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This is a reply to George Pattison's magistral triology on a "Philosophy of Christian Life" – focusing on its second part: "A Rhetorics of the Words" (2019). The paper offers an analysis of the main concept, namely the 'call' or the 'vocation'. This leads to three basic questions concerning the lack of vocation's communal character in Pattison's account; his one-sided inclination to pessimism in his cultural critique; and, the only marginal role that other articulations than the call might play within a "devout life" and its ambivalent authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a reply to George Pattison's magistral triology on a "Philosophy of Christian Life" – focusing on its second part: "A Rhetorics of the Words" (2019). The paper offers an analysis of the main concept, namely the 'call' or the 'vocation'. This leads to three basic questions concerning the lack of vocation's communal character in Pattison's account; his one-sided inclination to pessimism in his cultural critique; and, the only marginal role that other articulations than the call might play within a "devout life" and its ambivalent authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]