In ‘The grounds of worship’, Tim Bayne and Yujin Nagasawa [henceforth ‘the authors’] considered various possibilities as to what might ground an obligation to worship God.Footnote ¹ The authors rejected a number of these, concluding, ‘We have examined four accounts of why it might be that we have obligations to worship God, and have argued that none is successful.’Footnote ² Benjamin Crowe replied to the authors, defending grounds of worship. In turn, the authors replied to Crowe.Footnote ³

The purpose of this paper is to defend maximal-excellence accounts of the grounds of worship against the major criticism (of such an account) presented by the authors. By responding to the authors' main criticism of maximal-excellence accounts, my goal is to suggest that a maximal-excellence account (as, e.g., discussed by Crowe) can succeed. Though I do not defend or set out my own maximal-excellence account, I think that it is important to see where the authors' criticism fails. In responding to Crowe, the authors write:

I suggest that the authors are mistaken in the following sense: maximal-excellence accounts can ground an obligation to worship God without lesser degrees of excellence grounding lesser obligations to worship lesser entities. To see why, I introduce the concept of threshold obligations (TOs). A TO is an obligation that arises only when a property is possessed beyond a certain degree. Thus, TOs act not in a continuous fashion, more in a digital (on-off) fashion.Footnote ⁵ Let us consider several examples. I offer these to demonstrate that TOs exist, not to show precisely how a threshold obligation to worship God would be structured.

First, a child refuses to eat his peas at lunch. At 4pm he complains that he is hungry. The parent may have no obligation whatsoever to feed the child, and is perfectly justified in saying, ‘You will wait to eat until dinner’. However, if the child were hungry past a certain degree (perhaps where the child is in moderate to severe pain, or where medical problems might arise), then there would be an obligation to feed the child. I am suggesting that the obligation to feed a child is a TO, where the obligation only arises when the child is hungry beyond a certain degree. At low levels of hunger, no obligation is generated.

Let us consider a second, more fantastic example. The Martians invade. They demand that we send the smartest human to Mars to compete in an intelligence contest. If the human wins, Earth will be spared. In such a case, humans must determine who is the smartest and send that person to Mars. Note that though maximal intelligence generates an obligation to go to Mars, lower levels of intelligence do not generate any obligations whatsoever. The obligation to go to Mars only arises when intelligence is possessed past a certain degree, and in this case only when intelligence is possessed to a maximal degree.Footnote ⁶

I present these examples to suggest that TOs exist. I invite the reader to think of additional examples. The key question then is: Is worship a TO with respect to the property of excellence? That is, does the obligation to worship only arise in the presence of a sufficiently excellent being or object? An analysis of worship suggests that it is a TO. For example, worship has as a component awe. As the authors write, ‘Worship also involves affective and emotional attitudes such as awe’.Footnote ⁷ Awe involves strong (overwhelming) feelings, and is properly felt in the presence of the sublime or extremely powerful. Then, as awe is not properly experienced in the presence of lesser beings, and as worship involves awe, worship is not properly experienced in the presence of lesser beings. Consider the following scale of excellence:

E_min is minimal excellence. E_max is maximal excellence. T is the threshold of excellence past which awe is the proper response. It follows that worship can only occur to the right of T. The important point is that properties can ground an obligation to worship God without lesser degrees of those properties grounding lesser obligations to worship; there is no worship to the left of T because there is no awe to the left of T.

Then, to move towards a more realistic account of worship, note that clearly awe is not sufficient for worship. The Grand Canyon inspires awe, but should not be worshipped. Other excellences are needed (this list may include holiness, goodness, knowledge, power, etc.). In each case, there is a minimum level of each excellence that is needed is order to ground worship. It may also only be proper to worship a person. Then, only persons who are beyond the threshold on every needed excellence should be worshipped. How many such beings are there? I see two ways to answer this question, and neither seems contradictory (at the least, a contradiction would need to be demonstrated). First, perhaps beings such as angels and saints should be worshipped, if such beings are beyond the threshold on all required excellences. The picture that emerges is similar to the picture above,Footnote ⁸ where, on this view, angels and saints would be to the right of the threshold, T.

Let us consider a second, more standard, view, one that makes it obligatory to worship only God. Note that there is no ‘step down’ from God. A being identical to God but who knows, e.g., one less proposition, does not yield a slightly lesser being than God; rather such a being does not compare favourably to God at all, lacking perfection and simplicity. The picture that emerges is different from that above:Footnote ⁹

Excellence can grow without bound to the left of T, just as the finite positive integers grow without bound. But God is infinite, perfect, and simple, which is radically different than any finite entity. The threshold, T, thus separates God and all other beings; only God deserves worship. Crowe suggests, following Gregory of Nyssa, that ‘the beauty and goodness of God are incommensurably superior to those of created things, to the extent that they no longer really constitute the same properties’.Footnote ¹⁰ I suggest that the importance of the incommensurable superiority of God is not that the properties of God differ from the properties of lesser beings; rather the importance of the incommensurable superiority of God (in the context of worship) is that God is clearly beyond the threshold, T, where worship is obligatory (on either picture, above).

Shifting gears away from maximal-excellence accounts, note that when the authors consider creation-based groundings of the obligation to worship God, they write, ‘If our dependence on God gives us an obligation to worship God, it ought to follow that our dependence on our parents, our friends, and family, even our society will generate obligations to worship these individuals.’Footnote ¹¹ But by recognizing TOs, we see that this conclusion does not follow. Massive (or, total) dependence can ground an obligation to worship without lesser degrees of dependence grounding lesser obligations to worship. Thus, it important to recognize and understand TOs whether one wishes to defend a maximal-excellence account or a creation-based account of the grounds of the obligation to worship God. Crowe finds these two accounts ‘more attractive than the others’.Footnote ¹² In this paper, I have suggested that Crowe's arguments (and, especially, his defence of maximal-excellence accounts) are not undermined by the authors' main response to his arguments.

To conclude, the authors write, ‘we have obligations to worship God if and only if we have obligations to worship those human beings who possess these good-making features’.Footnote ¹³ By arguing that worship is a TO with respect to excellence, I have argued that the authors' claim is false. I thus hope to have undermined a major criticism that the authors raised against maximal-excellence accounts. Maximal excellence can ground an obligation to worship God without lesser degrees of excellence grounding lesser degrees of obligation to worship. And I see nothing incoherent in thinking that true worship only arises in the presence of a maximally excellent (moral, good, holy, knowledgeable, powerful, etc.) being, that is, God.Footnote ^14,15