January 27, 2018

God said to Moses, “[YHVH/YHWH] I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” Exodus 3:14

Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.” John 8:58

“Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” Matthew 6:9

Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them” John 14:23

The name of a person in Hebrew thought was not a mere appellation used only for purposes of designation. The name was, as it were, the definition of the person. Even more, it was the person himself in the form of an alter ego which represented him, exhibited him, was him. To know the name of another was to know who and what the other was-his identity, qualities, and character, or, perhaps more exactly, his power, role, function-what the other was entitled or empowered to do. To be "nameless" is to be "worthless" (Job 30:8), of no avail. "As his name is, so is he; 'Fool' is his name" (1 Samuel 25:25). In the case of God, the Hebrew impulse was not to know his existence or essence; these were alien concepts. It was to know his Name, which was an operative entity in its own right. Knowledge of God's Name was empowering: one could address him as God, call on him, enter into community with him, make valid claims upon him. Similarly, for the people to have the Name of God "put" upon them was to come into God's possession and under his protection: "Thou art in our midst, Yahweh; and we bear thy Name. Abandon us not" (Jeremiah 4:9).

Moses' request to know God's Name was therefore of high import. The problem is the interpretation of the enigmatic answer. …There are three major possibilities.

The first is the most familiar to readers of the classical English versions of the Bible, Protestant and Catholic: "I am who I am." God affirms himself to be the Absolutely Existent One to whose being there is no limit or restriction. His very Name is Being, as the false gods and idols are nullities, nothingnesses, and therefore nameless. This sense is valid and true; it is in the text. But it was probably heard only later ... To them God was by definition the Power. Their concern was to know not his nature but his role in their community and his mode of action in their history. …I shall therefore put aside this exegesis.

The second interpretation takes the verb in a causative sense: "I make to be whatever comes to be." …The belief that God is the Maker of All was present among the Israelites from the beginning. …It may, however, be doubted that the original hearers of the divine Name caught this cosmological sense in it. To them, Yahweh was in the first instance the God of their fathers, who created the people, who was Lord of the people, the Power behind their history. …Therefore, I do not favor this exegesis.

There is a third interpretation, which I consider more satisfactory… It asserts that, in the enigmatic play on words and in the Name Yahweh that embodies its sense, Moses and his people heard not the affirmation that God is or that he is Creator but the promise that he would be present with his people. God's utterance of his Name is to be understood in the light of the promise to Moses that precedes it ("I will be with you") and which in another form follows it: "I will help you to speak and I will tell you what you have to say" (4: 12). The sense of the verb "to be" is relational. For the ancient Israelites, as for all primitive peoples, existence was an affair of community; to be was to be-with-the-others. Existence was also an effective affair; to be was to be-in-action. Finally, existence was of the phenomenal, not the essential, order; to be was to be-there, concretely and in evidence. …In uttering his Name, God says, "I shall be there, with you, in power" ('ehyeh). One of the multitudinous echoes of this sense which sound all through the Old Testament was uttered on the eve of the restoration of the kingdom of Judah when Deutero-Isaiah prophesied: "Therefore my people shall know my name; therefore in that day they shall know that it is I who says: 'Here I am'" (Isaiah 52:6). …To capture this full suggestion and to keep the paronomastic cadence of the original Hebrew, one might translate: "I shall be there as who I am shall I be there."

The New Testament

The New Testament raises the same question in a new way. The Christian views the New Testament as the fulfillment of the Old Testament but a fulfillment that is transcendent.

The New Testament transforms the ancient problem of Yahweh into the new problem of Jesus. …My assumption here is parallel to the assumption made in the case of the Old Testament. …From this point of view, the problem of Jesus is seen to have been stated by Jesus himself in the decisive query reported in all three Synoptic Evangelists; "Who am I, in your view of me?" (Mark 8:29). The question is cast in the intersubjective mode, in…terms familiar from the Old Testament: I, who am here with you in this moment-who am I, and what am I to you? Am I the Messiah of whom the Scriptures spoke? If this title defines my function, what, further, is my Name? Am I the Son, entitled by equality of power with God to bear the divine Name? Thus, the problem of God, in its New Testament form as the problem of Jesus, again centers on the presence of God in history, on his active existence with his people.

The ancient questions, in their new form, lie behind the answer given to them in the acclamation of the early Christian community: "Lord Jesus!" This is the Christian paraphrase of the Old Testament address to God as Yahweh, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Jesus bears the divine Name. He is Kyrios (the Greek translation, in the Septuagint, of the Hebrew Name Yahweh). He is the Lord, our Lord, the Lord-of-us. This affirmation and the questions latent in it form the burden of the primitive Christian kerygma (the Greek word for the apostolic preaching)...The burden of this instruction is the triadic presence of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the doctrine…of the functional Trinity, the Trinity-with-us. With…brevity…this doctrine may be stated in three simple propositions.

First, God still remains the one God of the Old Testament. Only now, the Name God has a new supposition, in the technical sense. It stands for the Father. He is now the God. Everywhere in St. Paul and St. John that one encounters the word God, one should read, as its sense and as the direction of its address, "the Father." This is now God's proper Name. He is "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" in whose manifestation as Son the Name of God was newly revealed.

Second, Jesus Christ, the Son who was sent down into our midst by the Father, himself bears the divine Name. He is the Lord-of-us, empowered to exercise the divine functions that the Name implies, that is, to be Savior and Judge.

Third, the Father who is the one God and the Son who is the Lord-of-us are present in us through the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, who is sent by them to be the Lord-with-us, the life-giving Lord, the indwelling Spirit of our adoption, by whom we are empowered to address God by his proper Name, "Abba, that is, Father" (Romans 8: I5).

This is the New Testament answer to Moses' ancient request, which is forever the human request, to know God's Name. But now the answer is to be cast in the mysterious plural of John's text (14:23) in which Christ makes the promise that "we will come" and "we will make our abode" with the new people of God. Hence, the ancient text must now read: "We shall be there as who we are shall we be there." The Son is here with us. With him the Father, who sent him, inseparably comes to us. Here with us, Father and Son breathe into us the Holy Spirit who is their Gift, now given to us. The Three are here as who they are, mysteriously the one God, the triunely Holy One. As triune, God is more hidden than ever, more unknown, his

Name more mysterious. Yet his Name has been revealed. As Father he is more intimately known, and he is more than ever truly named by all the many names that had long been used but are now laden with new meaning because they are read by men from the new works of God in our midst, more wonderful than ever-the Son's ransoming deed of love, and the Spirit's ceaseless energizing in the Church.

Moreover, the Old Testament alternative modes of resolution reappear. They are, still, knowledge of God or ignorance of God. The knowledge is again a recognition; what matters is to recognize the living God in "the moment of visitation" (Luke 19:42, 44) when the Word speaks, when the Spirit leads (Romans 8: 13). The recognition is practical; as in the Old Testament, it takes the form of a "going with" the Spirit who is the Lord-with-us. …This "knowledge (epignosis) of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:4) is both affirmation and choice, a knowledge and an acknowledgment, at once an assent and a consent, an affair of both mind and heart. It is a finding of the living God and also an endless search for him, precisely because he is the living God, present in the moment, most faithfully becoming with each fleeting moment the Lord-with-us.

The Problem of God (Yesterday and Today) by John Courtney Murray, S.J.

Questions for Discussion:

1. How do the three ways of interpreting the name of God from the Old Testament deepen my understanding of who God is?

2. How do I experience God’s presence in my life? In what ways can I enrich my experience of His presence?

3. How does Jesus’ use of the term “Father” change my way of thinking about who God is? And how is it instructive to me, in my role as a father?