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P A R T I God: Desiring the Infinite The Reason why God has no name, or is said to be above being named, is because his essence is above all that we can understand about God and signify in words. . . . [W]e attribute to him simple and abstract names to signify his simplicity and concrete names to signify his subsistence and perfection ; although both of these names fail to signify his mode of being, because our intellect does not know Him in this life as He is. —Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica God is the shortest distance between zero and infinity in either direction. —Alfred Jarry, ‘‘Concerning the Surface of God’’ The relation of referent to name is problematic in a unique way when the name of the referent is God. Transcendence may be envisaged as an excess that attaches to notions both of the infinite and of glory in a manner that bypasses the apophatic strategies of mysticism and of negative theology and expresses itself instead as an erotics of transcendence. Languages of art and ethics can become theological languages in which the thought of Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, Lacan, de Certeau, and Levinas can function as influences and instruments of analysis. Illustration: Visitors strolling through Christo and Jean-Claude Gates exhibit in Central Park, New York. Photograph by Meggie Wyschogrod. ...

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