Before we cross the final threshold to face the ultimate test of the Christian Stoic—the meditation on death (Memento Mori)—we must address the emotion that makes death so terrifying in the first place. We must examine fear.
For the ancient Stoics, fear was a disease of the mind. It was an irrational anticipation of a future evil. Because the Stoic believed that true evil could only exist in one’s own moral choices—and never in external circumstances like poverty, pain, or death—fearing the future was a mathematical error. The Stoic Sage was entirely fearless.
But when we turn to the Scriptures, we find a jarring paradox. From Genesis to Revelation, God repeatedly commands His people, “Fear not.” Yet, in the very same breath, the Bible insists that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”[1]
In this article, we will examine the Stoic attempt to conquer fear through logic, and discover how the Christian Stoic achieves true courage not by eliminating fear, but by reorienting it entirely.
The Stoic Cure: The Logic of Control
Seneca diagnosed fear as a byproduct of hope. He argued that we only fear the future because we are clinging to a desired outcome.
“Cease to hope,” he says, “and you will cease to fear.”… I am not surprised that they proceed in this way; each alike belongs to a mind that is in suspense, a mind that is fretted by looking forward to the future. But the chief cause of both these ills is that we do not adapt ourselves to the present, but send our thoughts a long way ahead.[2]
The Stoic cure for fear is to drastically shrink your horizon to the present moment and to perfectly align your desires with the uncontrollable will of Fate. If you do not care whether you lose your job, you cannot fear the layoff. If you do not care whether you live or die, you cannot fear the executioner.
The Stoic achieves fearlessness by deciding that nothing outside of his own mind actually matters.
The Christian Paradox: Fearing the Right Thing
The Christian agrees with the Stoic that a man paralyzed by worldly fear is a slave. But the Christian fundamentally disagrees on the cure.
You do not cure fear with pure logic. You cure a lesser fear with a greater fear. The 19th-century Scottish minister Thomas Chalmers preached a famous sermon called The Expulsive Power of a New Affection, arguing that the only way to dislodge a sinful love from the heart is to introduce a greater, holier love. The same principle applies to fear.
Jesus Christ gave the ultimate, anti-Stoic prescription for anxiety in Matthew 10:28, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Notice that Jesus does not say, “Fear nothing.” He says, “Fear God.” He replaces horizontal fear (the fear of men, pain, or loss) with vertical fear (the awe, reverence, and terrifying majesty of the Almighty).
If your greatest fear is the disapproval of your boss, you will be a coward in the workplace. If your greatest fear is the disapproval of the mob, you will compromise the truth to fit in. But if your greatest fear is the Holy God of the universe, you are suddenly liberated from the tyranny of men.
The man who fears God most, fears men least.
Filial vs. Servile Fear
We must make a crucial theological distinction here. When the Bible commands the Christian to “fear God,” it is not commanding the cowering, desperate terror of a slave waiting to be beaten. Theologians call that servile fear.
Because of the blood of Christ, the Christian is perfectly justified. There is no condemnation left for us.[3]Therefore, the fear we possess is filial fear—the fear of a devoted son.
Imagine a boy whose father is a fierce, righteous king. The boy does not fear that his father will murder him in his sleep; he knows his father loves him completely. But the boy does fear dishonoring his father’s name. He stands in awe of his father’s power. He knows his father is not to be trifled with.
That is the fear of the Lord. It is a trembling awe before the absolute holiness, sovereignty, and power of God, mediated through the secure love of adoption.
Courage: The Fruit of Holy Fear
The Stoic tries to manufacture courage by convincing himself the danger isn’t real. The Christian produces courage by remembering that the danger is real, but God is infinitely greater.
When the Jewish authorities commanded Peter and John to stop preaching the Gospel, they were threatening them with imprisonment, torture, and death. A Stoic would have faced them with cold apathy. But Peter and John faced them with blazing courage born of holy fear, ” But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”[4]
They did not say, “Your whips do not matter.” They said, “Your authority is eclipsed.”
Courage, for the Christian Stoic, is not the absence of emotion. It is the Fear of the Lord walking into the fire. It is what prompted the great Scottish Reformer John Knox to stand before the tyrannical Mary, Queen of Scots, without flinching. At Knox’s funeral, a fellow nobleman famously said of him: “Here lies a man who neither flattered nor feared any flesh.” He did not fear flesh, because he feared God.
Conclusion: Ready for the End
The Stoic pursues a hollow fearlessness. The Christian pursues a holy fear.
When you learn to stand in awe of the Creator, the threats of the creature lose their teeth. You are freed to obey God, to speak the truth, and to protect the vulnerable, regardless of the cost to your reputation or your comfort.
And once you have been liberated from the fear of men, you are finally ready to face the ultimate fear of every mortal creature. In our next article, we will cross the final threshold of practical philosophy. We will take up the ancient discipline of Memento Mori, and discover how the Christian Stoic prepares his mind to die well.
Key Terms
- Servile Fear: The cowardly, paralyzing terror of a slave dreading punishment from a cruel master. This is the fear that 1 John 4:18 says is “cast out” by perfect love.
- Filial Fear: The reverential awe, respect, and holy trembling of a beloved son before a righteous father. This is the “fear of the Lord” that is the beginning of wisdom.
- The Expulsive Power of a Greater Fear: The concept that worldly fears (anxiety, fear of man, fear of poverty) are driven out of the human heart not by cold logic, but by the overwhelming, consuming awe of God.
[1] Proverbs 9:10
[2] Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, trans. Richard Gummere (Williamn Heinemann, 1918), 5.7-8 quoting an unknown and lost writing of Hecato
[3] Romans 8:1
[4] Acts 4:19-20