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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.
Gilbert Meilaender
Gilbert Meilaender (PhD, Princeton University) is senior research professor at Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana. He was a Ramsey Fellow at the Center for Ethics and Culture, University of Notre Dame, from 2014 to 2018. He has written numerous books, including Bioethics: A Primer for Christians, Friendship: A Study in Theological Ethics, The Theory and Practice of Virtue, and Should We Live Forever? The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging. He also writes frequently for First Things.
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