Question: Which of the following does not belong in the below list?
- Faith
- Fear
- Hope
- Love
If forced to answer, just about all of us would pick B. Fear, leaving the three theological virtues. Yet there it is—fear, that is—smack-dab in the middle of St. Thomas Aquinas’ treatment of the theological virtues in the Summa Theologica. And, what’s more, he calls it a ‘gift’! What’s going on there?
Some of us may recall the Old Testament maxim that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Aquinas has this in mind—but also much more.
Aquinas addresses fear in his section on hope. Again, it seems to belong least here among the three theological virtues. Hope looks for a future it wants and it longs for it. Fear seems to do the opposite: see a future it doesn’t want and shrink back from it. In a sense, this is exactly why Aquinas considers hope with fear.
Hope is kind of a like a rudder to the ship of the soul. As a virtue associated with the will, it longs for eternal happiness and also for divine help in reaching it. Hope steers us towards our eternal destiny. In this context, it actually makes sense to think of fear in the context of hope. If hope is the longing for eternal happiness, then fear is the loathing of eternal happiness. One is oriented towards heaven; one is oriented away from hell. Put yet another way: if hope is the pull, fear is the push.
Aquinas classifies this as ‘servile fear.’ It is somewhat connected to imperfect contrition—sorrow for sin because we dread the pains of hell. It works—but that’s not really what we’re aiming for. We really want perfect contrition, which is remiss over sin because it has offended God and separated us from Him. The corresponding type of fear is filial fear:
Accordingly if a man turn to God and adhere to Him, through fear of punishment, it will be servile fear; but if it be on account of fear of committing a fault, it will be filial fear, for it becomes a child to fear offending its father (Summa Theologica, Question 19, Article 2).
It is this form of fear that is identified as a gift of the Holy Spirit in Isaiah 11:2, which Aquinas cites. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit but it is not a theological virtue. Aquinas elaborates on the distinction in this way:
It follows, therefore, that the fear of God, which is numbered among the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, is filial or chaste fear. For it was stated above (I-II, 68, 1,3) that the gifts of the Holy Ghost are certain habitual perfections of the soul’s powers, whereby these are rendered amenable to the motion of the Holy Ghost, just as, by the moral virtues, the appetitive powers are rendered amenable to the motion of reason. Now for a thing to be amenable to the motion of a certain mover, the first condition required is that it be a non-resistant subject of that mover, because resistance of the movable subject to the mover hinders the movement. This is what filial or chaste fear does, since thereby we revere God and avoid separating ourselves from Him. (Summa Theologica, Question 19, Article 9).
This filial fear works in tandem with hope:
Filial fear is not opposed to the virtue of hope: since thereby we fear, not that we may fail of what we hope to obtain by God’s help, but lest we withdraw ourselves from this help. Wherefore filial fear and hope cling together, and perfect one another (Summa Theologica, Question 19, Article 9).
To return to our initial analogy from above, filial fear helps to steady the rudder of hope, keeping the ships of our souls on course towards God.
In these ways, fear is paired with hope, as strange as that may initially seem.
But what about its relationship to the other theological virtues? Hope is related in different ways to both faith and love, as Aquinas explains when he treats hope itself. Is fear related to them as well?
Indeed, it is.
First, there is faith. Recall that above we invoked the familiar Old Testament principle that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, as Proverbs 9:10 states. Now wisdom, as defined by Aquinas in Article 7, is ‘the knowledge of Divine things.’ The first principles of wisdom are the articles of faith. “And in this sense, faith is said to be the beginning of wisdom,” says Aquinas. That is because he associates faith with the intellect.
Fear is also the beginning of wisdom at that ‘point where wisdom begins to work.’ Here both servile wisdom and filial fear are at work in different ways. In the words of Aquinas:
For servile fear is like a principle disposing a man to wisdom from without, in so far as he refrains from sin through fear of punishment, and is thus fashioned for the effect of wisdom, according to Sirach 1:27, ‘The fear of the Lord driveth out sin.’ On the other hand, chaste or filial fear is the beginning of wisdom, as being the first effect of wisdom. For since the regulation of human conduct by the Divine law belongs to wisdom, in order to make a beginning, man must first of all fear God and submit himself to Him: for the result will be that in all things he will be ruled by God (Summa Theologica, Question 19, Article 7).
When it comes to love, filial fear increases as charity does, according to Aquinas. Filial fear submits to God and does not presume equality with God. In those respects, there is a kind of separation from God even in the unity of charity—separation in the sense of a distinction between ourselves and God. In this context, we love God more than ourselves and everything else, Aquinas says. He concludes: “Hence the increase of the love of charity implies not a decrease but an increase in the reverence of fear” (See Reply to Objection 3 in Article 10).
Fear, then, as it turns out is indeed no virtue, but nonetheless belongs with them and works with them towards our salvation. As St. Paul himself declared: “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).
