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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: What's in a name?
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AlexaHof
Apprentice
# 18555
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Posted
Over on the Twitter, I always seem to be getting into debates about what to call God/Whatnot. My fellow heretics and I have founded two new religions since Christmas - the Sproutarians (seasonally rooted) and, today, The Church of Whatnot, targeted at those who, like ourselves, can't reliably remember names.
The serious point here is: does a label matter? Having done a lot of research into faith groups in contemporary Britain, I'm tempted to conclude that the answer is either 'no' or 'only up to a point'. And this, I further think, is a twenty-first century phenomenon - perhaps possible in the last century but not before. What do others think?
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'God is dead.' Nietzsche
'Nietzsche is dead.' God
Posts: 7 | From: Wiltshire | Registered: Feb 2016
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Paul.
Shipmate
# 37
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Posted
Names matter, it's how we refer to things. The problem is that there's a wide range of meanings for most words and names more so.
Witness the discussion over on the the "Atheists in the UCC" thread.
Posts: 3689 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2004
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Paul.:
Names matter, it's how we refer to things. The problem is that there's a wide range of meanings for most words and names more so.
Witness the discussion over on the the "Atheists in the UCC" thread.
Which thread is the UCC one, please?
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Posts: 3083 | From: UK | Registered: May 2007
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
FWIW the words 'god' and 'gush' are etymologically related. God is 'one to whom one pours a libation'.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
quote:
Originally posted by Paul.:
Names matter, it's how we refer to things. The problem is that there's a wide range of meanings for most words and names more so.
Witness the discussion over on the the "Atheists in the UCC" thread.
Which thread is the UCC one, please?
Here is a link to that thread, SusanDoris.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Names matter but they often mean quite different things place to place, country to country. Conservative, Anglican and socialism are three than come to mind.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Here is a link to that thread, SusanDoris.
Thank you for your help.
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
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tessaB
Shipmate
# 8533
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Posted
I'm studying the OT at the moment (not in original languages) and the consensus seems to be that God just means a Deity whereas Lord indicates a specific Jewish God namely Yahweh. So stories that talk about God could often be taken from Babylonian or Assyrian mythology. Anything that uses Lord is very specifically Yahwehist.
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tessaB
eating chocolate to the glory of God
Holiday cottage near Rye
Posts: 1068 | From: U.K. | Registered: Sep 2004
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Interesting question, particularly for faceblind me who always struggles with putting the right labels to the unremembered faces around me. ![[Waterworks]](graemlins/bawling.gif)
Naming is important in that it is useful--it allows us to be confident that we're talking about the same whatsit and not talking past each other. A really good name will also tell you something about the character of the whatchamacallit being named. YHWH does this, because its meaning "I will be what I will be, I am what I am" highlights God's existence, his power, and his will. That's all useful stuff to keep in mind about YHWH as a person. It's different, for example, from the various Greek gods who suffer the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and have to react to them just as we poor mortals do. Stuff happens to them, whether they like it or not, and then they have to either lump it or fight back. That's qualitatively different from the life of YHWH, who is under no outside pressure and who must put up with only what he has freely chosen to put up with.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by tessaB:
I'm studying the OT at the moment (not in original languages) and the consensus seems to be that God just means a Deity whereas Lord indicates a specific Jewish God namely Yahweh. So stories that talk about God could often be taken from Babylonian or Assyrian mythology. Anything that uses Lord is very specifically Yahwehist.
TessaB, I don't think that's quite correct. 'God' usually translates the Hebrew word 'elohim'. Normally in the OT, that means God, in much the same way as we would use the word. I.e. the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but not being referred to by name.
Where the letters YHWH appear, God is being referred to by name. That is what he is called, except that it became too holy to be spoken. So that we don't know how it was pronounced. In most Bibles it is written LORD in capital letters, and that is the most respectful usage to follow. Even if reading from a Bible which uses the convention of writing Yahweh in the text, Pope Benedict said that when reading about or singing people should change that to 'the LORD', adjusted to fit the grammar of the sentence. I'm not a Catholic but I agree with him.
A New Testament based explanation is to liken this to the difference between referring to Jesus by name, as Jesus, and referring to him as 'the Saviour', 'Messiah', or 'Our Lord'. No Christian uses any of those three phrases to refer to some other generic person. However, because of the incarnation, we do not forbid the naming of Jesus by name, any more than we forbid pictures in which he appears.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
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Posted
I knew I had heard someone ignorant of Islam say "They pray to a different God – they pray to Allah". So in a recent service I talked about how a French-speaking Christian would address Dieu, a Hindi-speaking Christian Ishwar, an Arabic-speaking Christian would talk to Allah.
But the one person who could possibly have made that statement was away that day at her son's ordination.
GG
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
AlexaHof wrote: quote:
The serious point here is: does a label matter? Having done a lot of research into faith groups in contemporary Britain, I'm tempted to conclude that the answer is either 'no' or 'only up to a point'. And this, I further think, is a twenty-first century phenomenon - perhaps possible in the last century but not before. What do others think?
I suspect that if you were to show up at a church calling itself "Hank Hackenbacker Ministries", you might be in for a different sort of experience compared with that at somewhere calling itself "Church of the All-Holy and Ever-Virgin Theotokos".
Names are pointers. Changing the pointer won't affect the thing itself, but it may mislead you or send you off in the wrong direction. There was a plan in WW2 that if England was invaded, then the finger signposts would be randomly swivelled to point elsewhere. It would have made no difference to the geography of course.
Juliet argued that "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet". And so it would. But if you went into a florist to buy some roses for your beloved, but were proffered a bunch of carnations because they smell as sweet, you too may wish to complain.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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The Scrumpmeister
Ship’s Taverner
# 5638
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Posted
Labels matter.
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If Christ is not fully human, humankind is not fully saved. - St John of Saint-Denis
Posts: 14741 | From: Greater Manchester, UK | Registered: Mar 2004
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Nenya
Shipmate
# 16427
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Posted
I think names matter, from our point of view. If I tell you my name I have opened myself up to being known and that makes me slightly vulnerable. I suspect that's partly why so many of us use Noms de Net on message boards. If, without my permission, you shorten or extend my name to a version I don't like, that annoys me and says something about your respect for me as a person.
I don't know how bothered God/the Divine is about what we call him/her. Richard Rohr has some interesting things to say about it in his book "Things Hidden." "...the important thing is that you have the relationship, the encounter, the love, and that somewhere you have experienced yourself being addressed as a Beloved." He suggests we find names that "somehow express the specialness that just exists between the two of you."
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They told me I was delusional. I nearly fell off my unicorn.
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