In this scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, King Arthur and his brave knights, riding their coconut horses, come upon an enchanter. He stands on a peak, ram’s horns curling down around his cheeks, beard flowing, and casts fiery explosions at the surrounding hills. He magically explodes his way down from the peak and stands in front of the men. Arthur asks, “By what name are you known?” The enchanter answers gravely, “There are some who call me…” and gives a long, expectant pause, and then, as if unsure, says, “…Tim.”
When Moses met God in the burning bush, he asked God a similar question, but got a wildly different answer. God instructs Moses to go to the Israelites and tell them the God of their fathers has sent him. But, says Moses, what if they ask “‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” Moses wants to know God’s name. Moses seems to expect a name, like the names of all the other gods he had heard of. The gods of Egypt had names. The gods that Moses’ father-in-law Jethro served surely had names. What was the name of this God, the God of Moses’ fathers, who was now speaking to him from the burning bush? Now what if God said, “Some call me…Tim”? Or Steve, or Jose, or Melvin, or Bruce Almighty? Or if God gave a powerful-sounding name like some other gods, like Osiris the god of the Nile, or Amon-Ra who had the head of a beetle?
The reason Tim the Enchanter is funny is because the name Tim is anticlimactic. An enchanter should have an impressive name. Likewise, Moses expected a name of power, but rather than a normal guy name like Tim, the name God gives Moses is really not a name at all. God says, “I am who I am.” Philo, a Jew whose lifespan overlapped with Jesus, and who was much influenced by the philosophy of Plato, translated this phrase into Greek, ego eimi ho on, “I am the God who is.” I remember that at least one of my seminary professors objected to this platonic interpretation of God’s name. She claimed that the emphasis in the Exodus account is on the fact that God was promising that he would be present with his people, not on a philosophical concept of God’s being (which the philosophers would call ontology). But surely, even if Philo stretched his translation a little too far, the non-name I am who I am shows Moses, and shows us, that God does not have a normal guy name, or a normal god name, or even a proper name at all. God is beyond a name. A name would reduce God and make him manageable.
When Moses asks God his name, God’s response shows that he is beyond names, beyond all categories, beyond attempts to pin him down. God is more than any name or description or category we could put on him. Which is good news. Because people are constantly trying to reduce God to this or that object or ideology. God refuses to have that done to him, not just by his choice but by his very nature. God is who he is. Philo’s interpretation is not wrong. God is “the one who is.” Despite all our attempts to reduce God down to something manageable, God says, “I am who I am.”
So the pursuit of God is made endlessly more complicated – and endlessly more interesting – by the fact that God is greater than our understanding, always breaking the boundaries of our finite minds. I will have more to say about the joy of exploration and contemplation of the God who is I am who I am. Specifically, I will write about using Anselm’s ontological argument with my inquisitive children, tours of the Kingdom of God, and exploring the grizzly-packed beauty of Denali National Park. Trust me, it will all come together, although I’m not sure how many posts that will take. And in a couple weeks I’ll write about what we are experiencing in the country of Turkey.