The Wrong Name
One of the semi-unspoken policies we have at Disruptive Theology is to refer to President Trump as “Donald” whenever we write about him. This is done for a number of reasons that have been discussed elsewhere. The main reason why I have chosen to do this is because “Donald” happens to be President Trump’s name, and calling someone or something by their proper name is a form of truth telling.
More on that later.
I am struck by Donald and his supporters’ practice of giving nicknames to those they hate. Selecting a few examples more or less at random:
· Crooked Hilary- Hilary Clinton
· Low Energy Jeb- Jeb Bush
· Lyin’ Ted- Ted Cruz
· Beautiful Ted- also Ted Cruz
· Lamb the Sham- Connor Lamb
· Pocahontas- Elizabeth Warren
· Mr. Kurd- Rahim Rashidi
· The Pakistani Fraudster- Imran Awan.
The list goes on and on. If you wanted to see a more comprehensive list there is an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to all of the nicknames that Donald uses complete with direct sources. I direct your attention to my footnotes.[1] Anyone who has remotely paid attention to Donald’s speeches or twitter posts over the past three years can attest to this. Donald uses these nicknames to put down and to project an aura of weakness around those he dislikes. We are talking about classic grade school bullying tactics, and these tactics work. What concerns me is not so much the childlike sadism found in Donald and his supporters use of these tactics; (don’t get me wrong, that does concern me, just not in this post) rather it is the sinister and awful way the misnaming of people erodes and distorts truth. For the classical Christian tradition to distort truth is also to distort our encounter with God.
The Divine Names
The question is what do names have to do with truth? Perhaps we can turn to the mysterious 5th-century theologian Dionysius the Areopagite for some help. The Areopagite taught that God is not properly a being like you, or me, or anything else that exists. God is beyond being, and is therefore the source of all being. God is not a thing to be studied or observed, actually, God isn’t a thing at all. Because of this, God is utterly incomprehensible and therefore impossible to know by way of the common, human techniques that we use for knowing a thing.[2] However, that doesn’t mean that we can’t know something about God. Because God is the source of creation and all that exists finds its life in God, it is possible to name God in creation.[3] The Areopagite tells us that every creature names God most fully when it lives as the being that it is. Consider this passage:
“They call it “cause of beings” since in its goodness it employed its creative power to summon all things into being, and it is hailed as wise and beautiful because beings which keep their nature uncorrupted are filled with divine harmony and sacred beauty.”[4]
What are God’s names? Well, these names are the fundamental, and perhaps supernatural, sources of existence. The Areopagite offers “beauty”, “wisdom”, “power”, “life”, “love”, “good”, and “truth” as proper names of God that we see in creation. Every creature partakes of these things in order to be, and the more fully and wonderfully a creature partakes of these things the more clearly the divine names are shown in creation.
There is a deep connection between God’s revealing of God’s self in creation and in all creatures’ living authentic lives as the beings God has called them to be. The more a creature comes alive, lives truthfully, participates fully in creation, and so on the more the glory of God radiates in that creature. God comes into sharper focus, if you will.
This is why I find Donald’s nicknaming practice to be disturbing. In this way of seeing the relationship between God and creation, any distorting of a creature, any misnaming is also in a very real sense a misnaming of God. Remember, God is named in creation most fully when the creature is itself in its fullest sense. Donald’s policy of misnaming those he hates and disagrees with not only puts down and harms his fellow human beings, but it also distorts the revelation of God found in those human beings.
Disruption-
I mentioned earlier in this post that calling something or someone by its proper name is a form of truth-telling. Proper names help dispel some of the veils and deceptions that spring up in our world. Donald’s practice of misnaming is a form of deception, it conjures ideas and images that may not be there and shapes the way the people he is misnaming are perceived and engaged with. The Areopagite adds a theological and metaphysical weight to this. If truth is one of God’s proper names (and it most certainly is) than any instance of misnaming is also a misnaming and distortion of God’s revelation in the world.
What can the church and other Christians do to disrupt this? I have two ideas.
One idea is to insist on naming a thing or a person what it is. We do this with Donald here at the blog and we can do it with anything else. Calling something by its proper name is powerful, it reveals the truth of that thing or person and it keeps us from dehumanizing the other. One group who does this beautifully is the folks who are a part of Black Lives Matter. As black folks continue to be murdered by police or other principalities there is a tendency to forget the names of the victims of such violence. Often, we convert people into statistics so that we can distance ourselves from the scandal of their deaths. Black Lives Matter has a practice of naming the victims and demanding that they are remembered. Without this work, I doubt strongly that we would remember Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, or Philando Castile.[5] This is powerful truth-telling.
Another way the church can disrupt this is to be places of refuge for humanity. We must remember that God is proclaimed more clearly when humanity is more fully human.[6] The church must be locations where humanity is allowed to flourish in all of its diversity because it is there that we find God’s proper names radiant in the world. When humanity is fully alive, Life is on display. When humanity creates beautiful things, Beauty shines forth. When humanity embraces goodness over evil, the Good is made known. When humanity tells the truth, Truth is revealed. These are the names of God at work in creation, and the church is called to declare God’s names publicly. The church can do this by being places of radical inclusion of folks of different ethnicities, sexual orientations, gender identities, etc. The church should be places of art, of music, of social activism, of public displays of solidarity and love. Doing this will disrupt the deceptions of false names and declare the true God of Jesus Christ.
God of Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. May we participate in the great work that You are already doing. Empower us to be who You have called us to be so that Your name can shine forth clearly and without distortion. Wipe away all deceptions and false names so that we can live in truth. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nicknames_used_by_Donald_Trump As I said, every nickname listed on this page has a source. My favorite nickname on the list is one he uses for Stephen Colbert: “That Guy on CBS”
[2]The Areopagite only has a few surviving texts. I am mostly pulling from his most important text The Divine Names
[3] The Divine Names -“To sum up. It is the life of the living, the being of beings, it is the source and the cause of all life and of all being, for out of its goodness it commands all things to be and it keeps them going. We learn of all these mysteries from the divine scriptures and you will find what the scripture writers have to say regarding the divine names refers, in revealing praises, to the beneficent processions of God…”
[4] Chapter 1, DN
[5] The list could go on and on. Lord, have mercy on us.
[6] This is demonstrated by Irenaeus. “The Glory of God is the human being fully alive” Against Heresies 4.20.7
For a superb translation of The Divine Names we recommend:
Pseudo-Dionysius, The Classics of Western Spirituality: Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works, translated by Colm Luibheid. New York: Paulist Press, 1987.
