Divine Names

To call someone by name is to touch his innermost essence. Naming entails the power of awakening an individual from his selfishness. Names, like personalities, are dialectical. They are individual and incommunicable, and can only be expressed in an ‘as if’ way. Since a name defines an unique individuality, the specificity of the one named, it can only be used ironically. The incommunicable name, towards which all names strive, is itself the foundation of all individuality. It precedes the communicable and hence is not itself communicable. The Neoplatonic philosophy of participation is constituted by this figure of thought. A name can grasp an individual while at the same time being unable to penetrate his real identity. This dialectic is particularly evident when a soul tries to approach the unique divinity. It is by means of divine names that the devout, praying, dependent soul approaches its Lord, who is the foundation of the soul’s own existence. In its use of the divine names, the soul comes to recognise itself in its contingency, for it conceives that the thoughts by which it partakes in the One are expressed in the eternal and immutable names of the One, and are illuminated by divinity.3