Is there a direct correspondence between language and reality or is there a complete gap in which language does not refer to any extra-linguistic reality? The either/or answer to the question, more or less, sums up the history of philosophy and a great deal of theology. In an oversimplified telling, modernism and foundationalism presume language corresponds to reality and the questioning of how or if this is so, brought forth nominalism, structuralism, and post-structuralism which presume language is not grounded in exterior reality. Theologically the either/or answer, is not really two answers, as the presumption that there is direct correspondence results in propositionalism and legalism, but so does theological nominalism. Anslem presumes a direct correspondence between law and the reality of God, and he reifies the human word as if it is on a direct continuum with the divine Word, while Luther’s “imputed righteousness” has only the theoretical workings of the law, and does not presume direct engagement with the Immanent Trinity. In the first instance, law and propositions are determinative of access to the reality of God, and in the second instance law and language do not touch upon the reality of God, but this is all we have. Both fall short of the determinant role of Christ as the mediator of a new mode of meaning.
What is missing in the either/or answer is partially recognized in the linguistic turn, in that language can play a variety of roles in regard to meaning. Ludwig Wittgenstein notes that meaning is grounded in use, so that embodiment and culture cannot be excluded from meaning (as in the modernist attempt), and in continental philosophy it was recognized the question of correspondence or non-correspondence is preceded by a non-cognitive “being in the world” (which Martin Heidegger will directly relate to the history of violence, see here). René Girard’s picture of language arising around the scape-goated victim, extends this embodied understanding, simultaneously grounding it in the body and culture (the culture arising around the slain victim) but the “transcendental signifier” posed by Girard (the scape-goated victim, giving rise to religious myth) is false. It does not secure meaning outside of time and history though it posits a connection between history and meaning (see the above reference). In the linguistic turn and Girardian theory, language is not on the order of Platonism or foundationalism, floating free of the world, as there is a presumed correspondence, but for Girard this is a false correspondence grounded in a false transcendence.
All of this to say, language, law, or the symbolic order, is not adequate, in and of itself, to attain to God. Language is not naturally imbued with the Spirit, and the word of man is not on a given continuum with the Word of God. Human words fall short of the fullness of the transcendent divine reality, and in Paul’s description (Rom. 3:10-18), like that of Girard, human speech is grounded in violence and murder. Language cannot escape finitude apart from an alternative or true “transcendental signified.” Meaning does not drop from heaven apart from embodied-contextual factors (pure idealism cannot be the case), and those factors as we “naturally” have them are not simply finite, but bound by the mortality and finitude of death in a murderous realism. But the other factor regarding language, revealed in the Bible, is that the word can be transubstantiated, regenerated, and transfigured, so that it is no mere empty human symbol system, but can be combined with the divine nature so as to reveal the divine presence. The Name of God contains God, and this is the primary fact about language.
Sergius Bulgakov finds in the Name of God, an alternative order of meaning, between the finite and infinite or which mediates between idealism and realism, as the stable transcendental signified (the true generation of final and full meaning). The meaning grounded in culture (the language arising around the cadaver or generated through death) is unstable, but this false consciousness is not the final truth of language. The Name of God reveals a transcendence, which gives predication and naming (the order of language) an ontological ground (a true metaphysics). The naming of God as a possibility in language makes all naming a potential predication of the divine order: “Every judgment is naming, and every judgment is a name, rather, is potentially a name, and can become a name.”[1]
Bulgakov is building upon the work of Dionysius the Areopagite, who describes human mind as made possible by “a Mind beyond the reach of mind” and human language as possible through “a Word beyond utterance, eluding Discourse, Intuition, Name, and every kind of being.”[2] Naming and nouns are possible as the original “substantive noun” or that which is both transcendent and immanent has revealed itself: “the grammatical subject of all grammatical subjects, and the grammatical subject par excellence, the foundation of all predicative value, the subject of all predicates, the Godhead, is disclosed as transcendent-immanent” so that all speaking and naming is an approach to that which is not reducible to predication.[3]
This does not foreclose either Girard’s notion that human language arises around the cadaver, nor Feuerbach’s idea that God is a human projection, “an objective projection of their own self.” According to Bulgakov, the truth of the Name, gives rise to the counter possibility: “This illusion is possible precisely because the naming of God takes place in and through human beings; it is their act, the awakening of their theophoric and theophanic potentials, the realization in them of the enclosed image of God, of their primordial theanthropism.”[4] The “theophoric” are words or names that contain the name of a deity, and the “theophanic” is the manifestation or appearance of God to humans (as in the burning bush), which makes possible theanthropism, interpreting divine actions or qualities in human terms. He sees the activity of language as always embedded in this unfolding divine reality working itself out in the human realm. It is not that language is first grounded in a lie (Genesis 3 or the Girardian scapegoat), but lying is made possible by truth. Predication arises through the possibility of universality and in the actuality of God’s revelation, which can be thwarted and perverted.
Where the Girardian or Feuerbachian word would seem to be exhausted by the finite scope of human need, predication is drawn by infinite possibility. There is no end to speaking, as everything can be named, and nothing is exhausted in the name. There is correspondence in the finite order in which every subject transcends its name, but this finite order is due to the transcendence of God: “Therefore, we have here the absolute revelation of the Principle, beyond the limit of the cosmos, in the cosmos, through the cosmos.”[5] Or as he puts it later, “Naming is the operation of God in the human being, the human response to it, the manifestation of the energy of God.”[6]
The Word made flesh is a possibility only for God, but given this possibility there is hominization, or the creation of man as a user of language. There are humans because God is human in Christ, and there is speaking because God has spoken in Christ: “the incarnation of the Word is accomplished not only in the divine incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ but also in the acts of naming that are accomplished by the human being in response to the operation of God.”[7] Bulgakov illustrates through icons, which are images made to reflect the Godhead, but these images are possible because the Name of God is the original and real icon of the Godhead. By the same token, in the Old Testament there are a series of names, Elohim, Sabaoth, Adonai, the Holy One, the Blessed One, the Most High, Creator, the Good – none of which is the proper name, Yahweh, revealed to Moses, but each is reflective of the fact that God has a proper name.
In this case, “when we have, as it were, the proper Name of God, God’s I, the proper nature of the word, its ‘inner form,’ or significance, seemingly evaporates.” With “‘I am Yahweh,’ the independent meaning of the word who is completely dissolves and becomes only a verbal form for containing the Name of God, for containing what is a super-word for human language while being a word that humans accommodate. . . . After this, it becomes transparent glass and only lets the rays through but does not reflect them.”[8] God is present in his Name, just as he is present in the sacramental bread and wine. There was always bread and wine, just as there was the “being” of “I am” (contained in Yahweh) but in the Name and in the Body, God completely reveals himself. “More than an icon, it becomes the temple, the altar, the shrine, the Holy of Holies, the place for the presence of God and of encounter with God.”[9] God is in His Name, beyond the icon and beyond descriptive names, making these reflections possible.
“I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Ex. 3:14). Only after giving his name does God order the building of the tabernacle for his dwelling (Ex. 25:8) through which his presence and revelation continue: “I shall be revealed to you, and above the lid between the two cherubim that are on top of the ark of revelation, I shall speak about everything whatsoever I may command the sons of Israel through you” (Ex. 25:22). The tabernacle and then the temple, are built as a dwelling for the Name of God. In this Name, spoken in human language, God chooses to reveal himself, to pour out his love, in the name revealed to Moses in the Old Testament and then in the name revealed to Mary in the New Testament.
In the Hebrew Scriptures God communicates his Name, but it is not to be pronounced (it is the unspeakable tetragrammaton), and is known only by Moses, and then the high priest, who articulated it only at the festival of purification at the entrance to the Holy of Holies. Moses knows God by name unlike Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Ex. 6:23), and he can communicate the Name. This is not merely the idea of God, but God is in the Name, and this Name is his presence in both tabernacle and temple. The Name is united with the concept of the Glory of God: “and the Lord descended in a cloud and stopped there opposite him and proclaimed the Name of Yahweh” (Exodus 34:5). The “Name of God is taken directly as a real, living force, a Divine energy, which abides at the center of the life of the temple. The temple is the place of habitation of the Name of God; it is constructed for the Name of God.”[10] For example, “then it shall come about that the place in which the Lord your God will choose for His name to dwell” (Dt. 12:11). Prior to the building of the temple, “The people were still sacrificing on the high places, because there was no house built for the name of the Lord until those days” (1 Kings 3:23). Then he says of Solomon, “He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever” (2 Sam. 7:13). Solomon notes that David was disqualified to build a dwelling for the Name, due to violence: “You know that David my father was unable to build a house for the name of the Lord his God because of the wars which surrounded him, until the Lord put them under the soles of his feet” (1 Kings 5:3). But Solomon, due to his peaceful reign can establish a dwelling for the Name: “But now the Lord my God has given me rest on every side; there is neither adversary nor misfortune. Behold, I intend to build a house for the name of the Lord my God, as the Lord spoke to David my father, saying, ‘Your son, whom I will set on your throne in your place, he will build the house for My name’” (1 Kings 5:4-5). The Name of God is not merely a sign or substitute for God, but God is in the Name and his glory and presence are attached to the Name. God’s Name can be articulated, and he is in this word. “So they shall invoke My name on the sons of Israel, and I then will bless them” (Nu. 6:27). This is not only a revelation about the nature of God, but reveals the fulness of the power of human language to be made a fit dwelling for God.
Nonetheless, part of what is communicated around the Name, in the dwelling in the Temple with its walls of separation, and in the dread in which the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies, is the transcendence and separation still attached to the Name. In Christ, this wall of separation is broken down and Jacob’s dream will become a reality: “from now on you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending towards the Son of Man” (Jn 1:51). Jesus will open the Name of God to all, taking what was unpronounceable and dreadful and attaching it to his humanity, so that all can walk in the light of his Name.
Jesus connects the tetragrammaton “I am that I am” to himself: “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). In this same passage in John 8 he also ties the “I am” to the light he gives (8:12) connecting it to the Logos of the Prologue called the light of men (John 1:4-9). He says, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35, 48); “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12; 9:5; 12:46); “I am the door of the sheep” (John 10:7); “I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11); “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25); “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6); “I am the vine (John 15:1). He tells Philip, that to see Him is to see the Father: “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me?” (Jn 14:9–10). It is particularly the “lifting up” which reveals Jesus’ identity as the “I am” (YHWH): “So Jesus said, ‘When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He’” (John 8:28). Here is the realization of Isaiah, that through the “lifted up” servant “you may know and believe that I AM” (Isa. 43:10; 52:13). “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself” (John 12:31-32). Sometimes the ἐγώ εἰμι (“I am”) is explicit reference to deity and the name of God (YHWH) and in others it is implicit. For example, at his arrest he declares ἐγώ εἰμι (“I am”) and the guards fall to the ground (John 18:5) and walking on the water he calms the fear of the disciples, declaring “It is I; do not be afraid” (John 6:20).
In the name of Christ the presence of God is readily available: “And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’” (Acts 2:38). The nations are called to take up the Name (Matt. 28:19), to pray in the Name (John 14:13-14), and to abide in Jesus Christ (John 15:4). The dread of the transcendent name Yahweh is removed in the name of perfect love; “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).
God in Christ has spoken, lifting up speech to its transcendent purposes in himself:
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power” (Heb. 1:1-3).
Salvation is in and through the name of Christ, as this Word is God (John 1:1).
[1] Sergii Bulgakov, Philosophy of the Name (NIU Series in Orthodox Christian Studies) (pp. 292-293). Cornell University Press. Kindle Edition.
[2] Dionysius the Areopagite, Divine Names and the Mystical Theology, trans. C. E. Rolt (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1920), 53.
[3] Bulgakov, 293.
[4] Bulgakov, 293-294.
[5] Bulgakov, 294.
[6] Bulgakov, 295.
[7] Bulgakov, 295-296.
[8] Bulgakov, 312-313.
[9] Bulgakov, 314.
[10] Bulgakov, 317-318.