The presupposition of the use of such concepts is that...

The presupposition of the use of such concepts is that worship is a rational activity (“our reasonable service,” as it is called in the New Testament) and God is defined as an adequate object of worship. Since worship involves a total abasement before and a total obedience to its object, in calling something or someone God I commit myself to obey its or his commandments.

But it does not follow from this, as might be thought, that once I have accepted the practices of worship I am irremediably committed to an incorrigible religious dogmatism. For I can ask of any proposed object of worship, Is this an adequate object?

Among the criteria of adequacy both the power and the knowledge that can be credibly ascribed to the object will appear, and since for any finite identifiable object it will be possible to conceive of some object that is more powerful and knows more, it will always be the case that any finite object is a less worthy object of worship than some other which can be conceived to exist.

The ascent of this particular scale continues indefinitely to the point at which worshipers realize that only a nonfinite object, not identifiable as a particular being, is secure from displacement as God and characterization as mere idol. But, of course, by losing particularity, by becoming in the religious sense infinite, God becomes also questionable. For existence and particularity appear inextricably bound together.

The leap from theism to monotheism prefigures the leap from theism to atheism; but, happily for religion, usually by some thousands of years. Up to this point I have intentionally avoided remarking that among the criteria of adequacy by which the object of worship is judged, moral criteria normally appear. For at this point the first type of answer to the question, Why should I do what God commands?

passes over into the second type of answer, “Because he is good.” Since this answer has to function as a reason for obedience to God, it follows that good must be defined in terms other than those of obedience to God if we are to avoid a vacuous circularity. It follows that I must have access to criteria of goodness which are independent of my awareness of divinity.

But if I possess such criteria, I am surely in a position to judge of good and evil on my own account, without consulting the divine commandments.