One River, Many Wells - Chapter 5

Names for God

All the names which the soul gives to God it receives from the knowledge of itself.
- Meister Eckhart

We call divinity by many names. We might call Divinity God or Allah or Yahweh or Buddha or Christ or Tao or the Goddess or the Great Spirit or Creator or Redeemer or Liberator or Supreme Being or Rama, or Ground of All Being or Ra or Aten or Vishnu or Brahmin or Godhead or Nothingness or Mooramoora or Mystery or Beauty or Justice or Goodness or Wisdom and many more. The Hindu tradition says that there is only one Rama [God] and he has a thousand names. Still others say that there are an infinite number of names for God. . . . they reveal, as Eckhart says, something of our own souls. And they make it possible to reimagine ourselves and to let Divinity continue to evolve and cease making Divinity into our own projection.
- Matthew Fox

In the Christian mystical tradition, Meister Eckhart offers the following prayer: I pray God to rid me of God. What images and projections of Divinity do we need to more beyond and let go of?
- Matthew Fox

Matthew Fox goes through a litany (list) of names for God that St. Thomas Aquinas took from Scripture (almost 50 titles/names - too many to list here!). He then goes on to say: But Aquinas adds another and very powerful caveat: And the Divine One is none of these things insofar as God surpasses all things. Thus in Aquinas' view, God can be named by any being in the universe because God is the cause of every being in the universe. But Aquinas also warns us to live with this dialectic - that God is named by all beings and by no beings. To live this way is to dance the dance of truth. No name, absolutely no name, suffices for Divinity. Which is also to say that all names suffice for Divinity - but on a limited scale only.

The One Existence the wise call by many names.
- The Rig Veda (part of the Hindu Scriptures)

God has a million faces.
- Baghavad Gita

We all have images of God lying around in our heads and hearts. Even for Catholics, we have numerous images through which we approach the divine: the Sacred Heart, the Divine Mercy, the Holy Spirit, the Father, etc. The way we imagine God will necessarily color the way we pray, how we worship, and who and how we believe God to be.

However, it's always good to remember that when we speak about God - when we give God names and attach images to God, we are always using limited language - we are using metaphors and symbols to approach Divinity. Since we are created, finite creatures, our language will never be able to fully comprehend or utter the infinite majesty and splendor that is God. We can only offer ourselves in humble worship of the Lord of Creation that graces us with his loving-kindness.

Blessings & Peace,
Hugo