When "Love Your Enemy" Means Justice

A quick musing on Plato and Christ

Jesus said to love your enemies.

But, like medicine for the sick, the remedy for an unjust soul is justice.

Yet, though many Christians agree that love desires the good of the other, the good the soul needs is confused with the good the soul wants. And often Christian love collapses into appeasement, tolerance, and irrational kindness.

What does it mean to love your enemies? A surprising source of clarity comes from a pagan, Socrates, who makes a bewildering claim: if a tyrant were his enemy, he would wish him to not be brought to justice.

What does he mean?

There is a lesson here that many miss about what it means to love.

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Love Your Enemies

In his Sermon on the Mount, Christ, the new Moses, promulgates a new law: “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44). In the ancient Greek world, justice was seen as loving your friends and hating your enemies, as seen in Aeschylus’ Oresteia or Plato’s Republic. In the Old Testament, one was called to love God and hate evil. Jesus’ command is a perfection, a maturation of both of these concepts of justice.

But what does it mean to love your enemies?

A surprising commentary on this concept comes from Plato’s Gorgias, a pagan text. It is surprising because Socrates, bereft of divine revelation, can only observe truth from nature—and most would see Christ’s command to love your enemies as something otherworldly, something that simply is not discernible with reason alone. But Socrates comes close and offers a keen insight into what you should wish upon the unjust soul.

The painting depicts a passage described by Marsilio Ficino in De Amore, when in November 7, 1468, he and his friends for Plato’s birthday.

The Medicine for the Tyrannical Soul

At the end of the Gorgias, Socrates is dialoguing with a young man named Callicles who, in sum, has aspirations to be tyrannical. Like many young men in Athens, Callicles sees rhetoric, divorced from truth, as a tool by which he can gain power, glory, and pleasure. Socrates, however, rejects the notion that the life of the tyrant is best and gives various arguments as to why the life of the philosopher, a life of virtue, would be better. And here Socrates makes an incredible claim.

Obviously, those who desire the life of the tyrant desire not to brought to justice but rather continue in satiating their lower desires with wealth, food, and sex. Socrates claims, however, that if the tyrant was his enemy, he would wish the tyrant to not be caught. Why would he say this?

Socrates holds that justice for the unjust soul is like medicine for the sick. What the unjust soul needs is justice; thus, for Socrates, if the tyrant were his enemy, he would not wish the tyrant to be brought to justice. He would wish the tyrant to be given over to his sick soul, the disease of his bloated bestial desires. If, however, Socrates cared for what was good for the tyrant, he would want him brought to justice—he would want his unjust soul to experience the remedy of justice.

Socrates’ insight shows us that what is good for the soul is not necessarily the good the soul wants—nor the good, especially a harsh good like justice, that those who care for unjust soul may wish upon it.

Love Desires Justice as a Remedy

Jesus tells us to love our enemies. To love your enemy, means that you desire what is good for them—and here is where Socrates’ insight is quite helpful. If you are called to love the unjust man, then you would desire justice for him. For the remedy for the unjust soul is justice. If you hated your enemy, you would not wish justice upon them. You would desire that they fester within their own disordered desires.

Yet, many Christians would hold the opposite.

Everyone agrees love is desiring what is good for the other, but what is conflated is the good the soul needs with the good the soul desires. Christian love often collapses into appeasement, tolerance, and an irrational kindness. Ironically, in the name of love these persons do what is exactly unloving—they condemn the unjust soul to fester in his own injustice. They deny the restorative element of justice because it can be harsh, like a parent who denies his sick child the distasteful medicine he needs.

The Christian is called to love his or her enemies—but you must always be mindful of what is informing your understanding of love.

Go Love & Be Just

Jesus’ command to love your enemies is difficult—Christians acknowledge this. But in loving your enemy, you must desire for them the good their soul needs, not the good their soul wants. The unjust soul is confused, like a man with a fever, and goodness must be delivered to it for its sake and for the sake of the community.

Loving your enemy is not appeasement.
It is not tolerance.
It is not disordered empathy.

Christians teach it is desiring the good of your enemy—which will be good for your soul as well.

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Dcn. Harrison Garlick is a deacon, husband, father, Chancellor, and attorney. He lives in rural Oklahoma with his wife and five children. He is also the host of Ascend: The Great Books Podcast. Follow him on X at Dcn. Garlick or Ascend.