Love and Fear

By  Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

In the first letter of St. John we read, “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18).  What does he mean by it?  According to St. Thomas Aquinas there are two kinds of fear: servile fear and filial fear.  Servile fear refers to the fear of a servant of being punished by his master while filial fear is the fear of a son to his father.  In the spiritual life, servile fear means we fear God’s punishment of our sins, thus we are moved to repent.  Filial fear on the other hand is a better form of fear, because it is based on charity or love for God and it is the fear we have of offending God with our sins.

Servile fear comes from self-love.  It is a fear of punishment which is detrimental to one’s good or happiness.  St. Thomas classifies a threefold relationship of self-love to charity (or love of God).  (1) Self-love is contrary to charity, when man places his ultimate end in the love of his own good over God.  (2)  In another, self-love goes with charity, when a man loves himself for the sake of God. If we are supposed to love whatever God loves, and if God loves us, then we ought to love ourselves.  (3) Self-love in itself is neutral.  It can become bad if we love ourselves for our own sake which is the definition of selfishness as referred to in number (1).  And good if we love ourselves for God’s sake which refers to number (2).

If we go to confession because of servile fear or the fear of punishment, God would accept it because anything that could lead you to something good is good in itself.  But the better good is that we should graduate from servile fear to filial fear because filial fear is based on charity which is the highest virtue.  It may take time to reach that state of filial fear but God is patient with us and is willing to wait as long as we are striving to get there.  Spiritual writers would say, “God is easy to please but hard to satisfy.”  God is happy with our baby steps because He knows that if we are sincere in our effort to grow in the spiritual life, and in our love for Him, we will sooner or later reach that more esteemed state.  God is hard to satisfy because there is no limit to holiness that we can acquire in this life, in the same way as there is no limit to how much we can love God and our neighbor.

Charity and filial fear are directly proportional.  As we grow in our love for God, we will also grow in our fear to offend Him.  Charity and servile fear on the other hand are inversely proportional.  As charity increases, filial fear increases and servile fear decreases.  Servile fear decreases because disorderly self-love has been diminished, thus the fear of punishment is almost not there, because you would not fear someone whom you have grown to love, and loves you much in return or rather someone who has loved you much all along.  Disorderly self-love is further diminished because we now look more on God and less on ourselves. Thus, perfect love casts out servile fear.