onomatoclast

English

Etymology

From onomato- (back-formation from onomatodoxy) +‎ -clast, by analogy with iconoclast, from Byzantine Greek κλάω (kláō, “to break”).

Noun

onomatoclast (plural onomatoclasts)

1. (rare, Eastern Orthodoxy, derogatory) An opponent of onomatodoxy.
   • 2001, Tatiana Senina, “The Divine Name Controversy”, in History, Bible, Science‎^[1]:

     […] they at first were unable to present to the onomatoclasts the teaching concerning the divinity of the Name of God that they knew through their experience of prayer, but were not always able to articulate in words.

   • 2014, Lara Sels, “Gregory of Nyssa's Contra Eunomium and Onomatodoxy in Russian Theology”, in Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium III: An English Translation with Commentary and Supporting Studies‎^[2], page 665:

     According to the self-proclaimed apologists of imjaslavie the onomatoclasts, in rejecting the divinity of the revealed names and God's undivided presence therein, sided with Palamas's opponent Barlaam of Calabria, who had denied the full divinity of God's energies and their inseparability from His essence.

   • 2015, Paweł Rojek, “Onomatodoxy and the Problem of Constitution: Florensky on Scientific and Manifest Images of the World”, in Faith and Reason in Russian Thought‎^[3], page 107:

     An onomatoclast sees a face as a mere mask, perceives an icon as piece of wood and hears a name as an empty sound.