Fear of the Lord Part 1: Holy Fear

“The gifts of the Holy Ghost are seven in number: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord [Isaiah 11:2-3]…. The gifts proceed in orderly fashion and gradually ascend by degrees. From the fear of the Lord, the soul rises to the other gifts, one after the other, to arrive at the most lofty and excellent of all, which is the gift of wisdom. Fear of the Lord arouses and awakens in us a fear of God: not the servile fear which the Apostle calls the spirit os bondage [Romans 8:15], but a fear proper to the adopted sons of God. Such a fear enables the Christian to venerate his merciful father with filial reverence, striving conscientiously never to offend him in the slightest way nor to lose His grace and love. St. Augustine calls it a chaste fear which is born of Charity”

Venerable Louis of Grenada, O.P., Summa of the Christian Life (II.3.5)

This is what one of the great spiritual masters [1] had to say about fear of the Lord. It is the least of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and thus listed last, and yet it is also perhaps the most important, in the sense of being the most foundational. Without it, the soul will fail to rise to receive the other gifts; or at the very least will be hindered in that reception, and will not attain them to their fullest degree. So we read in a variety of Old Testament passages, perhaps the most germane of which is found in Sirach:

“All wisdom comes from the Lord and is with him for ever….The fear of the Lord delights the heart, and gives gladness and joy and long life. With him who fears the Lord it will go well at the end; on the day of his death he will be blessed. To fear the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…To fear the Lord is wisdom’s full measure…The fear of the Lord is the crown of wisdom” (Sirach 1:1. 12-14, 16, 18, my emphasis).

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (see also Psalm 110:10), and indeed as Ven. Louis notes, each gift builds on the last until culminating in wisdom, which is the the disposition of the mind to desire the greatest things first and the least things last. To what extent is the fear of the Lord the “crown of wisdom” or “wisdom’s full measure” (see also Job 28:28)? It is tempting to answer that it is the chaste fear of St Augustine which is the crown of wisdom, wherease the initial fear posited by St. Thomas (ST II-II.19.2) is the beginning of wisdom, but this is perhaps too simplistic. Rather, it may be reiterated that if wisdom is king of the gifts (being the greatest), then fear of the Lord is its crown, completing its adornment as the crown completes the king’s adornment.

As stated above, St. Augustine draws attention to the distinction between “chaste” and “not chaste” fear:

“There is one fear which is called chaste, and there is another fear which is not called chaste. Let us mark the difference between these two fears, and so understand the harmony of the flutes. How are we to understand, or how to distinguish? Mark, my beloved. There are men who fear God, lest they be cast into hell, lest haply they burn with the devil in everlasting fire. This is the fear which introduces charity: but it comes that it may depart. For if you as yet fear God because of punishments, not yet do you love Him whom you in such sort fear. You do not desire the good things, but are afraid of the evil things. Yet because you are afraid of the evil things, you correct yourself and beginnest to desire the good things. When once you have begun to desire the good, there shall be in you the chaste fear. What is the chaste fear? The fear lest you lose the good things themselves. Mark! It is one thing to fear God lest He cast you into hell with the devil, and another thing to fear God lest He forsake you. The fear by which you fear lest you be cast into hell with the devil, is not yet chaste; for it comes not from the love of God, but from the fear of punishment: but when you fear God lest His presence forsake you, you embrace Him, you long to enjoy God Himself.” (Homily 9 on the First Epistle of Saint John, with my emphasis)

In short, there is a holy fear which is not chaste, which seeks to avoid the punishments due to sin. This is fear of the Lord, but mostly it is fear of the punishments which come from the Lord, both temporal and eternal. This sort of fear can still cause us to do good and to avoid evil, but it does so for less pure motives than does chaste fear. Chaste fear motivates not through the desire to avoid some evil [2], but rather through the dread of not accomplishing some good. Also, the unchaste fear often precedes and thus leads to the chaste fear.

Saint Augustine continues his analysis by comparing chaste and unchaste love to a pair of possible wives. The former wife, representing unchaste fear, desires to commit adultery and yet refrains for fear of being found out and condemned by her husband. She still desires to commit a sin, and yet because she desires not to face the consequences of that act, she also refrains from the sin. The latter wife does not wish to disappoint her husband, and (rightly) fears that adultery would so disappoint him—she therefore avoids adultery for his sake. She fears that he might forsake her, and so does all that she can to avoid this, out of love for him. This latter woman expereinces what might be called “chaste fear,” the fear of doing that which displeases the one whom she loves. The former woman fears condemnation; the latter fears only being forsaken.

This concept of two fears is further broadened by Saint Thomas Aquinas, who draws a distinction between worldly fear—what we normally mean in modern parlance by the word “fear”, and which St Augustine calls “human fear”—on the one hand, and fear of the Lord (or Holy Fear) on the other. Both types of fear discussed by Saint Augustine above fit under the general heading of “fear of the Lord,” which Saint Thomas divides into three types: “servile” (unchaste) fear, “filial” (chaste) fear, and intiial fear which is a mixture of the two and which charity slowly changes into filial fear by removing servile fear (ST II-II.19.2).

Note here that both types of holy fear are in fact good: they both cause the one who fears to avoid sin. Indeed, the two actaully parallel the two type of contrition, perfect and imperfect. In other words, both types of fear can motivate us towards sorrow for our sins: servile fear motivates us to imperfect contrition, which may yet lead to a perfect confession, while filial fear would motivate us towards perfect contrition for which a perfect confession would surely be made.

Merely avoiding sin is not the complete end of fearing the Lord. Actually, it might be further clarified here that a good and holy fear might make us more aware of those idle things which might bring offense to God, that is, those things which would be materially sinful. Saint Thomas is known for noting that the curse of Original sin is not only that our will is weakened and inclined towards sin, but also that our intellects are darkened so that we may not recognize sin. Besides this, there are some sins which might be committed in haste, as thoughtless words sown without heed to the damage they may reap. Saint John Chrysostum notes that fear of the lord is a sort of safegaurd against such murmurings:

“Let us utter nothing hasty, nothing disrespectful, but let us humble ourselves that we may be reverential. For this is with reverence and godly fear….Let us utter nothing blasphemous, nothing hasty, nothing bold, nothing presumptuous, nothing desperate. This is with reverence and godly fear. Hebrews 12:28 For a soul in tribulations becomes desponding, and reckless. But let not us [be so]. See here he again says the same thing which he said before, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, for so shall we be able to do all things with reverence. For oftentimes even out of respect for men, we refrain from doing many evil things.” (Homily 33 on Hebrews).

Indeed, Saint Thomas Aquinas pairs fear of the Lord with the virtue of temperance as being the Gift which perfects this virtue [3], and notes that it combats against temptations to the evil things of this world. Saint Athanasius does likewise when he writes that “having the fear of the Lord before your eyes you will put Him first” (Letter 47). Fear of the Lord causes us to desire to please Him before we desire any other thing: truly, this is the beginning of wisdom.

Part 2 is available here.

—Footnotes—
[1] Although not himself canonized—yet?—Ven. Louis of Grenada’s writings have been praised by such saints and doctors as Saints Teresa of Avila, Charles Boromeo, Francis de Sales, Vincent de Paul, John of the Cross, and Rose of Lima

[2] Saint Thomas discusses this point in ST II-II.19.1, noting of the punishment ordained by the Lord that “this is evil not absolutely but relatively, and, absolutely speaking, is a good.”

[3] Each of the gifts of the Holy Spirit perfects one of the cardinal virtues (ST II-II.68.4), and that in particular fear of the Lord perfects temperance: “The gift of fear corresponds, in a manner, to temperance: for just as it belongs to temperance, properly speaking, to restrain man from evil pleasures for the sake of the good appointed by reason, so does it belong to the gift of fear, to withdraw man from evil pleasures through fear of God” (ST II-II.68.4.R1). Elsewher, St. Thomas notes that although presumption is ultimately opposed to hope, it is to some extent opposed to fear of the Lord, and in particular to servile fear (ST II-II.21.3).