This paper argues that there is an elective affinity between the religious conception of God’s essential namelessness and imperial power, and that the Scriptural conception of YHWH, the named God of Israel, stands in stark conflict with both. In the ancient world, the marriage between the doctrine of God’s namelessness and imperial power was most fruitfully consummated by Graeco-Roman civilization after Alexander the Great. Soulen argues that in the modern world, a similar marriage may be taking place between modern theologies of religious pluralism and the expanding empire of modern market economics. Ultimately, he suggests, it is the biblical God YHWH, not the nameless deity of religious pluralism, who can oppose unlimited expansion of market economics into all spheres of life.
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