Abstract:
After some introductory remarks on the role of fear in religious discourse
and on the vocabulary, Plutarch's treatise On Superstition
is analysed according to its rhetorical outline. Questions of authenticity are
discussed and answered by locating The essay in Plutarch's early career.
Then we ask for the place of ''fear of God" in biblical teaching and
theology, compare it to Plutarch and show some limits in Plutarch's
youthful thinking, which doesn't yet pay due respect to the life values of
myth. We conclude with two New Testament passages, Romans 8:15,
masterfully interpreted by Martin Luther, and 1 John 4:17f, excellently
explained by 20th century's Swiss theologian and psychologian Oskar
Pfister, and we show that these texts are propagating "belief without fear".
