On The Name "Raphael"

In Exodus 15:26 God refers to Himself as "Yahweh Rapha" or "The One Who Heals". There are several places where God's name is modified by some other word. God is called "Yahweh Shalom", for instance, in Judges, which means "God is Peace". It may be that these various names and titles have to do with other gods that were worshipped by the Canaanites whose functions were subsumed under the worship of Yahweh alone. So at one time there was a god who was said to be a healer. But God tells the Israelites literally "I Am The One Who Heals", as a way of appropriating the activities of this other god. These other gods may have even, at one time, been looked at as other aspects of Yahweh. So monotheism takes place in stages, beginning with polytheism, and then moving into a period of syncretism where other gods are worshipped as aspects of the One True God, and finally to true monotheism.

Raphael is the name of an angels, found predominately in the Book of Tobit. Raphael literally means "God Heals". So the activity of healing, which once was explicitly attributed to God alone, is now attributed to an intermediary between God and man. This was the result of what is known as the apocalyptic worldview. This was the view that dark powers stood between God and man, and so God would not or could not directly interact with people. So God interacts through intermediaries, primarily angels. So in the Book of Tobit the power to heal comes from God alone, as does the command to heal, but the exercise of that power is in the hands of an intermediary, named Raphael. The evolution here is interesting: from a healer god, to that god acting as a kind of intermediary, to God being the sole source of action, and then back to that power being filtered through some other being.

The simple fact of the matter is that the world is not the perfect harmony it would have to be if it conformed fully to a single divine being. Thus polytheism always has something to commend it, intellectually. But morally and religiously, it is of little use. Moral experience demands unity. For to believe in multiple gods is to believe in a multitude of equally valid moral positions. On this view, murder is 'right' so long as there is some god who justifies it. A religion that doesn't help us make sense of the meaningfulness of the moral life, is all but useless, and should command no one's assent. But the insight of polytheism cannot be let go of so easily. In the end, positing other lesser cosmic forces in the universe that at time stand over against God and can at least at times frustrate His plans, is the only way I see of making sense of both insights. Our experience of cosmic evil is as palpable as our experience of cosmic good. But to hold onto monotheism is to stake a claim on the side of hope, hope that the invitation to love and the promise of good overcoming evil is not one that is given to us in vain. It is trusting in the Word of God, and in the reality of the good over the reality of the evil. The alternatives just undermine the very call that got us out on the road of redemption in the first place.