14. Every Being Is aName for God; and No Being Is aName for God.
14. Every being is a name for God; and no being is a name for God.14
This amazing observation Aquinas penned as a very young theologian—it is found in his first book, a commentary on Denys the Areopagite’s book On the Divine Names of God. Denys lists forty-two names for God taken from the Scriptures including: God as good, beautiful, wise, beloved, eternal, manifest, bestower of life, wisdom, reason, virtue, powerful, salvation, justice, constellation, star, fire, water, air, dew, cloud, stone, rock, etc.
Then Aquinas utters the following: “and all the other beings attributed to God as cause. And the Divine One is none of these beings insofar as God surpasses all things.”
One can take such a list of names and add one’s own, and in chanting them like a litany or a mantra one takes part in a rich spiritual practice. The Muslim tradition boasts such a practice called “the ninety-nine most beautiful names of God.” Inspired by this astounding teaching from Aquinas, I published a book called Naming the Unnameable: 89 Most Wonderful and Useful Names for God. (So as not to compete with the Muslim tradition of 99 names of God, I offer only 89.)
By opening up our minds and hearts to multiple names for God, Aquinas encourages us to let go of stale and tired God-naming to become young and fresh again in our relationship to the divine. He also encourages our creativity and that of one’s culture (including science) to be creative. Or, as one scientist told me, hearing the multiple names for God in my book “takes the top of my head off.” In that book I offer names borrowed from the sciences: “Flow, Energy, Spirit, Breath, Mind of the Universe; the Self of the Universe; planetary Mind.”19
If every being is a name for God because every being can be “attributed to God as cause,” then we are not at a loss for alternative and ever more dynamic names for the divine. And, of course, this includes feminine names for divinity as well, including Goddess, Kuan Yin, Osun, Black Madonna, Brown Madonna (Guadalupe), Mother, Wisdom, Shekinah, Gaia, and Tara.
Further names would include Love, Goodness, Beauty, Justice, Compassion, Joy, Laughter, the Cause of Wonder, and the One to Whom We Give Our Thanks.
Judging from the sentence heading this chapter, Aquinas would be on board with all this naming. It is indeed striking that he offers us this feast of divine names in his very first book, written at the age of twenty-eight. Why? Because it demonstrates how thoroughly grounded in nature and creation he was at a young age. It also hints at why he fell in love with a scientist—that is, Aristotle—at so young an age.
The ancient Hindu scriptures tell us that God has “a million faces.” Aquinas does them one better—he speaks of trillions of names, since for him every being can be a name for God.
Elsewhere he says that “God is pure existence. The existence of all other things partake of God’s.” And again, “‘The One Who Is’ determines no particular mode of being. Rather it is indeterminate to all. Therefore it denominates the infinite ocean of being” (87). One might say that God is an infinite ocean of being in which we all swim around.
All the names offered above, whether from Denys the Areopagite, Aquinas, or myself, invoke a Cataphatic Deity. This means a God of light, a God who is revealed in creation, which is made of light, and whom we encounter in a special way in the light of day when we see the beauties of nature all around us.
But there is another dimension our God talk, one that is often neglected: the Apophatic Deity, the God of darkness, mystery, and unknowability. Aquinas refers to this God when he proclaims that “the Divine One is none of these beings insofar as God surpasses all things.” I offer nine such apophatic names in my book. As evident in the next chapter, Aquinas offers an understanding of the apophatic divinity that is profound.
We are united
to God
as to
One Unknown.