The Way That Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Saint Augustine formulated the classic Christian understanding of desire, that “our hearts are restless until they rest in God.” Gilbert Meilaender maintains that this frustrated desire lies at the heart of our existence. In The Way That Leads There he takes Augustine as a “conversation partner” for exploring subjects that human beings have wrestled with for centuries -- desire, duty, politics, sex, and grief. Meilaender’s carefully reasoned, insightful work rescues Augustine from many of our misperceptions and interacts meaningfully with both C. S. Lewis and Catholic moral theology, generating insights on difficult topics. The picture of life that emerges in these pages is one of incompleteness, of our inability to perfect and unify our moral lives. Yet this inability is not a cause for despair; it is rather a call to look, with Augustine, to God as the source and object of our greatest desire.
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- Takes Augustine as a “conversation partner” for exploring difficult topics.
- Encourages to look to God as the source and object of our greatest desire.
- Studies subjects like desire, duty, politics, sex, and grief.
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Desire
- Duty
- Politics
- Sex
- Grief
- Method
- Index
There is no Christian thinker writing in English today that I enjoy reading more than Gilbert Meilaender, and this new book is no exception. In the company of St. Augustine he ponders what it means to live a mature Christian life. The charm is found not only in Meilaender’s wisdom (winnowed by experience) but also in his inventive selection of passages from Augustine (often unnoticed by others) and in the leisurely pace of his prose. Nothing is hurried as Meilaender patiently teases out the issues without rushing to conclusions. This is a book that invites reflection.
—Robert Louis Wilken, University of Virginia
A splendid account of the shape of Christian identity and the Christian moral life. With characteristic wisdom and insight, Gilbert Meilaender develops the continuities and tensions present in our loves for God and neighbor, as they are made manifest in political life, sexual bonds, and the experience of grief. One of our finest Christian ethicists has written his finest book to date.
—William Werpehowski, Villanova University
This book will be of help to those really seeking to understand what it is to be fully human.
—Expository Times