What's in a Name?
Delivered on Sunday 18 May 2008 in St George's Chapel
Exodus 3:1-6, 13-15
Trinity Sunday
In Romeo and Juliet, we hear Juliet ponder:
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
Surely, she asks, are names not meaningless conventions?
These words written towards the end of the sixteenth century are a kind of foretaste of a great debate that would take place only fifty or so years later. That debate was a direct result of the invention of the printing press. Prior to the printing press records show that the University Library at Cambridge boasted the grand total of 122 books, each with the value of a farm! Now, in the middle of the seventeenth century there were books galore and people became bored and repelled by what one commentator called 'that horrible tower of books which grows higher every day'.
The story of this debate begins really - as so many intellectual stories do - with Descartes. This tiny man of just over five feet in stature was one day compelled to stay inside his lodgings due to a heavy fall of snow. With not much else to do, he gazed out his window. All these books, all these words and yet you read one book and it says 'this' and you read another and it says exactly the opposite; there are many books but there is no certain knowledge. And yet look at these splendid buildings. They are built on sure foundations and they stand up to the beating of the rain and the wind, and to the weight of the snow. What we need, said Descartes, is to start again. Let's doubt everything and construct a system of thought that is built on certain foundations. And you'll remember that that particular project began with his conclusion that 'I think, therefore I am'. There's one thing that's certain (or at least he thought so). Descartes set off an exciting journey of collecting knowledge based on these sure foundation blocks. There was no need for all these books. In fact, on one occasion he was asked by a visitor if he might have a look at Descartes' library. With great gusto Descartes threw open the doors, and there inside was a calf in the process of dissection. Not, we imagine, what the visitor had had in mind. So here then, is the root of dissatisfaction. Descartes was unhappy with the contemporary study of letters; it was all too much - he wanted simple words that we could certain about.
His view was not unopposed. Both John Locke and Gottfried Leibniz disagreed with him, and as it happens with each other. They both felt that the problem was not one of having 'simple words' it was simply with having 'words' at all. What are 'words'? How do 'words' help us to construct truth? Are some words better words than other words? To these questions Locke and Leibniz turned their prodigious minds. Locke, the seventeenth century English philosopher, had had an interesting career. Not only was he a philosopher but we also a student of medicine and politics. It is said that he had much to do with the writing of the Constitution of what is now Virginia and Florida. And it was on his advice that the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury underwent the operation that was widely believed to save his life. But despite a varied career, Locke is best remembered for his intellectual gifts and in particular for his famous Essay. It is there that he tells us something of his understanding of 'words'. He thinks that 'words' are like signposts - they point to ideas. So if for example I am thinking about a four legged animal that barks, I use the word 'dog' because that word points to my idea of a dog. As far as he is concerned words are signposts to ideas. But they could have been otherwise - it could well have been that the word 'cat' pointed to that four legged animal that barks. It just so happens out of pure accident that it is the word dog that works as that particular signpost. Words are ad hoc signposts.
If Locke is said to have had a varied career, then Leibniz was even more extraordinary. He had drawers full of plans - some great, some middling and some small. Among his small plans were one for a better wheelchair and one for a stagecoach to pass over obstacles without shaking the traveller inside. Among his middling plans you find notes on how to persuade Louis XIV not to attack northern Europe, and a rather good plan to stop Venice falling into the sea. And then there were the great plans, like the one to unite Catholics and Protestants, and the social scheme to make medical care available to everyone. And all of these plans were very well thought out. But his very greatest plan was the creation of an artificial language. Using this very special language he believed that people would be able to speak with accuracy and truth about the world they saw and experienced. We don't need to bother too much about this fantastic language other than to note why he thought such a language possible. Unlike Locke, he believed that 'words' are not accidental signposts; words are pictures. Signposts point, they don't actually say anything about the thing they point to; pictures, on the other hand, certainly do try to pick up on at least some of the aspects of the thing they are a picture of. Leibniz thought when Adam was given the job of naming all the animals he didn't just stand there and call out any old gobbledegook whenever he saw a new form of life, instead he thought of a word that made a connection to the animal. He thought of a word that was a kind of picture of the animal. I suppose another way of looking at it is that for Leibniz, words are mirrors and in them we see something of the thing they represent. So I am going to call Leibniz' view, the mirror view and Locke's, the signpost view.
Now what happens when we apply the mirror view and the signpost view to the word 'God'? Right away there will be those who object, quite correctly, that we need to be more specific than that. In the reading from Exodus this morning, we heard that God has a name: I AM who I AM. And on this Trinity Sunday, we celebrate the Christian name for God, 'Father, Son and Holy Spirit'. And it is this name I will focus on. There are those who say that 'Father, Son and Holy Spirit' is only a signpost. We could just as well speak about God as mother hen, as stronghold, as sure defence, or as one baptismal formulation has it, as creator, redeemer and sustainer. According to the signpost theory it doesn't matter; all these words, or phrases, point to an idea that is God.
By contrast those who hold to the mirror theory will say something different. For them 'Father, Son and Holy Spirit' is a mirror in which we see something about the genuine nature of who God is. Of course, like St Paul, we see in a mirror dimly - we are not able to explain exactly how God is three in one; we are not able to define with precision how each person relates to the other. But in humility we can acknowledge that in the name 'Father, Son and Holy Spirit' we get glimpse into the inner nature of God. Through that mirror, however dimly, we see the one who raised Jesus from the dead and who continues to enliven us with his Spirit.
Following on from Easter and Pentecost then, the Church rightly and properly invites the people of God to acknowledge with gratitude the revelation of God given to us through the naming of God as 'Father, Son and Holy Spirit'.
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