What is Axiology and Why Is It Important to the Christian Faith?

The Origin of Christmas  |  7:55

What is Axiology and Why Is It Important

to the Christian Faith?

How is Value & Worth Related to Normative Ethics?

by R.E. Slater

Yesterday I put up ten or so articles on topics which in my mind seemed related to one another. Briefly, they dealt with axiology, ethics, evolutionary psychology, and evolutionary consciousness. Overall I wanted to ask the question "How do we give value or worth to someone or something we deem important to us in some way?" This is the study of axiology. And secondly, when forming valuative judgments, "How do we show or display those attitudes, behaviors or demeanors to those around us?" This is the study of ethics.

By placing the sciences of evolutionary consciousness and psychology in juxtaposition with the philosophies of axiology and ethics we can begin to ask the question of all global societies - both ancient and modern - as to how our inner values and outward acts work to resolve the tensions between adaptive human behaviors yo-yo'ing between loving attitudes and actions v. unloving attitudes and actions. Said another way, what does our "mindful" human behavior tell us about ourselves and our societies when overlooking just-and-fair treatment towards those we do not value (re people, places, things, or nature)?

Conclusion to Series: Process Christian Axiology


What is Axiology and Why Is It Important to the Christian Faith?

What Is Axiology?

How Did Consciousness Evolve?

Evolutionary Psychology

The Axiology of Theism

Ethics, Part 7 - Applied Ethics

Ethics, Part 6 - Western Ethics: 20th Century and Forward

Ethics, Part 5 - The Continental Tradition

Ethics, Part 4 - The British Tradition

Ethics, Part 3 - Ethics in the New Testament to the Reformation

Ethics, Part 2 - Ancient and Classical Greece

Ethics, Part 1 - Origin, Middle East, India, China

DEFINITIONS

AXIOLOGY: Is the Philosophy of Value or Worth

Axiology is the study of the nature of value and valuation, and of the kinds of things that are valuable: "One of the central questions in axiology is this: What elements can contribute to the intrinsic value of a state of affairs?"

Used in a sentence: "All consequentialists start with an axiology which tells us what things are valuable or fitting to desire."

META-ETHICS: Is the Philosophy of Morality, Language & Judgments

Meta-ethics is the philosophical study of morality, or what morality is, rather than what is "moral". It is the branch of analytic philosophy that explores the nature of moral values, language, and judgments. Meta-ethics is also known as "second-order" moral theorizing, to distinguish it from "first-order" normative theory, which focuses on what is moral.

Meta-ethics asks questions like:

• What is the nature of moral judgments?
• Can moral judgments be assessed as true or false?
• What is the connection between moral judgments and motivation?
• What is the relationship between values, reasons for action, and human motivation?
• How do we learn about moral facts?

Meta-ethics is concerned with the metaphysical, epistemological, semantic, and psychological presuppositions of moral thought. It's different from normative ethics, which is concerned with what practices are right and wrong.

Why is axiology important?

How is 'value & worth' related to normative ethics? 

Since this is a Christian site more than a purely "academic site" (though I strive to bring relevant! academic discussions into this site at all times... pun intended!) I am always curious as to how Christians pick-and-choose which value judgments to follow-and-enforce while claiming God, or the Bible, has instructed their religious understanding, beliefs and healthy - or, unhealthy - actions and mindsets.

Which brings up another question: "Does God have an axiology or not?" Because if God does, then it should be shown by God's ethical responses in the bible towards conscious, sentient, life... would it not? Otherwise, we should begin to suspect that even as homo homo sapiens (the most recent version of homo spaiens) were evolving in their consciousness (sic, psychologically, sociologically, and biologically) even so was modern man evolving in his cultural and religious consciousness. Thus we read in the bible of the many horrendous things ancient man did to one another in the name of God.

By the time we get to Jesus' day we find him "erasing all the erroneous religious teachings of God" from the Jewish Old Testament oral and written histories down to one or two foundational matters.... What were they? In a word, "Love God, Love your neighbor. Let all other considerations be derived from believing God is Love."

Jesus then was stating that in opposition to the Jewish narratives teaching of a terrifyingly horrendous War-God who added up the people's sins in order to count up judgment against them, that God is unlike that God. Rather, Jesus' God was loving and lovingly just in response to our responses towards one another (including how we wisely conducted ourselves towards the natural realm re ecological rhythm and balance).

Could this be then a reason today's modern Christian might say that in humanity's continual evolution we can also be said to be evolving in our religious understanding of the kind of God we think is out there? If this God is full of wrath and judgment than woe be upon us... but if this God is full of love and comportment than its high time our religious faiths being to show lovingkindness to one another (and yes, this is an indictment against all churches past and present who have not loved).

Let me go further. Let me review with you a few examples of loving mindsets and behaviours. Let us look at what Jesus and the early disciples taught at the start of the Christian era as different from their traditional Jewish compatriots who taught of a God of legalism, guilt, manipulation, and injustice:

• Firstly, in the Lord's prayer Jesus prays that we learn to forgive each our debts and to do likewise with all our debtors": "And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors." - Jesus, Matthew 6.12 (NASB)

• On another occasion a tax-man was so overwhelmed by Jesus' discussion on charity and generosity that he decided to repent of his former ways and make all right with his debtors: "But Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, 'Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I am giving to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone, I will give back four times as much.' And Jesus said to those that stood nearby and said to Zaccheus, 'Today salvation has come to your house, because you too are a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.'" - Jesus, Luke 19.1-10 (NASB)

• During his latter church ministry a repentant former Rabbi spoke to his new church-plants that they learn to treat one another lovingly despite the greeds, racisms, discriminations, and inequities they had formerly shown to each other in their community behaviours: "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. All bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander must be removed from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you." - the Apostle Paul, Eph.4.30, Eph.4.31, Eph.4.32 (NASB)

• And again, on another occasion, this same apostle spoke fervently about the kind of God he believed in and had chose to follow... a God who is lovingly reconciling all of creation to God's loving intent: "...[19] Namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their wrongdoings against them; and [so], this God has committed to us the word (ministry or lifestyle) of reconciliation. [20] Therefore, we are [to be] ambassadors for Christ, as though God is making an appeal through us [to urgently act]; we beg you [then] on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God" [and in your reconciliation become reconcilers of all that, or those, around you]. -the Apostle Paul, 2 Cor.5.19; 2 Cor.5.20 (NASB)

Why Is Axiology Important to the Christian Faith?

You can see then that Jesus' ministry, as well as his disciples and followers to come, preached a loving God and a loving lifestyle. His theology's axiology held all creation to have worth and value in-and-of-itself and that all which existed in creation were to show this same kind of attitudinal value. Moreover, these value-based ascriptions were to result in the kind of loving ethics we are to show to one another. Ethics of forethought, thoughtfulness, kindness, mercy, and forgiveness. Ascriptions which God's "church" or "followers" have either succeeded in performing or have failed quite miserably.

Which brings us to Christmas time and the "babe in the manager" story.... If we reject this loving God teaching of Jesus than really, Jesus' crucifixion at the hands of his countrymen and the Romans has no meaning. He was simply a misunderstood political revolutionary who died for a greater good or an ideal cause. However, should the Advent of Jesus be God's declaration that God is love by showing us by God's incarnation (earthly presence) how to love and then to become as creation's blood sacrifice dispelling all wickedness and sin for love's sake, then does Christmas and Easter come sharply into focus.

As followers of Jesus we love because the God we follow loves us. But more than this, this same God empowers his followers to love because God indwells all who repent and claim the name of Jesus. The penitent follower learns to live a cruiciformed life even as Jesus taught. A life which is exceedingly hard but one which realigns itself with how the God of the universe has blessed it's very spiritual DNA in God's self-same image.

So, does God have an axiology? Perhaps, as a Christian, we should rather ask, do we show God's axiology? And does it come out through our ethical living in love with one another? If so, this is the spirit of Christmas as well as the spirit of Easter.

Blessings,

R.E. Slater

December 17, 2024

"Christmas and Easter are the two most important holidays in Christianity, and they celebrate different aspects of the life of Jesus Christ:

"Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus, marking the Incarnation, or God becoming human. Easter celebrates Jesus's resurrection from the dead, symbolizing victory over death and the promise of eternal life.

"Some say that Easter is the most important day in the Christian liturgical year. Each Sunday is considered a "little Easter" that celebrates the Resurrection. Some say that Christmas can only be celebrated because of Easter. Jesus's birth is not as important as his resurrection, which is why he is considered the hope of salvation." - AI

What Is Axiology?

amazon link

Four Views on the Axiology of Theism: What Difference Does God Make?

by Kirk Lougheed (Author, Editor)

For centuries, philosophers have addressed the ontological question of whether God exists. Most recently, philosophers have begun to explore the axiological question of what value impact, if any, God's existence has (or would have) on our world.

This book brings together four prestigious philosophers, Michael Almeida, Travis Dumsday, Perry Hendricks and Graham Oppy, to present different views on the axiological question about God. Each contributor expresses a position on axiology, which is then met with responses from the remaining contributors. This structure makes for genuine discussion and developed exploration of the key issues at stake, and shows that the axiological question is more complicated than it first appears. Chapters explore a range of relevant issues, including the relationship between Judeo-Christian theism and non-naturalist alternatives such as pantheism, polytheism, and animism/panpsychism. Further chapters consider the attitudes and emotions of atheists within the theism conversation, and develop and evaluate the best arguments for doxastic pro-theism and doxastic anti-theism.

Of interest to those working on philosophy of religion, theism and ethics, this book presents lively accounts of an important topic in an exciting and collaborative way, offered by renowned experts in this area.

* * * * * * *

John Dewey

AXIOLOGY

Also known as: theory of value

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The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

Axiology, (from Greek axios, “worthy”; logos, “science”), also called Theory Of Value, the philosophical study of goodness, or value, in the widest sense of these terms. Its significance lies (1) in the considerable expansion that it has given to the meaning of the term value and (2) in the unification that it has provided for the study of a variety of questions—economic, moral, aesthetic, and even logical—that had often been considered in relative isolation.

The term “value” originally meant the worth of something, chiefly in the economic sense of exchange value, as in the work of the 18th-century political economist Adam Smith. A broad extension of the meaning of value to wider areas of philosophical interest occurred during the 19th century under the influence of a variety of thinkers and schools: the Neo-Kantians Rudolf Hermann Lotze and Albrecht Ritschl; Friedrich Nietzsche, author of a theory of the transvaluation of all values; Alexius Meinong and Christian von Ehrenfels; and Eduard von Hartmann, philosopher of the unconscious, whose Grundriss der Axiologie (1909; “Outline of Axiology”) first used the term in a title. Hugo Münsterberg, often regarded as the founder of applied psychology, and Wilbur Marshall Urban, whose Valuation, Its Nature and Laws (1909) was the first treatise on this topic in English, introduced the movement to the United States. Ralph Barton Perry’s book General Theory of Value (1926) has been called the magnum opus of the new approach. A value, he theorized, is “any object of any interest.” Later, he explored eight “realms” of value: morality, religion, art, science, economics, politics, law, and custom.

A distinction is commonly made between instrumental and intrinsic value—between what is good as a means and what is good as an end. John Dewey, in Human Nature and Conduct (1922) and Theory of Valuation (1939), presented a pragmatic interpretation and tried to break down this distinction between means and ends, though the latter effort was more likely a way of emphasizing the point that many actual things in human life—such as health, knowledge, and virtue—are good in both senses. Other philosophers, such as C.I. Lewis, Georg Henrik von Wright, and W.K. Frankena, have multiplied the distinctions—differentiating, for example, between instrumental value (being good for some purpose) and technical value (being good at doing something) or between contributory value (being good as part of a whole) and final value (being good as a whole).

G.E. MooreG.E. Moore, detail of a pencil drawing by William Orpen; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Many different answers are given to the question “What is intrinsically good?” Hedonists say it is pleasure; Pragmatists, satisfaction, growth, or adjustment; Kantians, a good will; Humanists, harmonious self-realization; Christians, the love of God. Pluralists, such as G.E. Moore, W.D. Ross, Max Scheler, and Ralph Barton Perry, argue that there are any number of intrinsically good things. Moore, a founding father of Analytic philosophy, developed a theory of organic wholes, holding that the value of an aggregate of things depends upon how they are combined.

Because “fact” symbolizes objectivity and “value” suggests subjectivity, the relationship of value to fact is of fundamental importance in developing any theory of the objectivity of value and of value judgments. Whereas such descriptive sciences as sociology, psychology, anthropology, and comparative religion all attempt to give a factual description of what is actually valued, as well as causal explanations of similarities and differences between the valuations, it remains the philosopher’s task to ask about their objective validity. The philosopher asks whether something is of value because it is desired, as subjectivists such as Perry hold, or whether it is desired because it has value, as objectivists such as Moore and Nicolai Hartmann claim. In both approaches, value judgments are assumed to have a cognitive status, and the approaches differ only on whether a value exists as a property of something independently of human interest in it or desire for it. Noncognitivists, on the other hand, deny the cognitive status of value judgments, holding that their main function is either emotive, as the positivist A.J. Ayer maintains, or prescriptive, as the analyst R.M. Hare holds. Existentialists, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, emphasizing freedom, decision, and choice of one’s values, also appear to reject any logical or ontological connection between value and fact.

*This article was most recently revised and updated by Brian Duignan.

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