En Gud värdig tillbedjan

En filosofisk analys av tillbedjan, panteism och det gudomligas personlighet

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to widen the discussion on worship and question the assumption that only a personal God can be worthy of worship. Within philosophy of religion, the contemporary debate on worship axiomatically assumes that only a personal God is worthy of worship and a conception of God tends to only be regarded as religiously adequate if the god in question is worthy of worship. In this paper, I focus on monistic non-personal pantheism: a conception of the divine as a non-personal Unity. The analysis looks to the "radical model" of worship outlined by George Chryssides and the theory of the numinous by Rudolf Otto. The radical model for worship does not accept that only a personal being can be worthy of worship. The article shows that Otto's theory of the numinous can be used to bridge the gap between non-personal, and personal, conceptions of God/the divine. In other words, even if we accept Otto's theory of the holy and the numinous we cannot draw the conclusion that only a personal God can be worthy of worship.