Losing Your Name, Losing Your Soul

It occurred to me recently that it is significant that the invisible enemy of our souls is called “the Evil One” in both the Lord’s Prayer and in such passages as 1 John 5:19. That is, our adversary is never named, but only referred to obliquely.  He is also referred to as “the Adversary” from the Hebrew word for adversary “satan” (see e.g. the curse in Psalm 109:6 which reads “Appoint a wicked man over him and let a satan stand at his right hand”).   This Hebrew word was transliterated into the Greek as Σατάν/ Satan and used as a title in such passages as 1 Thessalonians 2:18. He is also referred to as “the Slanderer” (Greek δίαβολος/ diabololos), usually rendered in English as “the Devil”.   Note:  all these words are titles, not names; they are in fact verbal circumlocutions used to avoid mentioning his actual name.

For presumably he once had a name.  Christian tradition regards the Devil and the demons as fallen angels, and angels seem to have names.  We see some of those names in the Old and New Testaments:  one angel is named “Michael” (see Daniel 12:1, Revelation 12:7); another is named “Gabriel” (see Luke 1:19), and another is called “Raphael” (in Tobit 3:17).  Pseudepigraphal works such as the composite Book of Enoch would invent names for other angels (see Enoch 6:7, 9:1).  But whether canonical or pseudepigraphal, whether they be the actual names of the angels or were simply names made up by writers, the tradition persists that angels have names. 

One gets the idea that those names (e.g. Michael and Gabriel) are translations of angelic names into Hebrew.  “Michael” is Hebrew for “Who is like God?”, while “Gabriel” is Hebrew for “Hero of God”, and “Raphael” means “God heals”.  Presumably the angelic sons of God who existed before the universe was made (see Job 38:6-7) did not have Hebrew names since the Hebrew people and their language did not then exist.

Some notion of the ineffability of the angelic names may be gathered from Judges 13:17-18.  In that passage the father of Samson asked the angel who predicted Samson’s birth what his name was so that the boy could be named after him.  The angel replied, “Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?”  The word rendered here “wonderful” is the Hebrew pili, meaning “incomprehensible, miraculous, remarkable”.  The King James renders it as “secret”; the Jerusalem Bible renders is “a mystery”.  From this one may conclude that names such as “Michael”, “Gabriel” and “Raphael” are not the actual names of the angels by which they were known to each another from the beginning of the universe, but how they wished to be known to the Hebrew people.

This means that once upon a time, the fallen angel now referred to by the term “the Evil One” also had a name—a name which he lost when he fell and when evil swallowed him up.  We see therefore why his name is never spoken, but that he is only referred to obliquely by such terms as “the Evil One”, “the Adversary”, “the Slanderer”, for to speak a name is to invoke someone, to summon, to give that person a kind of reality and place in one’s life.  That is why when we utterly reject someone we say, “I don’t want to hear that name ever spoken again!”  We think too of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels:  the evil Voldemort is “He-who-must-not-be-named”.  

This refusal to name evil finds it opposite in the delight we have in speaking the names of those we love and of hearing them speak our names.  This is especially poignant after the death of a loved one:  after they have died, it becomes all the important for us to speak their names in remembrance and so in some small way have them with us.

Moreover, the loss of name reflects the ultimate loss, the ultimate tragedy, the ultimate horror.  It is as if the person who once had a name has now ceased to exist.  After evil swallows them up, nothing of them remains, including their names.

We see this reflected in modern literature, such as the epic The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien.  The first example of this loss of name and personhood is Smeagol who first found Sauron’s lost ring.  In time, as the Ring slowly devoured him, he became not Smeagol, but Gollum—not so much a name as the sobbing sound one makes in one’s throat when choking.  Thus we read in The Two Towers that Smeagol answers Frodo and Sam, “I don’t want to come back [to Mordor]…Don’t ask Smeagol.  Poor, poor Smeagol, he went away long ago.  They took his Precious and he’s lost now.”  The tragic loss of all that Smeagol was is fitly expressed by the loss of his name.

Even more horrifying is the ambassador of Sauron that met Gandalf and his armies at the gate of Sauron’s stronghold.  He is described as follows: “At the head [of Sauron’s embassy] there rode a tall and evil shape, mounted upon a black horse, if horse it was; for it huge and hideous and its face was a frightful mask…The rider was robed all in black and black was his lofty helm, …The Lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dur he was and his name is remembered in no tale, for he himself had forgotten it, and he said: ‘I am the Mouth of Sauron’”.

Note well: “he himself had forgotten it”.  Here we see the final horror, the result of willingly embracing evil and darkness.  His true and former name was now no more; only his evil self remained, nameless and twisted.  All his previous life had vanished along with his name, leaving only a dark phantom behind. 

In the same way the past angelic beauty and glory of our present Adversary has utterly perished.  Once, before his fall, he was glorious, as were all the angels.  But now the glory is gone, and the name by which he was known prior to his fall is also gone, lost beyond recall.  Now he is the angel with no name; the Evil One.

Names are important. That is why names feature so prominently in the Apocalypse of St. John, the revelation of hidden realities.  The apostates have the name of the Beast written on their foreheads or hands, while the saints have the name of the Lamb and His Father written on theirs (Rev. 13:18-14:1).  Indeed, as part of our eternal salvation and inheritance, Christ said that He would write on us the name of His God, the name of the city of His God, and His own new name (Revelation 3:12). 

More than that He will confess our name before the Father and before His angels, and even give us a new name (Revelation 3:5, 2:17).  A new name?  Yes, a new name for a new destiny, a new glory, a new eternal life in the Kingdom of God.  The names by which we were known in this age will not be expunged or lost, but transfigured.  Not having lost our souls, we will never lose our names.