Abstract

Paul Ricoeur is a contemporary French philosopher in the phenomenological and hermeneutic tradition. The theme of naming God, which recalls the traditional theological rubric of the divine names, is examined by Ricoeur within several methodological contexts: biblical hermeneutics, philosophy of religion and theology. ;This dissertation explores the development of the theme of naming God in Ricoeur's religious essays. First, it traces the historical development of this theme across Ricoeur's works, primarily against the background of three hermeneutic approaches to the biblical text as religious symbol, poetic text and testimony. Second, it shows that the hermeneutics of naming God presupposes a speculative moment in that naming and an underlying biblical ontology . The speculative moment affirms the possibility of a naming that is meaningful and true. Third, this study relates Ricoeur's approach to naming God to that of Thomas Aquinas. ;Ricoeur articulates three objective moments in naming God: the divine self-presentation as Word, its Scriptural trace and its speculative dynamism. These moments are appropriated in three acts: attestation of the divine call, interpretation of its Scriptural trace, and reflection on its meaning. Naming God, in this analysis, is set within the dialogical context of vocation and invocation. It is plurivocal, polycentric and in tension with the experience of evil. Its speculative dynamism yields a predicative naming with Trinitarian dimensions. God is named one, love, and Spirit. The poetic and speculative naming are true both as poetic manifestation and as ethical injunction. Ricoeur articulates, only in his latest work, a biblical ontology of divine love. ;Ricoeur himself uses the term "analogical" for the predicative language that names God and to affirm a transcendental relation, within faith, between God and creatures. The meaning of analogy for St. Thomas is transformed by being placed within faith, tied to its matrix in biblical poetry and testimony, and interpreted through the category of person or Spirit. Love, and not being, is the primary name of God