289. Penance and fear
289. PENANCE AND FEAR
Is fear the origin of repentance? If so, doesn’t that make repentance a feeling, or dependent on a feeling?
Whether penance originates in fear?
Objection 1. It would seem that penance does not originate from fear. For penance originates in displeasure at sin. But this belongs to charity (since hating sin and being displeased with sin comes from loving and being pleased with God and His goodness). . . . Therefore penance originates from love (charity) rather than fear.
Reply 1. Sin begins to displease a man, especially a sinner, on account of the punishments which servile fear regards, before it displeases him on account of its being an offense against God or on account of its wickedness, which pertains to charity (III,85,5).
The best motive for repentance is filial fear, which is the fear of offending God, since this stems from charity or the love of God and what God is (goodness, holiness), for His sake rather than our own; yet servile fear (selfish fear of punishment) suffices as a prod to repentance. God accepts this as a beginning but not an end. He is “easy to please but hard to satisfy” (George MacDonald).
Objection 2. Further, men are induced to do penance through the expectation of the heavenly kingdom, according to Matthew 3:2 and 4:17: Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Now the kingdom of heaven is the object of hope. Therefore penance results from hope rather than from fear.
Reply 2. When the kingdom of heaven is said to be at hand, we are to understand that the king is on his way, not only to reward but also to punish (III,85,5).
Hope is somewhere between servile fear and filial fear or charity as a motive for repentance. Hope of reward can be either selfish and mercenary or unselfish and idealistic. In other words hope can stem from, or take the form of, either servile fear, the fear of punishments from the King, or filial fear, the fear of offending Him due to our love of Him (charity). Or it can stem from both. (We usually have mixed motives, and progress in the life of the Spirit consists largely in purifying our motives.) In other words, there are better and worse, higher and lower forms of and motives for repentance. St. Thomas distinguishes the two different motives in the passage that follows:
I answer that,. . . (Penance includes) (1) a movement of servile fear, whereby a man is withdrawn from sin through fear of punishment . . . (2) a movement of charity, whereby sin is displeasing to man for its own sake and no longer for the sake of the punishment . . . (this is) a movement of filial fear whereby a man, of his own accord, offers to make amends to God through fear of Him.
The act of penance (both internal repentance and external amends) results from servile fear as from the first movement . . . and from filial fear as from its . . . proper principle (motive) (III,85,5).
The distinction St. Thomas makes above between “a movement of charity” and “the act of penance” is not a distinction between higher and lower motives, like the distinction between (1) servile fear and (2) charity, but a distinction within filial fear between the internal cause or motive and the external act (going to Confession). He classifies all three as “movements” of the soul, which change our spiritual state in the right direction.
The purpose of servile fear, and the reason God uses it in religion, is wholly to lead us to filial fear. God will accept selfish motives at first (“Pascal’s Wager” actually works for many people!) if it moves us from rebellion or unbelief to belief; and He will purify our motives (and the deeds they motivate) later, and gradually.