153. Love and fear
153. LOVE AND FEAR
If “perfect love casts out fear” (1 Jn 4:18), does it cast out all servile fear and allow only filial fear? If it does, then does the fact that I fear God’s punishment mean I do not have love? How can that be if I am to honestly confess, in the confessional, that I am sorry to have offended God by sin because I fear the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell (= servile fear) as well as because He deserves all my love (= filial fear)?
Servile fear is not driven out when charity comes.
Servile fear proceeds from self-love, because it is fear of punishment which is detrimental to one’s own good. Hence the fear of punishment is consistent with charity in the same way as self-love is: because it comes to the same thing that a man love his own good and that he fear to be deprived of it.
Now self-love may stand in a threefold relationship to charity.
(1) In one way it is contrary to charity, when a man places his end in the love of his own good.
(2) In another way it is included in charity, when a man loves himself for the sake of God and in God.
(3) In a third way, it is indeed distinct from charity, but is not contrary to charity, as when a man loves himself from the point of view of his own good yet not so as to place his end in this his own good (II-II,19,6).
. . . filial fear must needs increase when charity increases . . . for the more one loves a man, the more one fears to offend him and to be separated from him. On the other hand, servile fear . . . decreases as charity increases . . . since the more a man loves God, the less he fears punishment: first, because he thinks less of his own good, to which punishment is opposed; secondly, because the faster he clings, the more confident he is of the reward and consequently the less fearful of punishment (II-II, 19,10).
“Perfect love casts out (servile) fear” indeed, but by a process. It is gradual. Thus as charity (perfect love) increases, servile fear (of punishment) decreases (last paragraph). But the two are not opposed simply and absolutely, like good and evil or light and darkness; they are compatible.
St. Thomas explains why they are compatible: the fear of being punished is of course the fear of suffering some loss to your own happpiness. (One is punished by being fined, not by being given money; by being whipped, not kissed.) We love our own happiness because we love ourselves. And self-love, the root of this servile fear of punishment, is not necessarily contrary to charity. (1) It can be, if it means that you deny that your good is ultimately in God, and make yourself your only or ultimate good. (2) But it is not, if it means that you love yourself for God’s sake. Loving God means loving whatever God loves, so if God loves you, you must love yourself—for God’s sake. (“God don’t make no junk.”) (3) In itself, self-love is neutral: to love yourself can become either bad (#1) or good (#2).
The most well-known and universally acknowledged rule of morality is “the Golden Rule”, “Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.” This is the same principle, in different words, as “Love your neighbor as yourself,” i.e., as you already love yourself. But if self-love were evil by its essence, if it were always evil, then “love your neighbor as yourself” would mean “love your neighbor evilly, as you love yourself evilly.” If self-love were like a disease, loving your neighbor as you love yourself would only spread that disease.
Filial fear and servile fear are opposites. Therefore although charity and filial fear are directly proportional, while charity and servile fear are inversely proportional. In other words, as charity increases, filial fear increases and servile fear decreases. This is the process of spiritual maturing.