The Instructor 1.8.62

Here some attack us, saying that the Lord is not good because of the rod and the threat and the fear. They have not listened, it seems, to the Scripture when it says, “And whoever fears the Lord will turn to his heart,” and they have forgotten the greatest proof of his love for humankind: that he became man for our sake. And indeed the prophet prays to him more intimately in these words: “Remember us, that we are dust,” that is, sympathize with us, since you have experienced in your own person the weakness of the flesh. In this the Lord, the Instructor, is best and blameless: out of his surpassing love for humankind, he has sympathized with the nature of each human being. “For there was nothing that the Lord hates.” For surely he does not hate something and yet will that what he hates should exist; nor does he will something not to exist and yet become the cause of its existence, though he wills it not to exist; nor does he will something not to exist, and yet it exists. If, then, the Word hates something, he wills it not to exist; but nothing exists to which God does not give the cause of its existence; so nothing is hated by God. Nor by the Word; for both are one, God, since it says, “In the beginning the Word was in God, and the Word was God.”