God Ahead of Us: The Story of Divine Grace

Paul O'Callaghan

Dec 2014 · Fortress Press

About this ebook

 Pope
Francis has stated that his own vocation as a Christian came to him as an
awareness that “God is ahead of us,” that God thinks about us and looks after
us before we even realize it. This is the essence of grace, a love story that
begins with God. The present book is an introduction and exploration of that
story—of the Christian life as not about humans looking for God, but God
seeking us out. The story that unfolds demonstrates that grace is not something
secondary or superficial but primary and constitutive, from crucial beginnings
in election and creation to the divine actions of justification and renewal,
fostering a life of virtue and obedience. Within this context, the book
explores the issues of the relationship of grace and freedom, the dynamics of
justification, the true meaning of merit, life as a son or daughter of God, the
action of the Holy Spirit, the sacraments and the Church, the role of the
ascetical life, and the eschatological horizon of the life of grace. In an
accessible account, the author narrates the doctrine of grace as directed
towards and explained by the fact that God has destined humans to spend
eternity in communion with the Triune creator.

About the author

 Paul O’Callaghan is professor of Christian anthropology at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome and fellow of the Pontifical Academy of Theology. He is the author of The Christological Assimilation of the Apocalypse (2004) and Christ Our Hope: An Introduction to Eschatology (2011), as well as other books and numerous articles in six languages that have been published worldwide. He has also been a participant in the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue on justification, published the book Fides Christi: The Justification Debate (1997), and was involved in the preparation of the 1999 declaration on justification.