God, Value, and Ontological Gratitude: On the Axiological Foundations of Worship

Abstract

[Figure: see text]What kind of God is most worthy of worship? This question is historically significant to open, relational, and process theological traditions. In considering this question anew, I advocate a particular axiological approach in light of the deeper question of divine necessity: What is the nature of divine necessity? What reasons or explains God’s existence? Why do God and a world exist at all? Different responses confront us: (1) reasonless brute fact, (2) unrelenting divine power, (3) logical necessity, and (4) utter mystery. Each of these responses fails to ground a God worthy of worship. They also fail to illuminate what worship is. Through resonant insights of John Leslie, Keith Ward, A.C. Ewing, A.N. Whitehead, and Nicolas Rescher, I argue for a fifth response: (5) axiological necessity. Worthiness of worship is only to be assigned to that God whose reason for being is found in the creative supremacy of its own Value. Value thus also reasons the existence of the world, human beings, and human purpose as worshipful beings. The axiological foundations of God and the world constitute worship as “ontological gratitude”—a gratefulness for existence—which manifests itself in a value-creative life.