Fencing Bear at Prayer

"This may seem the greatest paradox of all.  The most liberating act of free, unconditional grace demands that the recipient give up control of his or her life.  Is that a contradiction?  No, not if you remember the points of Chapters 3 and 9.  We are not in control of our lives.  We are all living for something and we are controlled by that, the true lord of our lives.  If it is not God, it will endlessly oppress us.  It is only grace that frees us from the slavery of self that lurks even in the middle of morality and religion .  Grace is only a threat to the illusion that we are free, autonomous selves, living life as we choose. "The gospel makes it possible to have such a radically different life.  Christians, however, often fail to make use of the resources of the gospel to lives the lives they are capable of in Christ.  It is critical for anyone reading this book to recognize this fundamental difference between the gospel ["salv...

Prof. Delbanco is describing the role of grace in the process of education as it was understood by the Puritan founders of our collegiate tradition, particularly as it is (or should be) dedicated to the psychological and ethical growth of students: "More than achieving the competence to solve problems and perform complex tasks, education means attaining and sustaining curiosity and humility.  It means growing out of an embattled sense of self into a more generous view of life as continuous self-reflection in light of new experience, including the witnessed experience of others. "With these ends in view, Puritans spoke almost indistinguishably about teaching and preaching .  Consider John Cotton, arguably the leading minister of New England's first generation...  By his voice and arguments, but most of all by his manifest commitment to the impossible yet imperative task of aligning his own life with models of virtue that he found (mainly) in scripture, he was mentor to...