Introduction to Christianity Part One: God, Chapter Two

‘The Biblical Belief In God” is divided into five subchapters. In the ‘Problem of the story of the Burning Bush’ Ratzinger takes up Exodus 3 and examines the story of how the name ‘Yahweh’ was established as the name of the God of Israel. In telling Moses to tell his people “I am who I am,” the name is established both in light of the word for being (I am) and as the God of Israel’s ancestors. This jibed well with the Greek philosophical tradition of the Church Fathers, where a comprehensive idea of Being was “considered the most appropriate expression of the divine” (118) Moses sounded like Plato. However, as Ratzinger points out Emil Brunner pointing out, “The name is here replaced by the concept, and the not-to-be-defined is replaced by a definition. It is likely that the name ‘Yahweh’ comes not from the word for ‘being,’ but from the Babylonian theophorous names containing the syllable ‘you’ or ‘ya’, meaning “mine” or “my God.” “It is the God who, as the personal Being, deals with man as man.” (121)

In the second part, The Intrinsic Assumption of the Belief in Yahweh, the subject is this God of Israel’s fathers, bearing the name El or Elohim (singular and plural, respectively), taken from the surrounding peoples. “By deciding in favor of El, the fathers of Isra-el thus made a choice of the greatest importance: they opted for the ‘numen personale’ [personal divinity] as opposed to the ‘numen locale’ [local divinity], for the personal and person-centered God, who is to be thought of and found on the plane of I and You, not primarily in holy places.” (124)

This also means that he is not a God of nature, of the aforementioned ‘stirb und werde’ who is interpreted in light of cosmic changes, even though he may govern them. He is the God of coming events, the God of hope in the future. Addressed as El and Elohim “he is one, but as the exceeding great, entirely Other, he himself transcends the bounds of singular and plural; he lies beyond them.” (125)

In the third part, Ratzinger brings these meditations to bear on their importance of the creed concerning ‘Yahweh, the God of Our Fathers’ and the God of Jesus Christ.’ By identifying himself with the words “I am who I am,” God has rebuffed Moses’ search for a name to give to the Jewish people. God is beyond naming, and as Ratzinger writes, this “serves as a kind of negative theology.” (128)

Moreover, “when God here calls himself ‘I am’, he is to be explained, according to Jacob, as he who ‘is’, as Being in contrast to Becoming, as that which abides and persists in all passing away.” (129) In John 17, this ‘I am’ is taken up by Jesus Christ. “He himself is the name, that is the “invocability” of God.”

Ratzinger begins The Idea of the Name by asking “What is a name really?” He answers, “When God names himself after the self-understanding of fith, he is not so much expressing his inner nature as making himself nameable, he is handing himself over to men in such a way that he can be called upon by them. And by doing this he enters into coexistence with them; he puts himself within their reach; he is “there” for them.” (134)

“In part five The Two Sides of the Biblical Concept of God are considered. “One side is the element of the personal, of proximity, of invocability, of self-bestowal, an element that is heralded in the idea of the “God of our fathers, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” summed up comprehensively in the giving of the name, and concentrated again later in the idea of “the God of Jesus Christ”.

“On the other side is the fact that this proximity, this accessibility is the free gift of the One who stands above space and time, bound to nothing and binding everything to himself. The element of timeless power is characteristic of this God; it become concentrated more and more emphatically in the idea of Being, of the enigmatic and profound ‘I am’.” (136)

I don’t think there’s any thing to add to this, and I don’t really have any questions about it. I just think they're exemplary passages.