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Bonaventure was a great pastor and preacher, and also a very effective teacher. His writing shows clarity and conviction, and his authority arose from his profound grasp of Scripture and patristic monastic tradition. The force behind how he wrote sprang from his keen sense of the significance of Francis and Clare and all that flowed from them, not least into his own spiritual life and experience as a person of deep contemplative and mystical prayer.
Way Back to God is a comprehensive conspectus and study of how Bonaventure taught Christian theology and applied it to spiritual life. It is intended to be a guide through most of his writings (though not as a substitute for reading them). It provides a bridge into his thought, and also a remarkable hand-book of Christian theology in its bearing upon spiritual life. Douglas Dales¿ new work enables Bonaventure¿s distinctive spiritual theology to be seen as a whole, as well as making his writings, in Latin or English, accessible and attractive.
About the author
Douglas Dales was from 1984 to 2012 Chaplain of Marlborough College, Wiltshire, and he is now a parish priest in the diocese of Oxford. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and the author of several studies in Anglo-Saxon church history and other areas of theology.
Among his other books are: Alcuin: His Life and Legacy, Alcuin: Theology and Thought, Dunstan: Saint and Statesman, Light to the Isles: Mission and Theology in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Britain and Living Through Dying: The Spiritual Experience of Saint Paul.
