Saving Fear in Christian Spirituality

<p>Hailed 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.</p><p>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 conjoined in a creative tension with each other but also tending to oscillate back-and-forth in the history of Christian spirituality as first one then the other comes to the fore sometimes to correct a perceived imbalance sometimes at the risk of losing its companion altogether. Given this historical pattern clearly evident in these chronologically arranged essays the palpable absence of a discourse of holy fear from the mainstream theological landscape should give us pause and invite us to consider if and how-under what aspect in which contexts-a holy fear inseparable from love might be regained or discovered anew within Christian spirituality as a remedy both for a crippling anxiety and for a presumptive recklessness. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Christian spirituality theology biblical studies religious studies and religion and literature.</p><p>Contributors: Ann W. Astell Pieter G. R. de Villiers Donna R. Hawk-Reinhard John Sehorn Catherine Rose Cavadini Joseph Wawrykow Robert Boenig Ralph Keen Wendy M. Wright Ephraim Radner Julia A. Lamm Cyril O'Regan Brenna Moore Maj-Britt Frenze and Todd Walatka</p>