The Religious Adequacy of a Euteleological Theism

Abstract

Abstract This chapter replies to the objection that no coherent sense can be made of key religious practices such as worship and prayer under a non-personalist understanding of theism such as the euteleological one. In particular, a response is given to Brian Leftow’s argument that a non-personal God is not a conceptually appropriate object of worship. This response includes critical discussion of some aspects of an account of worship given by Nicholas Wolterstorff. A positive euteleological account of worship is offered, and defended as religiously viable. Right relationship is at the heart of authentic worship, but, on a euteleological account, this is not to be understood as relationship to or with some other supremely great individual being. Rather, it is right relationship to ‘eutelic’ reality as directed upon realizing the supreme good. Worship, in a broad sense, is a matter of practical commitment to a whole ethos and way of life rooted in a cognitive and affective orientation to reality which places God at the centre (an orientation consistent with reflective understanding that God-as-a-being is a cognitive analogical construction, apt for enabling right human responses to ultimate divine reality). Prayer fits into this picture too, when understood as the work of aligning human wills with the divine will, which a Christian euteleological theism may understand as the exercise of the power of agapē-love. Worship of God, and of God alone, and prayer to God, thus remain well-founded practices under a euteleological understanding of theism.