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As we celebrate Advent, many of us will sing traditional carols or listen to readings which use different names or titles for God or Jesus. But this isn't particular to the Christmas story or even to Christianity, as a new study by College Emeritus Fellow, Professor Janet Soskice, discusses. We spoke to Prof Soskice to find out more about her book, Naming God: Addressing the Divine in Philosophy, Theology and Scripture. 

What led you to write this book?

It has long interested me that early theologians and spiritual writers (Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and so on) seemed more concerned with how we name God than with how we might prove that God exists—not just in ‘which names’ we use to speak of God (one current obsession), but in whether we can name God at all. It’s not just because these earlier thinkers took the existence of God for granted, but that they were acutely aware of the dangers of idolatry—always a risk when one is speaking of God.

Generations of Christians knew and named God and Christ with many names: Messiah, Emmanuel, Alpha, Omega, Eternal, All-Powerful, Lamb, Serpent, One, Goat, Lion, Word, Worm, Bridegroom. These names, all drawn from Scripture, were said, sung, and chanted in plainsong and polyphony, woven into the worship of the faithful. Today, a remnant of what we might call this ‘piety of the names’ remains in the popular Advent hymn ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’, where names from the ‘O Antiphons’ preface each verse heralding the coming of Christ with one of the titles Christians took from the Old Testament: ‘O come, Emmanuel!  O come, Rod of Jesse! O Come, Dayspring from on High! O come, Key of David! Oh come, Adonai!’

Sometime in the 16th century, this focus on names changed. Theologians and philosophers spoke less of ‘divine names’ and increasingly of just a few of these hundreds of names, and indeed the most abstract—‘eternal’, ‘immutable’, ‘omnipotent’, and so on, which were now considered as ‘attributes’ of God (not names). Philosophers like Descartes and John Locke thought the existence of God to be demonstrable by reason alone, and that such proofs generated qualities of the deity—the attributes.  I think this leads to deism, thinking of God as a ‘big Guy in the Sky’, as Richard Dawkins seems to think Christians and Jews do.

We can quickly see that many in the long list of ‘divine names’ (Wisdom, Day Spring, Root of Jesse, Key of David) could not be thought of as ‘attributes’ of God in our modern sense. ‘Attributes’ to us suggests qualities a bearer possesses, such as having red hair or being six feet tall. How could ‘day spring’ or ‘key of David’ be attribute of God or of anyone? But all were names—names held to have been given in Scripture and means by which to call upon the Lord in prayer, praise, and supplication. It is here that we may find the greatest affinity between Christian, Muslim, and some Jewish practices of meditation on the names of God.

So my project was to consider terms like ‘eternal’, ‘infinite’, and so on, if we considered them not as attributes, but as names within a plentitude of names and a practice of naming. 

Where did these many names for God come from? 

Classically Jews, Christians, and Muslims found their names for God within their sacred texts. This was scarcely a restriction. Thomas Aquinas found hundreds of divine names in the Book of Isaiah alone.

Who is your book aimed at?

This is a ‘scholarly monograph’, as they say, but available to upper-level undergraduates and the general reader who is interested in the mystery of creation and connectedness to one another. I’ve had a good from a former Anglican bishop that describes it as accessible, thoughtful, and thought-provoking, and a Dean of Chapel at one of the Colleges tells me it’s good to preach from.

How do you hope your book will influence its readers?

I hope that readers will see that philosophy and spirituality are closer than one thinks—and that God’s ultimacy and intimacy are one.

What are the most exciting potential impacts of this research?

The first review the book has had (Professor Denys Turner, Yale, The Tablet, 16 September 2023) suggests (rightly, I’d say) that I’m turning the dominant research strategy in modern philosophy of religion inside out. God remains mystery, even in self-disclosure.  Moses at the burning bush in the paradigmatic story about naming God, does not know ‘what God is’ but rather ‘who God is for us’, who God is in relation, in this case, to the Israelites in their Egyptian captivity. Names are about being in relation – we are called names, we call others by name, we summon and upbraid with names. Turner describes the book as ‘game-changing’ for philosophy of religion. That would be a lot to hope for.