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In Gk. aidōs and Lat. reverentia, reverence is regard, respect, veneration, awe. It signifies being gripped by the revered object and restrained by awe. The original idea is that of astonishment and stillness in the presence of the divine. It is a basic religious experience, the substratum of all such experience (F. Heiler). It is also the basis of the moral consciousness (E. Brunner). It rests on direct feeling (not a natural disposition) but is also a historically conditioned attitude. It forms …

The so-called means of grace ( media gratiae, or, sometimes among Lutherans, organa gratiae et salutis, “instruments of grace and salvation”) are the means by which, revealed in the power of the Holy Spirit, God offers grace in Jesus Christ and awakens and strengthens faith. When we refer to these means, we think especially of the symbolic and sensory manifestation of grace in the Word and in the reality of the world, the external Word (i.e., Holy Scripture) as the presupposition of the understanding of the internal Word (i.e., of the Holy Spirit). If, then, what is said about th…