Post Scriptum to the Essay on the Name of God

Abstract

This chapter offers a Sophiological interpretation of the dogma of the Name of Jesus. The Name of God does not differ formally from other proper names: it, like they, is a naming that adheres to its subject in a special way and insofar as it is identified with it. This very subject, in the given case the hypostatic essence of God, is nameless because it is beyond name. In the Sophiological interpretation of the Name of God in general, of both the Old Testament name Yahweh and the New Testament name Jesus, the following fundamental question arises. To what does the divine revelation contained in the Name of God refer, to the hypostasis only, the Divine Person, or to the essence, the nature, the “energies,” the wisdom and glory, and to Divine Sophia in general? The chapter argues that the Name of God and the Name of Jesus, in heralding the hypostatic being of God, at the same time are also sophian. Ultimately, the “Name of God” is not only a word, a Divine word, in all the depth and inexhaustibility of its meaning, but also Divine power and essence.