I had this mad idea to preach a a series of three sermons on linked pairs of words viz:
Hope and Fear
Love and Hate
Faith and Doubt
The idea being that rather than seeing these as polar opposites, one bad the other good, they actually exist in some kind of tension. Insterestingly I discovered today one of the Hebrew words usually translated 'hope' means 'twist' or 'cord' or 'tension' cue spooky music.
Anyway, I naively thought that somewhere in one of my numerous general theology books would be something on fear. Nah. Nothing. Not a sausage. Not even 'fear of the Lord'.
So, here's the request for help:
Can anyone point me at some constructive theological writing on any of
Fear
Hate
Doubt
It's probably too late for this week's service on hope and fear, though I have managed to find some stuff I can work with, but any or all ideas welcome.
Also more spooky music as I found Stan Grenz expressing the 'same but different' ideas I'd used over Easter in a part of a book I'd never read before. I love it when that happens.
Answers to the usual address!
Comments
On fear see Scott Bader-Saye’s Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2007)
Lots of older stuff on 'the fear of the Lord' - Puritan sermons and the like. Andy's recommendation is good.
On hate, Robert Beckford's *God of the Rhatid: Redeeming Rage* comes pretty close. And actually, at ground level, some of the stuff in Rob Bell's latest is helpful - God hates violence and injustice, and so violence and injustice are excluded from the Kingdom, is the basic line.
Doubt - if you have a collection of the BMJ, there were a couple of articles 6-7 years back on doubt, the latter one quoting Pat Took very extensively; Pat was (as always) excellent. It's a theme Barth dealt with constructively, but I can't put my finger on where from memory - perhaps *Evangelical Theology*?
I like the idea for the sermon series...