Freedom, Grace, and Destiny

Freedom, grace, destiny: these realities form the basic pattern of existence. Yet the modern world has witnessed a radical diminishment, if not an outright loss, of any sense for the unity of existence—even among Christians. This disunity is evident in how “the believer no longer stands with his faith amid the concrete, actual world, and he no longer rediscovers that world in his faith.” In three compelling essays, Guardini closely examines the core concepts of freedom, grace, and destiny, treating the presence of each in everyday experience and then considering them in terms of divine revelation and the illumination it sheds upon the mystery of being. The result is a reunification of what had been fragmented and the realization “that all divisions have only a methodological value and that what really exists is the world and man in the world, as called by God and judged and redeemed.”

First appearing in English translation in 1961, Freedom, Grace, and Destiny stands as a timely recollection of what it means to be human. Moreover, in rescuing these elemental concepts from their modern “distorted, discarded, or diluted” forms—in Flannery O’Connor’s evaluation—Guardini has admirably fulfilled his goal: the presentation of the pattern of Christian existence as a whole.

Paperback. 232 pages.