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15 - The Individual’s Relationship with God

An Existentialist Understanding

from Part IV - Forms and Functions of Worship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

By
Sharon Krishek
Edited by
Aaron Segal  and
Samuel Lebens
Aaron Segal
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Samuel Lebens
Affiliation:
University of Haifa, Israel
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Summary

Does the conception of worship – in expressing, as it does, a direct relationship with God – prevent an understanding of love for God as mediated by love for humans? Taking the latter to be an existential model of one’s relationship with God, in this chapter I answer in the negative to the above question by demonstrating the role that worship plays in such a model. To do so, I turn to Kierkegaard’s image of “resting transparently” in God. For Kierkegaard, this image represents what he perceives as the highest possible state of the believer’s relationship with God; a state that is achieved, according to Kierkegaard, when one becomes the self – the individual – that God intends one to be. And how does one become this self? By loving properly the neighbour (that is, another individual). The suggestion I develop in this chapter is that it is the worshipping of God – that is, by being in a state of respect and attendance to God’s will – that directs one in loving properly the neighbour. Hence, it is worship of God that paves the way to fully loving the neighbour and thus to fully loving God.

Keywords

essenceindividualKierkegaardlovepotentialself
Type
Chapter
Information
The Philosophy of Worship
Divine and Human Aspects
 , pp. 278 - 295
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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References

Adams, R. M. (1999). Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics, New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bayne, T., and Nagasawa, Y. (2006). The Grounds of Worship. Religious Studies, 42, 299–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kierkegaard, S. (1980). The Sickness unto Death, trans. Hong, Howard V. and Hong, Edna H., Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kierkegaard, S. (1995). Works of Love, trans. Hong, Howard V. and Hong, Edna H., Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Krishek, S. (2022). Lovers in Essence: A Kierkegaardian Defense of Romantic Love, New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
May, S. (2019). Love: A New Understanding of an Ancient Emotion, New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Smuts, A. (2012). The Power to Make Others Worship. Religious Studies, 48, 221–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swinburne, R. (2016). The Coherence of Theism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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