necessity within the Christian tradition.

His aim was not to weaken Christ’s command but to articulate how it might be realised in a broken world, where justice and peace are often threatened by instability and danger. His acceptance of Just War theory and state involvement in religious affairs did not arise from a rejection of love, but from a sense of responsible love operating within the framework of divine order.

The influence of Augustine’s view is evident in both Catholic and Protestant traditions. Love for one’s enemy came to be regarded not merely as a personal virtue but as a social and political norm – reflected in practices ranging from restorative justice to public acts of reconciliation. Augustine’s distinction between ‘hating the sin’ and ‘loving the sinner’ continues to shape contemporary moral theology.

While some modern critics have challenged Augustine’s vision, his intellectual framework still offers a balanced model – one that rejects both naïve pacifism and unreflective violence. His enduring contribution is the insistence that no situation – not even war or conflict – can annul the Christian imperative to love. Augustine’s legacy remains – a bridge between the gospel ideal and ethical realism.

 ^[1] The original Latin phrase in the text is ‘perfectorum sunt ista filiorum Dei’, which translates as ‘the perfect ones, the sons of God’.

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