The Way That Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life

by Gilbert Meilaender

Paperback, 2006

Status

Available

Collection

Description

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.… (more)

Publication

Wm. B. Eerdmans-Lightning Source (2006), Edition: NEW STIFF WRAPS, 184 pages

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Media reviews

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
As this review has shown, Meilaender has overall rendered a great service in The Way That Leads There. So who should read it? First, ethicists contemplating moral issues will find a relevant conversation partner in Augustine. secondly, students of history and Augustine may celebrate and wrestle
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with some relevant moral ideas from the bishop of Hippo. Finally, Christians in general will discover its devotional content nourishing. Though "devotional" in the twenty-first century might be construed as "light," Meilaender's work is anything but that. Rather, it is a feast of thought to be read (like Lewis or Augustine) in a slow and contemplative manner.
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Rating

(1 rating; 4)
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