Fear of God
Theophobia
Fear of God may refer to fear itself, and more often refers to a sense of awe and submission toward a deity. Every other entry in this catalogue describes something a person would rather not have. This one describes something several traditions consider a gift, and the difficulty is entirely in the English word.
It sits among the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit in Roman Catholic teaching, and where those gifts are listed in the Roman Rite of Confirmation the name given to this one is wonder and awe in God's presence.
How Hebrew separates the kinds of fear of God
The Hebrew terms most commonly used are yir'at and pachad. The first appearance in the Hebrew Bible is Genesis 22:12, where Abraham is commended for putting his trust in God, and Proverbs 9:10 makes fear of the Lord the beginning of wisdom, with Proverbs 15:33 describing it as the discipline or instruction of wisdom.
Isaiah 11:1 to 3 lists it among the spirits resting on the shoot from the stump of Jesse, alongside wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength and knowledge, and adds a phrase that settles the matter: his delight shall be the fear of the Lord.
Jewish thinkers separated the two senses precisely. Bahya ibn Paquda distinguished a lower fear of punishment from a higher fear of divine glory. Abraham ibn Daud set two things apart. On one side, the fear of being hurt, which is what a snake or a king's justice produces. On the other, the fear that greatness produces, which is what a person feels before somebody exalted who intends them nothing. Maimonides made it a positive commandment, produced by looking at what God has made and done until a person's own smallness registers.
The distinction each of them draws is the same one, and it is the distinction the English word cannot make.
Which Greek word the New Testament uses
The New Testament uses the Greek phobos, meaning fear or horror, throughout, with one exception. In 1 Timothy 2:10 Paul describes women professing theosebeia, which means god-respecting rather than god-fearing.
Robert B. Strimple describes what the phrase encompasses beyond simple fear:
a convergence of awe, reverence, adoration, honour, worship, confidence, thankfulness, love, and, yes, fear
Some translations, including the New International Version, replace fear with reverence.
Mary uses it in the Magnificat, at Luke 1:50, where mercy extends from age to age to those who fear God. Luke 18:1 to 8 uses the phrase as an accusation instead, the judge in the parable being a man with no fear of God and no regard for anybody else.
Why Catholic writers keep correcting the word fear
John Mallon, writing in Inside the Vatican in April 2006, sets out the distinction that recurs across the tradition: servile fear, the fear of getting into trouble, against filial fear, the fear of offending someone one loves. He describes the first as the common misreading.
Jacques Forget, in the Catholic Encyclopedia, describes the gift as filling a person with sovereign respect for God and making them dread, above all things, to offend him. Pope Francis puts it directly, saying the fear of the Lord does not mean being afraid of God, since God is a Father who always loves and forgives, and calling it no servile fear but a joyful awareness of God's grandeur.
Three writers across a century making the same correction indicates a phrase that reliably misleads.
Catholic theology also names the inverse. The sin of human respect occurs where fear of God is replaced by fear of other people, aiming to please them rather than God, leading to sin. That is the only place in this catalogue where having the wrong fear is itself the offence.
What Otto and Lewis meant by the numinous
Rudolf Otto, the Lutheran theologian, coined numinous for the kind of fear one has toward God, and C. S. Lewis described it in The Problem of Pain.
Lewis is precise about what it is not: fear of the numinous is not the fear one feels for a tiger, or even for a ghost. Awe is the substance of it, and what a person feels is wonder together with a drawing back, an inability to meet what has arrived, and the impulse to go face down before it. Love is where it comes from.
Not a tiger and not a ghost is the useful formulation. A tiger is a danger and a ghost is an uncanny presence, and this is neither.
What taqwa means in Islam and the Bahá'í writings
Taqwa is the Islamic term for being conscious and cognisant of God, of truth and of rational reality, rendered as piety and as fear of God, and it appears frequently in the Quran. Al-Muttaqin refers to those who practise it, described by Ibn Abbas as believers who avoid associating partners with God and who work in his obedience.
The Bahá'í passage puts the heart under the same requirement, to be cleared of selfishness and appetite, on the grounds that fear of God is what the saints and the unitarians have always fought with.
What theophobia would mean
Nothing in the material describes a clinical fear of God: no case, no study, no prevalence figure, no instrument. What exists is a theological category with a fifteen-hundred-year argument attached about how to read the word fear in it.
Scrupulosity is where the clinical version lives, and it is a separate entry with an obsessive-compulsive structure and its own literature. The distinction between the two is exactly the distinction Bahya ibn Paquda drew: fear of punishment against fear of glory.
Told apart
Often confused with Fear of God
- Fear of Religious SinScrupulosity is the clinical condition, with obsessions, compulsions and a worse prognosis than other obsessive-compulsive presentations. The distinction between it and reverence is the same one Bahya ibn Paquda drew between fear of punishment and fear of glory, and it is why clinicians consult clergy.
- Fear of Being Stared AtFreud called scopophobia a dread of the evil eye and connected it to the function of observing and criticising the self, which is the psychoanalytic version of being under a gaze that judges.
Common questions
Questions about Theophobia
- Does fear of God mean being afraid of God?
- In the traditions examined here, no. Pope Francis states it directly: the fear of the Lord does not mean being afraid of God, since God is a Father who always loves and forgives, and it is no servile fear but a joyful awareness of God's grandeur. Roman Catholicism counts it among the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, called wonder and awe in God's presence at Confirmation.
- What is the difference between servile and filial fear?
- John Mallon set it out in Inside the Vatican in April 2006: servile fear is the fear of getting into trouble, and filial fear is the fear of offending someone one loves. He describes the first as the common misreading. Jacques Forget describes the gift as making a person dread, above all things, to offend God.
- How did Jewish thinkers distinguish the senses?
- Consistently and early. Bahya ibn Paquda separated a lower fear of punishment from a higher fear of divine glory. Abraham ibn Daud separated fear of harm, like fear of a snake bite or a king's punishment, from fear of greatness, like respect for an exalted person who would do no harm. Maimonides made it a positive commandment arising from contemplating God's works.
- What is the numinous?
- Rudolf Otto's term for the kind of fear felt toward God, described by C. S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain. Lewis is clear about what it is not: not the fear felt for a tiger, or even for a ghost. It is filled with awe, involving wonder and a certain shrinking, and a sense of inadequacy before such a visitant. It comes out of love.
- Is there a version that counts as a sin?
- Yes, and it is the inverse. Catholic theology names the sin of human respect, which occurs where fear of God is replaced by fear of other people, aiming to please them rather than God, and leading to sin. It is the only place in this catalogue where having the wrong fear is itself the offence.
- Is theophobia a clinical condition?
- Nothing in the material describes one: no case, no study, no prevalence figure and no instrument. Scrupulosity is where the clinical version lives, with obsessions, compulsions and its own research literature, and the line between it and reverence is exactly the line the theologians drew.
Added 2026-08-23 · Revised 2026-08-26
Nearby in the catalogue
Related entries
- Fear of Religious SinOnly somebody inside the tradition can tell devout practice from compulsion, so clinicians work with clergy. Its prognosis is worse than other OCD cases.
- Fear of Being Stared AtA psychiatric journal described it in 1906 better than most sources since. It is classed as both a social and a specific phobia, and has never been counted on its own.
- Fear of Being Cursed to DeathA man fell ill after a bone was pointed at him and recovered the moment he was told it was a mistake. Cannon argued in 1942 that fear alone can kill.
- Fear of Being HexedTwo colonial statutes, in 1748 and 1749, record a fear of hexing by Black folk practitioners. The tradition they targeted was mostly used for protection.
- Fear of GhostsWikipedia calls fear of ghosts very common and names no survey. What stands in for a research record: a Wari' spectre, a Papuan funeral racket, one philosopher.
- Fear of the Evil EyeAmulets against it go back five thousand years, and the Latin charm used to deflect it gives the English word fascinate. Where it is absent is the map.