Love vs Like Just to digress on the previous interpretation which contrasts "love" and "like", Greek is much like English. In English we have distinct words for “love” and “like”, just as the Greek does, namely "agape" and "phileo". And we have only one word for “hate” and "dislike”. We say, “I hate that person”, and we say, “I hate vegetables”. The same in Greek where there is likewise no grammatical distinction between hate and dislike. But there is a difference in connotation. For many words both in English and Greek have more than one connotation. Just look through any dictionary. How we distinguish between different connotations is not a matter of syntax, but of interpretation from the context. Note for example in Mt 5:44 Jesus said to love your enemies, and yet he also said, "If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.” Luke 14:26 If “hate” can only be interpreted as the opposite of “love”, then this is clearly a contradiction. But the answer is in the cross reference to Luke 14:26. Namely Mt 10:37 "He who loves (phileo) father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.” This shows that the “hate” of Luke 14:26 is equivalent to “not liking as much” of Mt 10:37 And therefore, more generally, the Bible indicates that “hate” can mean “not liking”(phileo), which is not the same as not loving. For we are called to love (agape) those we dislike. Likewise in John 15:19 where it states that the world loves (phileo) its own, but hates those who belong to Christ. In fact the translations would do better if they simply translating "agape" as "love" and "phileo" as "like", so that the distinction can be seen, and the interpretation can be more easily rendered.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 03:59:17 +0000
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