The Beautiful Names

The Beautiful Names of God
By Christopher Howse

Sacred mysteries
God will be invoked in Arabic in Westminster Cathedral on June 19, with the first performance of Sir John Tavener's The Beautiful Names. Sir John's work, commissioned by the Prince of Wales, lasts for 70 minutes and will be performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the choir of the cathedral.
Some will think it odd to call God by the name Allah in a Christian church. But Allah is simply the Arabic for God, just as God is Deus in Latin, Bog in Russian.
The word Allah refers to the same God that Jews and Christians worship. There is no doubt of that. He is the God of Abraham and Isaac; the one living God. He is the God that Jesus worshipped and whom he invoked, in Aramaic, as he died on the cross, calling on him by the name Eloi.
In a way, the word used to refer to God is arbitrary. It functions as a common noun, in the same way as tree or mountain. The difference is that there may be many trees or mountains, but, by his nature, there can only be one God.
At the same time, God is not just another item in the universe. He existed before he made the universe and he is not identified with any created thing or by the totality of created things. Indeed, it is impossible for us creatures to conceive of his nature. But we attribute perfections to him in an attempt to say something about him. Believers use these attributes to praise him in adoration.
Christians call God the Almighty. So do Muslims; they call him al-Jabbar. This has connotations of being irresistible. Christians call God the Holy One. So do Muslims: al-Quddus (which perhaps has connotations of purity and separateness; but then so does holy in the Bible). They call him al-Khaliq, the Creator, as Christians do.
All the 99 traditional names, or attributes, of God used by Muslims are concepts familiar to Christians when they contemplate God. The Islamic names of God are to be found in the Koran and, for that reason, their connotations are different from those from the Bible and Christian tradition.
In commenting on how different names seem to signify contrary aspects in God, the 13th-century Sufi writer Jalal al-Din Rumi explained: "Just as a person is, in relation to you, a father and, in relation to someone else, either a son or a brother, so the names of God have their relations.
He is, from the viewpoint of the infidel, the Conqueror; from our viewpoint, the Merciful."
It is a pious practice in Islam to recite the names of God. A hadith, or saying handed down from the time of Mohammed, says: "He who enumerates them would get into Paradise."
The names are recited in turn, or, in another practice, one name is recited 33 times or 99 times, as a way of concentrating on this attribute. People use strings of beads to keep count of the names they recite. Foolish Westerners often think they are "worry beads".
For a Christian, the alien aspect of the devotion to the Beautiful Names is the natural lack of any reference to Jesus, through whom Christian prayer is normally made. Yet Christians do contemplate the perfections of God in their prayer, when they want to.
I do not expect John Tavener's work to please many Muslims. Muslims drop in to Westminster Cathedral, but rarely for services. It would be surprising if they did.
The other thing is that Sir John Tavener has, in recent years, taken up the ideas of René Guéon and Frithjof Schuon. Both thinkers argued that there is a perennial philosophy behind the major religions in the esoteric understanding of their teachings. Guéon, as far as I understand it, made esoteric traditions more compatible with the truthfulness of Christian doctrine.
But such esoteric universalism can be deeply suspect to many Muslims, not to mention quite a few Christians.

A Christian Response
Respectfully, the God of Islam and the God of the Christian Bible are not the same person. Islam teaches a strict monotheism. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem placards the sign 'God has no son.' Christians however believe in a Trinitarian God - that the One God is revealed in Three Persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That the eternal God has an eternal Son is central to the Christian Faith. Two thousand years or so ago, the eternal Son became Man in Jesus Christ ' for us and for our salvation', and in doing so divided time into BC and AD, and procured the eternal salvation of all who put their faith in Him and His death in the place of sinners at Calvary's cross.

Prince of Wales
I see we have skated past the role of the self-proclaimed "Defender of Faiths" in all this. Prince Charles may like to do things which are multi-Faith in intent but I was under the impression that we had identified that multi-culturalisem in Britain has turned out to be a failed concept - not leats because it actually turns out that it perpetuates plural mono-cultures with no cross-over. It is Christianity that is in decline in Britain. The Queen holds very firmly on to the (albeit Catholic) title of "Defender of The Faith" - her heir would do a lot better if he found ways to revive interest in Christian worship as a regular thing in more households. As our Churches close and are deconsecrated for other uses or redeveloped - there has never been a bigger rash of Mosque building - all of which will be packed. Islam needs no help - Christianity most certainly does. I think a Faith where we are turning away from a God with one (or three if you look at the Holy Trinity) identity is in worse shape than another where it is common practice to use the 99 names they have for Allah as a prayer mantra. Our decline and decadence as seen in non-Western eyes has direct correlation with the decline of active celebration of our nominal mainstream Faith - Christianity - in Britain (and other western countries for that matter). Islam is watching and can claim with some conviction to be more devout and respected. Has it occurred to anyone that, though actually a small minority in Britain, the number of actively worshipping Muslims each week may already exceed the numbers entering Christian churches?