The Invocation of the Name

Behind the Jesus Prayer stands the whole biblical theology of the Name of God: the Name as the mode of God’s presence and power among His people, from the bush of Exodus to the “name above every name” of Philippians. This file traces that theology through the Old Testament, the New, and the Fathers, and states carefully — distinguishing dogma from theologoumenon — in what sense the tradition has dared to call the invocation of the Name a sacrament of the divine presence.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Name in the Old Testament

In the world of the Bible a name is not a conventional label but a real bond with the one named; to know a name is to stand in relation to its bearer, and God’s Name, uniquely, is His own self-disclosure. At the bush God reveals the Name — “I AM WHO I AM… say this to the people of Israel, ‘The LORD [YHWH], the God of your fathers… has sent me to you’: this is my name for ever” (Exodus 3:14–15) — and thereafter the Name functions in Israel almost as a mode of God’s own presence. The Deuteronomic theology speaks of the sanctuary as “the place which the LORD your God will choose, to make his name dwell there” (Deuteronomy 12:5, 11); Solomon prays at the Temple’s dedication, “My name shall be there” (1 Kings 8:29 [3 Kingdoms LXX]). The Psalter prays to and through the Name: “O God, save me by thy name” (Psalm 53:3 LXX [54:1]); “our help is in the name of the LORD” (Psalm 123:8 LXX [124:8]); “The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe” (Proverbs 18:10). Calling upon the Name is from Genesis onward the Bible’s own definition of worship (“At that time men began to call upon the name of the LORD,” Genesis 4:26), and Joel’s promise — “all who call upon the name of the LORD shall be delivered” (Joel 2:32 [3:5 LXX]) — carries that definition into the messianic age. At the same time the Name is hedged with awe: the third commandment forbids taking it “in vain” (Exodus 20:7), and by the late Second Temple period Jewish piety no longer pronounced the Tetragrammaton at all, substituting Adonai — in Greek, Kyrios (on the biblical theology of the Name, see Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity, trans. Baker, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1964, ch. on the Name; Ware, The Power of the Name, SLG Press, 1974, which opens from this Hebraic background).

The Name Given to Jesus

The New Testament’s boldest move is to transfer this entire theology to Jesus. The name Yeshua — “the LORD saves” — is given by the angel with its own exegesis: “you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). The apostolic Church heals, baptizes, forgives, and suffers “in the name of Jesus” (Acts 3:6, 16; 4:12; 10:48; 5:41 — the apostles rejoice “that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name”); Paul defines Christians simply as “those who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:2), quoting Joel’s formula with Jesus as its referent (Romans 10:13); and the hymn of Philippians declares that God has bestowed on the crucified and exalted Jesus “the name which is above every name” (Philippians 2:9) — in context, the divine Name itself, Kyrios: “every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is LORD” (Philippians 2:11). The invocation of Jesus by name is therefore, in the New Testament’s own terms, not a devotional flourish but the transposition of Israel’s calling-on-the-Name into its fulfilled key (Daniélou, Theology of Jewish Christianity, 1964; the biblical texts as listed).

Early Christian literature carries the theme forward with striking realism. The Shepherd of Hermas, in the mid-second century, says that “the name of the Son of God is great and incomprehensible, and sustains the whole world” (Hermas, Similitudes 9.14.5; trans. in ANF vol. 2). Justin Martyr appeals to the public fact that demons are expelled “in the name of Jesus Christ, crucified under Pontius Pilate” (Justin, Second Apology 6; cf. Dialogue with Trypho 85). Origen, answering Celsus’s charge that Christians work wonders by spells, replies that the power lies in the name of Jesus joined to the proclamation of His deeds, and that this name “has expelled myriads of evil spirits from the souls and bodies of men” (Origen, Contra Celsum 1.25; trans. Chadwick, Cambridge, 1953). These texts show the pre-monastic Church already treating the Name as effective power — and already, in Origen’s careful distinction between invocation-with-faith and pagan name-magic, drawing the very line the later tradition would need (see Not a Mantra; the anti-magical control text remains Acts 19:13–17, the sons of Sceva).

The Name in the Ascetic Tradition

When the desert and Sinai fathers made the remembrance and invocation of Jesus the center of the monk’s inner work — Diadochus’s “remembrance of Jesus,” Climacus’s “let the remembrance of Jesus be present with your every breath,” Hesychios’s coupling of watchfulness with “the continual invocation of Jesus Christ” — they were consciously drawing on this biblical inheritance rather than innovating (Diadochus, On Spiritual Knowledge 59, 61, in The Philokalia, vol. 1, trans. Palmer, Sherrard, Ware, Faber, 1979; Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 27, trans. Luibheid and Russell, Paulist, 1982; Hesychios, On Watchfulness and Holiness, in The Philokalia, vol. 1; the development is traced in Section 03). Hesychios in particular writes of the Name in language of remarkable warmth: the invocation of Jesus is to cleave to the breath and the heart, filling them with light — a teaching the Philokalia transmits and the whole hesychast tradition presupposes (Hesychios, On Watchfulness and Holiness, Philokalia vol. 1; Ware, “The Origins of the Jesus Prayer,” in The Study of Spirituality, SPCK, 1986). The fourteenth-century hesychast theology of St. Gregory Palamas then supplied the dogmatic frame in which the tradition’s experience could be stated without either magic or nominalism: God is truly present and participable in His uncreated energies, while His essence remains beyond participation (Palamas, The Triads, ed. Meyendorff, trans. Gendle, Paulist, 1983; see Barlaam, Palamas, and the Hesychast Councils). It is in Palamite terms that later Orthodox writers would attempt to say what “the power of the Name” is: not the syllables as such, but God’s own energy, His presence-in-action, which the believing invocation of the Name encounters.

“A Sacrament of the Divine Presence” — and the Limits of the Phrase

Modern Orthodox writers have used sacramental language for the Name. Fr. Sergius Bulgakov wrote that “the Name of Jesus, present in the human heart, communicates to it the power of deification” (Bulgakov, The Orthodox Church, 1935; quoted in Ware, The Power of the Name, 1974). Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, quoting him, speaks of the Name as a “point of encounter” between the Savior and the one praying, and of the invocation as bearing an almost sacramental efficacy — while immediately adding the guard-rails: the Name’s power is not mechanical, and the prayer is no talisman; its efficacy presupposes living faith and repentance (Ware, The Power of the Name, 1974). Fr. Lev Gillet’s classic essays on the invocation of the Name move in the same register (A Monk of the Eastern Church [Gillet], On the Invocation of the Name of Jesus, Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, 1950; The Jesus Prayer, SVS Press, 1987).

Here a distinction the repository draws elsewhere must be drawn explicitly: this sacramental language is theologoumenon, not dogma. The Orthodox Church has never conciliarly defined the relation of the divine Name to the divine essence and energies. When the question was forced — in the Athonite name-glorifying controversy of 1912–13, where one party confessed “the Name of God is God Himself” and the Holy Synod of Russia condemned that formula — the resulting dispute was referred to the Moscow Council of 1917–18 and never resolved; it remains formally open (Alfeyev, Sviashchennaia taina Tserkvi, Aleteia, 2002; see Section 07, where the dispute is treated at length with both sides named). Accordingly, this collection uses the “sacrament of presence” language the way its best exponents use it: as a reverent theological description of the tradition’s experience — that in the believing invocation of the Name, Christ Himself is encountered — without asserting, as dogma, any particular metaphysic of the Name. What is dogmatically secure is less and more than the disputed formulas: less, because no council has defined the Name’s ontology; more, because what the Church does confess — that Jesus Christ is truly God, truly present to those who call on Him in faith, and truly the only Name in which is salvation (Acts 4:12) — is the entire working content of the prayer.

Why the Name, and Not Another Word

It remains to ask why the tradition concentrated on the Name rather than on any other holy word — why not “God,” “Trinity,” “mercy”? The answer the sources give is Christological and personal. The Name “Jesus” fixes prayer on the concrete, historical, incarnate person — “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14) — and thus guards prayer from evaporating into abstraction; Diadochus already makes this point when he prescribes the remembrance of “the Lord Jesus” as the one object that satisfies the intellect’s need for occupation without feeding its imagination (Diadochus, On Spiritual Knowledge 59, Philokalia vol. 1). The Name is also the shortest possible confession of faith, and so can accompany the breath where a creed cannot. And the Name is given: it is not chosen by the one praying, as a meditation-word is chosen, but received from the angel, the apostles, and the Church — which is why the prayer of the Name is intrinsically ecclesial, an act of Holy Tradition and not of private technique (Ware, The Power of the Name, 1974; on the prayer’s ecclesial embedding see The Prayer Rope and the Rule and the compendium Holy Tradition).

See Also

References

  • Scripture: Genesis 4:26; Exodus 3:14–15; 20:7; Deuteronomy 12:5, 11; 1 Kings 8:29; Psalms 53 and 123 LXX; Proverbs 18:10; Joel 2:32; Matthew 1:21; John 1:14; 14:13–14; Acts 3:6, 16; 4:12; 5:41; 10:48; 19:13–17; Romans 10:13; 1 Corinthians 1:2; Philippians 2:9–11.
  • Daniélou, Jean. The Theology of Jewish Christianity. Trans. John A. Baker. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1964. (The early Christian theology of the Name and its Jewish matrix.)
  • The Shepherd of Hermas, Similitudes 9.14.5. In Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2.
  • Justin Martyr. Second Apology 6; Dialogue with Trypho 85. In Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1. (Exorcism in the name of Jesus.)
  • Origen. Contra Celsum 1.25. Trans. Henry Chadwick. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953. (The power of the Name distinguished from name-magic.)
  • The Philokalia: The Complete Text. Trans. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware. Vol. 1. London: Faber and Faber, 1979. (Diadochus, On Spiritual Knowledge; Hesychios, On Watchfulness and Holiness.)
  • Climacus, John. The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Trans. Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982.
  • Palamas, Gregory. The Triads. Ed. John Meyendorff, trans. Nicholas Gendle. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1983.
  • Ware, Kallistos. The Power of the Name: The Jesus Prayer in Orthodox Spirituality. Oxford: SLG Press, 1974. (The Name as point of encounter; the Bulgakov quotation; the guard-rails against magic.)
  • Ware, Kallistos. “The Origins of the Jesus Prayer: Diadochus, Gaza, Sinai.” In The Study of Spirituality, ed. Jones, Wainwright, Yarnold. London: SPCK, 1986.
  • Bulgakov, Sergius. The Orthodox Church. London: Centenary Press, 1935. (The Name and deification, as quoted by Ware.)
  • A Monk of the Eastern Church [Lev Gillet]. On the Invocation of the Name of Jesus. London: Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, 1950; and The Jesus Prayer, rev. ed. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987.
  • Alfeyev, Hilarion. Sviashchennaia taina Tserkvi: Vvedenie v istoriiu i problematiku imiaslavskikh sporov [The Sacred Mystery of the Church: An Introduction to the History and Problematic of the Name-Glorifying Disputes]. 2 vols. St. Petersburg: Aleteia, 2002. (The unresolved status of the ontology of the Name.)