The Name of God

What is God's name?

Answer: 

Very Rev. Ihor Kutash kutash@unicorne.org 

As I understand you are or have been associated with the community called Jehovah's Witnesses. I have had - when my life was less packed - interesting conversations with JW's (abbreviation does not imply disrespect). My mother got her first Bible from them. My problem with JW's - and other folk who are sure that they are right – is that this is a way surely open to illusion. We as humans simply can not know all that there is to know about God. I know that JW's believe that God's name is Jehovah and that is that. Actually that is a mispronunciation of the four Hebrew characters that may be rendered as YHVH - which is what God told Moses he could use when people asked him who sent him. Note, he could use it. And Jews to this day are very careful to use it very sparingly, for a name unites one with the power of the being who has offered it. (If you say Ihor to me, I respond, etc.) It means roughly: I am Who I am or better I will be what I will be . It is only God who can truly say that, for He is the only Being who is the Source of all being and truly determines Himself. We are all dependent upon Him, upon others, upon surroundings, etc. Yet we too have a limited - but essential - power of self-determination (in Greek - autexousion). It is part of His divine image in us - given to us irrevocably. And we must choose as wisely as we can - and most often this choice ought to be to be always turning from what is less to what is more worthy - i.e. away from things - to Him For we were made for Him and, if He can have His way without obliterating our autexousion, we shall be with Him forever - for we are His beloved children, for whom He has done amazing, reckless (if He were not God), astounding, utterly benevolent things. That is about as much as I have time to say now. Except to say that even as His name YHVH describes Him, it also does not describe Him at all - or only to a infinitely minute degree - for He is always and forever (of Him it can not even be said that He was, is and shall be - for He always IS) incomparably, unspeakably, indescribably more than anything that human speech could convey. And so we must bow before Him in grateful silence and adoration much, much more that we may speak about Him.

Ukrainian Orthodoxy