|
Objection 1: It would seem that servile fear is not good. For if
the use of a thing is evil, the thing itself is evil. Now the use of
servile fear is evil, for according to a gloss on Rm. 8:15, "if
a man do anything through fear, although the deed be good, it is not
well done." Therefore servile fear is not good.
Objection 2: Further, no good grows from a sinful root. Now
servile fear grows from a sinful root, because when commenting on Job
3:11, "Why did I not die in the womb?" Gregory says
(Moral. iv, 25): "When a man dreads the punishment which
confronts him for his sin and no longer loves the friendship of God
which he has lost, his fear is born of pride, not of humility."
Therefore servile fear is evil.
Objection 3: Further, just as mercenary love is opposed to the love
of charity, so is servile fear, apparently, opposed to chaste fear.
But mercenary love is always evil. Therefore servile fear is also.
On the contrary, Nothing evil is from the Holy Ghost. But servile
fear is from the Holy Ghost, since a gloss on Rm. 8:15, "You
have not received the spirit of bondage," etc. says: "It is the
one same spirit that bestows two fears, viz. servile and chaste
fear." Therefore servile fear is not evil.
I answer that, It is owing to its servility that servile fear may be
evil. For servitude is opposed to freedom. Since, then, "what is
free is cause of itself" (Metaph. i, 2), a slave is one who does
not act as cause of his own action, but as though moved from without.
Now whoever does a thing through love, does it of himself so to
speak, because it is by his own inclination that he is moved to act:
so that it is contrary to the very notion of servility that one should
act from love. Consequently servile fear as such is contrary to
charity: so that if servility were essential to fear, servile fear
would be evil simply, even as adultery is evil simply, because that
which makes it contrary to charity belongs to its very species.
This servility, however, does not belong to the species of servile
fear, even as neither does lifelessness to the species of lifeless
faith. For the species of a moral habit or act is taken from the
object. Now the object of servile fear is punishment, and it is by
accident that, either the good to which the punishment is contrary, is
loved as the last end, and that consequently the punishment is feared
as the greatest evil, which is the case with one who is devoid of
charity, or that the punishment is directed to God as its end, and
that, consequently, it is not feared as the greatest evil, which is
the case with one who has charity. For the species of a habit is not
destroyed through its object or end being directed to a further end.
Consequently servile fear is substantially good, but is servility is
evil.
Reply to Objection 1: This saying of Augustine is to be applied to
a man who does something through servile fear as such, so that he loves
not justice, and fears nothing but the punishment.
Reply to Objection 2: Servile fear as to its substance is not born
of pride, but its servility is, inasmuch as man is unwilling, by
love, to subject his affections to the yoke of justice.
Reply to Objection 3: Mercenary love is that whereby God is loved
for the sake of worldly goods, and this is, of itself, contrary to
charity, so that mercenary love is always evil. But servile fear, as
to its substance, implies merely fear of punishment, whether or not
this be feared as the principal evil.
|
|