Romans 12:9

Romans, Chapter 12 contains the following verse in the ESV:

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.

I was troubled by this, because ‘to abhor what is evil’ is a trivial injunction: obviously what is evil is to be abhorred, and anyone who does not instinctively, automatically, and habitually abhor what is evil will not flip to the other side with this injunction. Why would he waste his time with this?

Paul is not wasting his time. He is not trivial, and there must be a material message, here: his recipients must be doing something they should not or failing to do something they should, to which this is the antidote.

Let us look at the Greek:

ἡ ἀγάπη ἀνυπόκριτος. ἀποστυγοῦντες τὸ πονηρόν, κολλώμενοι τῷ ἀγαθῷ·

The word translated as ‘good’ is much more complex. The English word ‘good’ is bland and so polysemous as to be uninformative. ‘A good book’. ‘The Good Book’. ‘A good distance’. ‘For a good time, call …’ Note that this is an adjective used without a noun, lending the meaning things that are. The relevant senses of ἀγαθός, when used of things, are serviceable, beneficial and morally good, and the latter is cited in Liddell & Scott as the operative meaning in other places in Romans. Let us go with that. Now, to the verb: this means glue, and, in the intransitive, pronominal sense, glue yourself to. This is a very physical image: glue yourself to the morally good. We are going to come back to this, later.

Now let us turn to the more troubling middle phrase, and start with the adjective used as a noun:

πονηρός = that which is painful / grievous

This is not a simple opposite of the moral good: it is not a moral word but describes the source of mental pain.

Now let us move onto the verb: ἀποστυγέω comprises two elements: στυγέω (hate) and ἀπο (denoting movement away from). This not mere hating but shrinking back from, recoiling from, running away from, with hate.

Now we are onto something: people have no trouble shrinking back from, recoiling from what is painful physically. Sally does not need to be told to remove her hand from the fire.

What can this possibly mean, therefore?

Thought. The only thing this can mean is thought. People have immense trouble moving away from painful thoughts. These are mesmerising and entrapping.

The gloss, therefore, is this:

Recoil, run away from painful and grievous thoughts as fast as you can, and cleave, instead, to morally good thoughts (for a heuristic, go with faith, hope, and charity).

Let us add the first phrase to this: the adjective translated as genuine comes from the verb ὑποκρίνομαι, which means to answer, to interpret, and to play a part on stage. The prefix of the adjective means without or not.

Most of the translations are something along the lines of let love be without hypocrisy, which is suggested by the etymological link with the Greek, but introduces something simply not there in the Greek. Hypocrisy is usually reserved for those who ‘talk to the talk but do not walk the walk’, in other words who preach to others but do not take the requisite action themselves, or those who condemn that of which they themselves are guilty. We will return later to the reason why hypocrisy is the wrong translation.

Now, the love in question, here, is ἀγάπη, which is one of several words in Greek for love. This one means a number of things: love in general, the love of husband and wife, the reciprocal love between God and man, brotherly love, and charity.

Let us go back to the adjective, which means not in the manner of one who plays a part on a stage.

Now, the love in question that Paul means could be the sentiment, the action, or both. However, the adjective can apply only to the action. Sentiment cannot be split between actor and part. Loving actions can be, however. What Paul is enjoining is to take one’s loving, charitable actions in the spirit of those actions, to eliminate the sense of actor and part, with the actor dissolving into the part and ceasing to exist.

What he is cautioning against is not the hypocrisy of the talker without the walk or the immoral moralist but the goer-through-the-motions; the person who acts in love but still harbours unloving thoughts, uncharitable thoughts about the person in whose favour or benefit he is acting. In other words, although the love in question is practical, Paul is speaking to state of mind.

To gloss the whole sentence therefore, Paul is giving three pieces of advice:

• When you do service, be charitable and loving in your mind to those you are serving.
• Run as fast as you can away from dark or negative thoughts.
• Glue yourself to higher, moral thoughts.

Now, we have something we can work with.