ABSTRACT
In contemporary French currents of phenomenology that flow through to the wider discourse of philosophy of religion there have been theological currents at play for some time, whose collective force is able to keep at bay those impulses that might otherwise expunge from the horizon of experience its spiritual traces. Philosophers of religion, depending on certain metaphysical commitments, may want to reconfigure the relationship between philosophy and theology into an antithetical imperative. Explication of such a spiritual exercise is consequent upon the discourse of phenomenology. The reduction yields something like a lectio divina or meditative spiritual exercise. The type of piety typically associated with sacramental spirituality belongs to the pathos of the ancient world; Christians sought to raise the theological order of the “heavens and the earth” above scientific suspicion. An Augustinian spiritual exercise can unfold as a theological mood, an affection embodied in the heart which dilates the horizon of experience beyond the constrictive immanence of our age.
