The Fear That Ends in Love

Here the followers of Basilides take up this saying and explain it their own way. They put it like this: “The Ruler, hearing the utterance of the Spirit who was being ministered to, was struck with amazement at the voice and at the vision alike, since news had been announced to him beyond anything he hoped for. His amazement was what came to be called fear, and it became the origin of wisdom — a wisdom that sorts men into classes, tells them apart, brings them to completion, and restores them. For the one who is over all sets apart and sends out not the world only, but the chosen as well.” [a]

Valentinus too seems to have taken up views like these, in a letter of his. He writes in these very words: “Just as fear fell on the angels at this creature, because he spoke things greater than his own making warranted — on account of the one in him who had secretly sown a seed of the essence above, and who spoke his mind freely — so also among the races of men in the world, men’s own works became terrors to the men who made them: images and statues, for instance. And the hands of everyone fashion things to carry the name of God; for Adam, formed to carry the name of Man, made them dread the pre-existent Man, since that Man had his being in him. They were terror-struck, and they hurried to spoil the work.”

But there is only one First Cause, as will be shown further on, and these men will be exposed as inventors of chatter and birdsong. Still, since God judged it useful that men should first be given a preparatory training out of the law and the prophets, under the Lord, the fear of the Lord was called the beginning of wisdom: the Lord gave it through Moses to people who were disobedient and hard of heart. Those whom argument does not convince are tamed by fear. The Word who instructs us foresaw this from the first, and, cleansing by both methods, fitted his instrument to the work of making men reverent. Amazement, then, is fear at an unfamiliar sight, or at an impression one was not looking for — a piece of news, say. Fear itself is being overwhelmed with wonder at something that is happening or exists. What these men do not see is that by making amazement the beginning, they turn the God whom they themselves proclaim as highest into a being open to disturbance, and, before the amazement, into a being in ignorance. For if ignorance came before the amazement, and if this amazement and fear, which is the beginning of wisdom, is the fear of God, then ignorance must have been the cause that came before God’s wisdom and before all his work of making — and not only before those, but before restoration and before the choosing itself. Ignorance of what, then? Of what is good, or of what is evil?

If it was ignorance of what is good, why does it stop the moment amazement comes? And in that case their ministering spirit, and their preaching, and their baptism are all beside the point. And if it was ignorance of what is evil, how can a bad thing be the cause of the best thing there is? For if ignorance had not come first, the minister would not have come down, and amazement would not have seized “the Ruler,” as they call him, nor would he have reached a beginning of wisdom out of fear, so as to tell the chosen apart from those who belong to the world. And if it was fear of the pre-existent Man that made the angels plot against their own handiwork — on the notion that an unseen seed of the essence above had been lodged in that creature, or because a groundless suspicion stirred envy in them, which is past believing — then the angels became murderers of a creature entrusted to them as a child is entrusted to a nurse, and they stand convicted of the crudest ignorance. Or suppose instead that they were acting with foreknowledge. Then they would not have plotted, in the assault they made, against the very thing they foreknew; and foreknowledge would not have left them terror-struck at their own work when they made out the seed from above. Or suppose, last of all, that they trusted their knowledge and dared — though this too was beyond them — on learning of the excellence in the Fullness, to plot against man. Besides all this, they laid hands on what was made according to the image; and the original is in that image too, and it cannot be destroyed, any more than the knowledge that abides can.

To these men, then, and to certain others — the followers of Marcion above all — Scripture calls out, though they will not listen: “Whoever listens to me will rest in confidence and peace, and will be untroubled, with no fear of any evil.”

What, then, do they make the law out to be? They will not call it evil; they call it just, drawing a line between what is good and what is just. But when the Lord tells us to dread what is evil, he is not exchanging one evil for another; he does away with a thing by its opposite. Evil is the opposite of good, as what is just is the opposite of what is unjust. So if the freedom from fear that the fear of the Lord produces is called the beginning of good things, then fear is a good thing. And the fear that comes from the law is not only just but good, since it takes evil away. Yet in bringing in freedom from fear by means of fear, it does not produce a total absence of feeling by way of a disturbed mind; it produces feeling kept within measure, by way of discipline. So when we hear, “Honor the Lord and be strong; but fear no other besides him,” we understand it to mean being afraid to sin and keeping the commands God has given — and that is the honor that comes from God. For the fear that belongs to God is awe. But if fear is a disturbance of the mind, as some insist that it is, still not all fear is disturbance. Superstition is a disturbance of the mind: it is the dread of spirits that both stir up passion and are subject to it. The fear of God, on the other hand — of a God who is not himself open to disturbance — is free of disturbance. For it is not God that a man is frightened of, but falling away from God. And whoever fears that, which is falling into evils, is afraid of those evils and dreads them; and whoever fears a fall wants to be free of ruin and disturbance himself. “The wise man is afraid and turns aside from evil, but the fool is confident and mixes himself up with it,” says Scripture; and again it says, “In the fear of the Lord is the hope of strength.”

A fear like that leads on to repentance and hope. Hope is the expectation of good things, or a confident expectation of a good that is not yet here; and a favorable turn of affairs is taken as ground for good hope — and good hope, as we have learned, leads on to love. Love turns out to be agreement in matters of reason and life and conduct — in short, a sharing of life; or else it is the intensity of friendship and affection, with right reason, in the enjoyment of one’s companions. And a companion is another self, just as we call those men brothers who have been born again by the same word. Close kin to love is hospitality, a friendly craft occupied with the care of strangers. And the strangers are those to whom the things of the world are strange; for we count as belonging to the world the men who set their hope on the earth and on the cravings of the flesh. “Do not be shaped to the pattern of this world,” says the apostle, “but be transformed by the making new of your mind, so that you may test and know what the will of God is — what is good and acceptable and perfect.” So hospitality busies itself with what is useful to strangers. Guests are strangers; friends are guests; and brothers are friends. “Dear brother,” as Homer says. [q]

In love’s train come love for mankind — for the sake of which there is also natural affection — which is a loving way of treating people; and natural affection itself, which is a settled fondness shown toward friends or toward one’s own household. And if the real man in us is the spiritual man, then love for mankind is brotherly love toward those who share in the same spirit. Natural affection, for its part, is the keeping up of goodwill, or of fondness; and fondness is the full showing of it. To be loved is to please by one’s behavior, drawing and attracting others. People are brought into one by agreement, and agreement is the knowledge of the good things they enjoy in common; for being of one mind is a harmony of judgments. “Let your love be without pretense,” it is said; “hate what is evil and hold fast to what is good; be devoted to brotherly love” — and so on, down to “If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” Then it says, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

And the same apostle admits that he bears witness about the Jews “that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge; for not knowing the righteousness of God, and trying to set up their own, they did not submit to the righteousness of God.” They did not know the will of the law and do it; what they took for granted, that is what they supposed the law wanted. They did not trust the law as prophecy, but only the bare words, and they followed it out of fear rather than out of inclination and faith. “For Christ is the end of the law, for righteousness” — he whom the law foretold — “to everyone who believes.” That is why Moses said to them, “I will make you jealous by those who are not a people; I will make you angry by a foolish nation” — that is, by a nation that has come to be ready to obey. And through Isaiah it says, “I was found by those who were not looking for me; I was made known to those who did not ask after me” — plainly of the time before the Lord came. After that, the words prophecy spoke to Israel now fit exactly: “All day long I have stretched out my hands to a people who disobey and talk back.” Do you see the reason for the calling of the nations, plainly declared by the prophet to be the disobedience and the talking back of the people? Then God’s goodness is shown in their case as well. For the apostle says, “But by their trespass salvation has come to the nations, to make them jealous” — and to make them willing to repent.

And the Shepherd, speaking plainly about those who had fallen asleep, recognizes that there were righteous men among the nations and among the Jews — not only before Christ appeared, but before the law — men accepted by God: Abel, for instance, and Noah, and any other righteous man. He says this: “The apostles and teachers who proclaimed the name of the Son of God, and had fallen asleep, proclaimed it in power and in faith to those who had fallen asleep before them.” Then he adds: “And they gave them the seal of the proclamation. So they went down with them into the water and came up again — but the apostles went down alive and came up alive, while those who had fallen asleep before went down dead and came up alive. It was through the apostles, then, that they were made alive and came to know the name of the Son of God. That is why they came up together with them and were fitted into the building of the tower, and were built in along with them without being cut to shape. They had fallen asleep in righteousness and in great purity; they lacked only this seal.” “For when the nations, who do not have the law, do by nature the things the law requires, these, not having the law, are a law to themselves” — so the apostle says.

Since the virtues follow one after another, why need I say what has been shown already — that faith hopes by way of repentance, and fear by way of faith; and that patience and practice in these, together with learning, end in love, which is brought to completion by knowledge? But this has to be noticed: only what is divine is to be counted wise by nature. So wisdom, which has taught the truth, is the power of God, and the completeness of knowledge is taken up in it. The philosopher loves the truth and is fond of it; because of that love he is now reckoned a friend, having been a genuine servant. The beginning of knowledge is wondering at things, as Plato says in the Theaetetus; and Matthew, urging the same in the Traditions, says, “Wonder at what is in front of you,” laying this down first as the foundation of the knowledge that comes after. So too it is written in the Gospel according to the Hebrews: “The one who wonders will reign, and the one who has reigned will rest.” It is impossible, then, for an ignorant man, while he stays ignorant, to do philosophy, since he has not grasped the idea of wisdom; for philosophy is the effort to lay hold of what really is, and of the studies that lead to it. And it does not consist in turning a man into an expert in good habits of conduct; it is knowing how we are to use things, and act, and work, in the measure that a man is made like God — I mean God the Savior — by serving the God of all through the High Priest, the Word, through whom what is truly good and right is seen. Reverence is conduct that fits God and answers to him.

So there are three things our philosopher holds to: first, contemplation; second, the doing of the commands; third, the forming of good men. Where these come together they make the man who truly knows, and if any one of them is missing, the elements of knowledge go lame. That is why Scripture says, and says it divinely: “And the Lord spoke to Moses and said: Speak to the sons of Israel, and say to them, I am the Lord your God. You are not to do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived; and you are not to do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you; you are not to walk in their customs. You shall carry out my judgments and keep my commands and walk in them: I am the Lord your God. And you shall keep all my commandments and do them. The man who does them will live by them. I am the Lord your God.” Whether Egypt and the land of Canaan stand for the world and for deceit, or for sufferings and hardships, the saying shows us what has to be kept away from, and what has to be kept — the things that are divine and not of the world. And when it says, “The man who does them will live by them,” it is declaring both the correcting of the Hebrews themselves and the training and advance of us who are near; it declares their life and ours in one breath. For “those who were dead in their sins have been made alive together with Christ,” by our covenant. By repeating “I am the Lord your God” over and over, Scripture shames us in the way that turns a man back most powerfully. It teaches us to follow the God who gave the commands, and it gently urges us to seek God and to try to know him as far as we can — which is the highest contemplation, the kind that looks into the greatest mysteries, the real knowledge, the knowledge that argument cannot pull down. This alone is the knowledge that belongs to wisdom, and right conduct is never parted from it. [af]