The Peace-Bringing Virtue of Godly Fear

Yesterday I asked our friends about godly fear.  You responded very well.

I am particularly interested in the suggestion in the first one that “fear of man”, i.e., caring what people think about you, is an imperfect or incomplete form of love.

And more
Zen and Ugly M’s suggestions made a nice natural combination, where Godly Fear is  “fear” that inspires action and the opposite of Godly Fear is foolish confidence that inspires inaction.  Complacency probably.  This really seems promising.

The same chart, but more analytical

The discussion from our commenters about desire and ambition fits in with the distinction between action and inaction, but how remains to be seen.

One thought I had is that ‘godly fear’ may not be an analytic virtue at all, meaning that if you think of ‘virtue’ as a big sphere of different attributes, Godly Fear may not be spot in that sphere at all.  Rather, I wonder if its a relational virtue–a number of analytic virtues  combined into our attitude and relation towards God.  For example, obedience and love would be analytic virtues whereas filial piety (obedience + love towards parents) would be a relational virtue.  If godly virtue is relational, the other virtues and vices in the set should be relational also.

Without intending to, it looks like I  have found a place for the comments about desire and ambition and  “concupiscence” (satanic desire).

“Fear of man” from the first chart is relational, so here’s a version where the whole thing is cast into relational terms.  I really like this one.

Though its just a blog and online chatting, I believe that we achieved something like counseling together in the Spirit with this conversation.  I have been enlightened and uplifted.