Ordinary Days: Owen #2

 What is your name?

   “I-AM-WHO-I-AM”

     (Exodus 3:13-14)

Dear Owen,

I couldn’t help myself… I went ahead and read the first chapter of Comer’s “God has a Name.” The chapter tells the story of how it is that God reveals to Moses his name. I’ll stay here and wait for you to prompt me for chapter two. Meanwhile, maybe you will find the following summation of chapter one helpful.

God gives us, reveals to us, his name; but in the revelation, he remains hidden—a mystery: “I-AM-WHO-I-AM.” What kind of name is that? God tells us something about himself; yet we are not sure what. As Augustine puts it, God remains “hidden yet intimately present, steadfast yet elusive.” (Confessions Bk1,4,4)

 After trying to explain how it is that “I-AM-WHO-I-AM” gets turned into the “tetragrammaton” Y-H-W-H and how this tetragrammaton gets turned into “Yahweh” or “Jehovah” and why this is translated in our English Bibles as “LORD;” the writer pauses: “Whew…” Comer sighs, then asks us, his readers, “You still out there?” (p059) What do you think, Owen? Are you still out there?

At Corban University you get to read some theology. No matter how breezily Comer attempts to tell the story, it remains theologically demanding, doesn’t it? And yet, rewarding. So, let us stick with it and see where we end up, okay?

Love, Papa