Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination

by Vigen Guroian

We are, after all, creatures, and our wills, however free they may be, are finite and limited, thus vulnerable to sin and error. Yet MacDonald also maintains that our willing of that which is good, that which is righteous (in the Bible’s speech), is God acting within us. In other words, when a person wills that which is good or righteous, this is by and through God’s grace.14 Therefore, we are bound to say that God begets this willing in us. MacDonald is not finished. Behind this truth about our “ingraced” willing of the good is a deep paradoxical truth: “Because God wills first, man wills also” (my emphasis).15 That is to say, God’s grace, his willing, is antecedent to all of our willings. What is more, no matter whether we ourselves will for good or for ill, it is the will of God that will ultimately prevail in his Creation.