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The word fear has a double meaning. For fear is natural when the soul
is unwilling to be separated from the body, on account of the natural
sympathy and close relationship planted in it in the beginning by the
Creator, which makes it fear and struggle against death and pray for
an escape from it. It may be defined thus: natural fear is the force
whereby we cling to being with shrinking. For if all things were
brought by the Creator out of nothing into being, they all have by
nature a longing after being and not after non-being. Moreover the
inclination towards those things that support existence is a natural
property of them. Hence God the Word when He became man had this
longing, manifesting, on the one hand, in those things that support
existence, the inclination of His nature in desiring food and drink
and sleep, and having in a natural manner made proof of these things,
while on the other hand displaying in those things that bring corruption
His natural disinclination in voluntarily shrinking in the hour of His
passion before the flee of death. For although what happened did so
according to the laws of nature, yet it was not, as in our case, a
matter of necessity. For He willingly and spontaneously accepted that
which was natural. So that fear itself and terror and agony belong to
the natural and innocent passions and are not under the dominion of
sin.
Again, there is a fear which arises from treachery of reasoning and
want of faith, and ignorance of the hour of death, as when we are at
night affected by fear at some chance noise. This is unnatural fear,
and may be thus defined: unnatural fear is an unexpected shrinking.
This our Lord did not assume. Hence He never felt fear except in
the hour of His passion, although He often experienced a feeling of
shrinking in accordance with the dispensation. For He was not
ignorant of the appointed time.
But the holy Athanasius in his discourse against Apollinarius says
that He did actually feel fear. "Wherefore the Lord said: Now is
My soul troubled. The 'now' indeed means just 'when He willed,'
but yet points to what actually was. For He did not speak of what was
not, as though it were present, as if the things that were said only
apparently happened. For all things happened naturally and
actually." And again, after some other matters, he says," In
nowise does His divinity admit passion apart from a suffering body,
nor yet does it manifest trouble and pain apart froth a pained and
troubled soul, nor does it suffer anguish and offer up prayer apart
from a mind that suffered anguish and offered up prayer. For,
although these occurrences were not due to any overthrow of nature, yet
they took place to shew forth His real being." The words "these
occurrences were not due to any overthrow of His nature," prove that
it was not involuntarily that He endured these things.
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