5 Minute Theology: The Name of God

In the Gospels, Christ uses the name of God revealed to Moses as his own.

In John chapter 8, Christ tells the Jews,

Before Abraham was, I am.

This is the most explicit and clear claim of divinity that Christ makes in the Gospels,

even more so than when he says, the Father and I are one.

But how are we to understand this name?

I am is after all something we say all the time.

So what makes this the proper name of God?

Well when we say it, we follow it up with other things or other things are at least implied

and understood.

You either respond, I am to someone who asks you if you are doing such and such an activity

or are such and such a person.

You say, I am a man or a woman or a doctor or an athlete or sick or happy or whatever,

always with the qualifier that narrows the meaning of the verb to be.

If you walk up to someone and say out of the blue and with no context, I am, they will

wait for you to finish the thought with some additional information.

But for God to reveal, I am, as his proper name, a name that tells us something unique

about God, merits our contemplation and meditation.

To miss the profundity of this statement can lead to all kinds of real world errors.

For example, the primary mistake that nearly all ancient pagans and modern day atheists

and skeptics make is misunderstanding this name.

Of course, they don't realize that they're making any mistake about God's name, but they are.

It gives rise to the laughably misguided argument that our satellites and telescopes haven't

picked up any evidence of God floating around up there.

Because to them, the God that we believe in is just supposed to be the most powerful being,

the highest in a hierarchy of beings.

There are rocks than plants than animals than us, then God at the top, all on a continuum.

Even you might think this sounds about right.

But to avoid this mistake is one of the reasons God revealed his name, I am, because God

is not a powerful being.

God is not something in the universe that is more powerful than everything else.

No, God is being.

There is no qualifier on his being.

He just is.

He is not this particular being or powerful being or a merciful being.

He is the grounding of all reality.

The only reason anything exists is by some kind of participation in his being.

He is not in the universe as one being among others.

He is outside of the created order, transcending all space and time.

He is the source of the being of the universe.

This is why I am is the best way for us to conceive of God, given our limited capabilities.

First of all, it shows us why there can be only one God.

God, the source of all being, cannot share that role with another, as it would be impossible

to introduce any distinction which would differentiate the theoretical other God or

God's.

This would require some qualification on being, which is precisely what the name of God,

I am, excludes.

It also helps us understand that God is not in competition with His creation, and He

is not in competition with our wills.

If He were just the greatest being within creation, then God's action would in pinch on

my action.

He would crowd me out, so to speak.

But since God is the source of my very being and the being of everything that exists,

there is no competition.

On the contrary, God is the one who gives me and everything else the power to act in

the first place, and in our case to do so freely.

And He didn't just create things in the beginning of their existence and then let them

go on their own like a wind up toy, He is at every moment willing our existence.

Were God to cease willing His creation, everything would cease to exist.

I don't mean everything would die, it would collapse into absolute nothingness, non-existence.

So far from being a competitor and a limit to our freedom, God is willing us at every

moment, giving us the power to act freely, and is present in every one of our acts, every

one of our breaths and heartbeats as the here and now source of them all.

This also shows us how all encompassing God's providences were God to be simply the most

powerful being within the universe, then the objection that God is too busy to hear

all our prayers or to care about any one of us would be valid.

But since God is, in the words of St. Augustine, more intimate to us than we are to ourselves,

God sees and hears and cares for each of us as if we were the only part of His creation.

There is no prayer He doesn't hear, and He knows them before we even utter them.

He is not bound by the material and temporal limitations of His creation.

He transcends all of it, and at the same time is deeply within all of it.

This also helps us see how silly the common atheist objection is, which says that the universe

is big, therefore God doesn't exist and you aren't important.

Aside from being a total non-sequeter, we can see that it is based on the idea that

God would have to be somehow within the universe running the show.

But since it's so big, it's just not feasible for Him to manage.

And it assumes that God, if He existed, would have all that vast space to worry about

and manage, so He can't take the time to care about some small spec which we inhabit

when He has to fly about and check on other galaxies.

Size has literally nothing to do with the question of God's existence or our importance.

So while I am seems like a mysterious name, which of course it is, we can also see that

it tells us so much about God and His relationship to all of us.