Nameless Yet Has the Names of All That Is
Below is a beautiful passage from Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in his treatise The Divine Names.
Pseudo-Dionysius starts by pointing out that God cannot be named. Because God "transcends all things" God cannot be praised as "word or power or mind or life or being." God is "at total remove" from the "totality of existence." Thus, God is "the Nameless One."
And yet, since God is the Source of all existence, "the cause of everything" and "at the center of everything," we must "turn to all of creation" to find names for God.
So, in the second paragraph, Pseudo-Dionysius turns to enumerate names, names rooted in created existence, that Scripture uses for God. Names like "God," "life," and "truth." Names like "wisdom," "word," and "power." Names like "fire," "wind," "water," "rock," and "dew."
Thus, the conclusion: God is "nameless yet has the names of all that is."
Pseudo-Dionysius from The Divine Names:
Truly and supernaturally enlightened after this blessed union, they discover that although it is the cause of everything, it is not a thing since it transcends all things in a manner beyond being. Hence, with regard to the supra-essential being of God—transcendent Goodness transcendently there—no lover of the truth which is above all truth will seek to praise it as word or power or mind or life or being. No. It is at a total remove from every condition, movement, life, imagination, conjecture, name, discourse, thought, conception, being, rest, dwelling, unity, limit, infinity, the totality of existence. And yet, since it is the underpinning of goodness, and by merely being there is the cause of everything, to praise this divinely beneficent Providence you must turn to all of creation. It is there at the center of everything and everything has it for a destiny. It is there “before all things and in it all things hold together” (Col. 1:17). Because it is there the world has come to be and exists. All things long for it. The intelligent and rational long for it by way of knowledge, the lower strata by way of perception, the remainder by way of the stirrings of being alive and in whatever fashion befits their condition.
Realizing all this, the theologians praise it by every name—and as the Nameless One...
And yet on the other hand they give it many names, such as “I am being” (Ex. 3:14; Rev. 1:4), “life” (Jn. 11:25, 14:6), “light” (Jn. 8:12), “God” (Gn. 28:13; Ex. 3:6, 15; Is. 40.:28), the “truth” (Jn. 14:6). These same wise writers, when praising the Cause of everything that is, use names drawn from all the things caused: good (Mt. 19:17; Lk. 18:19), beautiful (Sg. 1:16), wise (Job 9:4; Rom. 16:27), beloved (Is. 5:1), God of gods (Deut. 10:17; Ps. 50:1 LXX; Ps. 136:2), Lord of Lords (Deut. 10:17; Ps. 136:3; 1 Tim. 6:15; Rev. 17:14, 19:16), Holy of Holies (Dan. 9:24 LXX) eternal (Is. 40:28, Bar. 4:8), existent (Ex. 3:14), Cause of the ages (Heb. 1:2). They call him source of life (2 Mac. 1:25), wisdom (Prov. 8:22-31; 1 Cor. 1:30), mind (Is. 40:13; cited in Rom. 11:34 and 1 Cor. 2:16), word (Jn. 1:1; Heb. 4:12), knower (Sus. 42), possessor beforehand of all the treasures of knowledge (Col. 2:3), power (Rev. 19:1; 1 Cor. 1:18; Ps. 24:8), powerful, and King of Kings (1 Tim. 6:15; Rev. 17:14, 19:16), ancient of days (Dan. 7:9, 13, 22), the unaging and unchanging (Mal. 3:6), salvation (Ex. 15:2; Rev. 19:1), righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30) and sanctification (1 Cor. 1:30), redemption (1 Cor. 1:30), greatest of all and yet the one in the still breeze (1 Kgs. 19:12 LXX). They say he is in our minds, in our souls (Wis. 7:27), and in our bodies (1 Cor. 6:19), in heaven and on earth (Ps. 115:3; Is. 66:1; Jer. 23:24), that while remaining ever within himself (Ps. 102:27) he is also in (Jn. 1:10) and around and above the world, that he is above heaven (Ps. 113:4) and above all being, that he is sun (Mal. 4:2), star (2 Pet. 1:19; Rev. 22:16), and fire (Ex. 3:2), water (Jn. 7:38), wind (Jn. 3:5-8, 4:24), and dew (Is. 18:4; Hos. 14:5), cloud (Ex. 13:21f., 24:16, 33:9; Job 36:27f.; Is. 4:5, 18:4; 1 Cor. 10:1f.), archetypal stone (Ps. 118:22, cited in Mt. 21:42; Mk. 12:10; Acts 4:11 and 1 Pet. 2:4, 7; Is. 8:14, cited in Rom. 9:33 and 1 Pet. 2:8; Is. 28:16, cited in Rom. 9:33; Eph. 2:20, 1 Pet. 2:4, 6), and rock (Ex. 17:6 and Num. 20:7-11, cited in 1 Cor. 10:4; 2 Sam. 22:2; Is. 8:14, cited in Rom. 9:33 and 1 Pet. 2:8), that he is all, that he is no thing.
And so it is the Cause of all and as transcending all, he is rightly nameless and yet has the names of everything that is. Truly he has dominion over all and all things revolve around him, for he is their cause, their source, and their destiny.
The sermon of the Apostle Paul to the Athenians provides a fuller response, I think.
The Nameless God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. What was Nameless now has a Name--a name given to one who "tabernacled" among us, a name fitted to our limited cognitive capacity.
The move to "turn inwards" and contemplate the transcendent Being of God is a move precisely in the wrong direction.
1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2 The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We write this to make our joy complete. (1 John 1)