RECAPITULATION

In pausing before the final phase of a journey, it may be helpful to reflect briefly on the steps taken so far. I have been underlining in a number of ways the role of the spiritual dimension – the central importance of structured programmes of moral and personal askesis – for understanding what it means to adhere to a religion. Spiritual praxis, it has been argued, is prior to metaphysical doctrine in various important respects. In the first place, it is temporally prior, because as with any process of acculturation, we characteristically begin the long process of learning and adaptation before we are in a position to scrutinize the theoretical basis of what we are taught. In the second place, it is heuristically prior, prior in the order of discovery, because religion is one of many important areas of human experience where personal involvement scores over impersonal detachment in the way it facilitates understanding: just as the detached scrutiny that is appropriate for science will not work in personal relationships, so in the religious domain we can often be blocked from grasping the salient features unless a certain degree of receptivity and openness is already present.