Over the last three decades, George Pattison has emerged as one of the English-speaking world's foremost theologians. After a stint as an Anglican vicar, he came to prominence in the 1990s, principally as a Kierkegaard scholar, but also as one engaged in wider conversations about existentialism, phenomenology, postmodernity, and theological aesthetics. Such interests were still somewhat unconventional in British academic life at the time, but Pattison's 2004 appointment as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford signaled a shifting of the tide. Since then, he has continued to develop his unique approach to philosophical theology—authoring books as diverse as Heidegger on Death: A Critical Theological Essay (2013) and Eternal God/Saving Time (2015)—even as he assumed the 1640 Chair of Divinity at Glasgow in 2013.

This brief sketch of Pattison's career is necessary in this context because it sheds light on his most recent monograph, A Phenomenology of the Devout Life. Some, no doubt, will consider it a peculiar book. At first glance, it is about what St. Frances de Sales called la vie dévote, defined here as “a form of practice in which the whole person, inclusive of affective, volitional, intellectual, and social commitments, is engaged and which is extended over what is envisaged as a lifetime of devotion” (51–52). Indeed, Pattison analyzes not only de Sales’ thought, but he also explores the insights of other major figures in the tradition of devotional literature, from François Fénelon to Søren Kierkegaard. One might assume, then, that the book intends to analyze the history or concepts of Christian spirituality, but, as the title adumbrates, Pattison's task is actually broadly philosophical. That is to say, although he “is concerned with understanding the meaning of God in human life,” he also wants to show that “that concern arises out of and is articulated in relation to human life and human understanding and does not … presume upon the acceptance of any propositions … accessible only by virtue of divine revelation” (7–8). Thus, Pattison arrives at the basic question animating his project: “If we allow our agenda to be set by life as we experience and live it, where and how can we find a truth by which to regulate that agenda?” (13).

It should be noted that Pattison does not set out to fully answer this question in A Phenomenology of the Devout Life. After all, this is but the first volume of his tripartite series A Philosophy of Christian Life, wherein he also plans to explore religious “intentionality in the prism of language” (Part 2) and, finally, the social implications of Christian conceptions of love (Part 3)—an overarching trajectory that “can be plotted as a movement from desire, through word, to love” (1–2). In a sense, then, it is impossible to render a definitive verdict on A Phenomenology of the Devout Life because its primary goal is to clarify the matter at hand rather than to draw particular conclusions. And yet, the overarching scope of Pattison's project is so ambitious that its first volume demands attention, both for its pellucid and perceptive sketch of “how the devout self arrives at an understanding of itself as shaped in all the dimensions of its manifold being” (205) and as propaedeutic to what is to come.