From Idol to Icon: The Problem of Divine Naming in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Naming the divine exposes a structural tension: language makes the transcendent intelligible only by confining it within humanly constructed measures. Jean-Luc Marion identifies this risk as conceptual idolatry, opposing the conceptual idol to the icon, a sign that directs the gaze beyond itself rather than arresting it. This article adopts Marion’s distinction not as a genealogical claim but as a heuristic framework for examining how different traditions navigate the limits of naming, tracing how the divine name shifts from a restrictive boundary to an open threshold across three registers: philosophical negation, name and letter mysticism, and repetitive invocation. Two dimensions emerge from this typology. Philosophical negation, rooted in Greek thought and Christian apophaticism, dismantles the predicative structure that produces the conceptual idol. Name and letter mysticism and repetitive invocation, drawing on Jewish and Islamic letter mysticism and the invocatory practices of dhikr, mantra, and Hesychasm, converge instead on a different mechanism: semantic exhaustion, the progressive suspension of a word’s referential function through sustained rhythmic repetition. By placing these practices in dialogue, the article identifies structural affinities that are difficult to see from within any single tradition’s own resources, suggesting that this convergence reflects an independent structural response to a shared linguistic aporia rather than doctrinal borrowing.