Description
Book SynopsisHailed in Sacred Scripture as the beginning of wisdom (Ps 111:10), the fear of the Lord is seldom mentioned and little understood today. A gift of the Spirit and a moral virtue or disposition, the fear of the Lord also frequently entails emotional experiences of differing kinds: compunction, dread, reverence, wonderment, and awe. Starting with the Bible itself, this collection of seventeen essays explores the place of holy fear in Christian spirituality from the early church to the present and argues that this fear is paradoxically linked in various ways to fear's seeming opposite, love. Indeed, the charged dynamic of love and fear accounts for different experiences and expressions of Christian life in response to changing historical circumstances and events.
The writings of the theologians, mystics, philosophers, saints, and artists studied here reveal the relationship between the fear and the love of God to be profoundly challenging and mysterious, its elements paradoxically
Trade Review
"The 'fear of God' is a topic that has been largely neglected both in recent scholarship and in contemporary Christian pastoral practice—at least within the mainstream of Catholic and Protestant churches. And yet, as the essays in this volume show, the same theme has been of great significance in the historical development of Christian theology from the New Testament period onward." —Arthur Holder, Graduate Theological Union
"This volume is a necessary contribution to the conversation—indeed, this collection of essays shows that the fear of God has historically been more deeply intertwined with divine love than terror." —International Journal of Systematic Theology
"For those who pray to have a ‘perpetual fear and love’ of God’s holy name, this volume is a salutary reminder that, in our relationship with the Lord, these two dispositions belong together." —The Living Church
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
The Saving of Fear: An Introduction by Anne W. Astell
Fear at the Foundations: Biblical and Patristic
1. “In Awe of the Mighty Deeds of God”: The Fear of God in Early Christianity from the Perspective of Biblical Spirituality by Pieter G. R. de Villiers
2. Cyril of Jerusalem on Learning the Proper Type of Fear of God by Donna R. Hawk-Reinhard
3. Threading the Needle: Fear of the Lord and the Incarnation in St. Augustine by John Sehorn
Fear in Medieval Meditation
4. Lips of Fear Kissed by Mercy: Expositions of Timor Dei in Cistercian Commentary on the Song of Songs by Catherine Rose Cavadini
5. Aquinas on Christ’s Fear by Joseph Wawrykow
6. Contemplations of the Dread and Love of God and the Nuancing of the Fear of the Lord by Robert Boenig
Fear amongst the Reformers
7. The Reformation Recovery of the Wrath of God by Ralph Keen
8. The Doctor of Divine Love and Fear of the Lord by Wendy M. Wright
9. Fear of God in Pascal and His Jansenist Friends by Ephraim Radner
Fear in the Modern Debate
10. Casting out Fear: The Logic of “God is Love” in Julian of Norwich and Friedrich Schleiermacher by Julia A. Lamm
11. Fear of God in John Henry Newman and Søren Kierkegaard by Cyril O’Regan
Fear on the Eve of the New Millennium
12. “Gold Fillings into Crocodiles’ Teeth”: Christian Fear, Politics, and Imagination in Léon Bloy by Brenna Moore
13. Faith, Hope, Charity, and the Fears of Fatima by Ann W. Astell
14. Shocked to Awe: The Rapture Hermeneutic and Holy Fear by Maj-Britt Frenze
15. Fear of God in Liberation Theology by Todd Walatka
16. A Concluding Case Study in Spiritual Direction: Father Joseph Kentenich and
Emilie Engel by Ann W. Astell
List of Contributors
Index
