This book is the result of a series of seminars in which the religious experience has been examined from the phenomenological point of view. The author's purpose is to explore this theme in depth using the account from the Gospel of John of the encounter of Jesus and Nicodemus. As Enzo Paci in his "Nota Finale" observes, this is a dialogue in which a call to action or new birth is proposed in response to a plea for definition or to an inquiry formulated in traditional cultural terms.

Paci's study stems from certain phenomenological propositions of an accomplished lay thinker and is developed by an author who, as a believer, confronts the challenges of the second birth. The study consists of a lively comparative analysis of various themes of Edmund Husserl to some of the major problems which, over the years, have troubled the human conscience and prompted religious thinkers to reexamine the gospel texts in other than the traditional manner.