ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUENet AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 2 LESSON 30 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> The Bible uses several names for Jesus as we have already seen in this course. One of the most common designations for him is Lord. Why is Jesus called Lord? And does the name carry any cultural significance that we might not understand? >> DR. DAVID SCAER: There are many names by which Jesus can be called. And if we want to fudge on the deity of Jesus, that is whether -- maybe we're not certain that we can take his deity as being prominent in our thought, we would rather call him Lord -- God at least in the English language is absolute. And Lord not so much. I think this whole thing has to be reevaluated. The word Lord in Greek is kyrios. And for us who use the liturgy of the older hymnal in the early part of the liturgy, there's a section called the ***kyriolason, which is not Latin but Greek. Lord have mercy. Very strangely that's taken directly out of the scripture. And it really would be nice -- I think we're the only Lutheran Church in the world now that's something I can't prove and probably an exaggeration that sings that part of the liturgy in English. All of the other churches sing it in Greek carry liaison. And somehow even the illiterate manage to figure out what it is. It kind of teaches the -- when you use a frame like that in the same language all over the world, it kind of strengthens the catholicity of the church in saying that we all belong to one church. There is -- some people hold -- some scholars hold that this title came from the Roman emperor. Because the reman coins -- well, shall in an English coin -- you pick up the English coin it has the abbreviation Elizabeth the Queen, Elizabeth Regina II. Queen Regina and defender of the faith. It has that. It has a simple religious symbol on the British coins. They all have that. The Roman coins also had a religious symbol. They had a picture of the emperor, the Cesar. And he was called ***daos at dominos, Lord and God. So the theory is that as Christianity moved out of the Jewish world into the Greek world. And I don't believe that Christianity existed only in the Jewish world because the Jewish world was already Greek at that time. They decided well, if these political figures in the room were designated as Lord and God, God and Lord, wouldn't it be nice if we did the same thing for Jesus? So they elevated Jesus to God and Lord. I think it's a much safer path to take that the word Lord is taken from the Old Testament word for Yahweh or adonai. ***Alaheim is the word for God, the ordinary word for God in the Old Testament. Yahweh and adonai is the word for Lord. So when the term Lord is used in the New Testament, it refers to the deity of Jesus. I think we have to speak about a further significance of this. About 30 years ago I was participating in a debate. And maybe I wasn't doing as good or I was not as learned as I should have been. And the argument was that in the Gospel, the phrase Lord was simply another designation for sir. And I didn't answer the question. But then later I was thinking of this. I was thinking about this. And bring to your mind the last judgement scene in the fifth discourse of Matthew when all the nations are gathered before the Son of Man as king. And the sheep are on the right. And the goats are on the left. And Jesus said, "Because you do not do it to the least of these my brethren, you didn't do it unto me." And they answer -- they didn't say, "Sir, when did we see you?" The word is kyrios Lord. Lord, when did we see you? When we -- believers and unbelievers see Jesus in judgement, they are not going to address him as sir. They are going to address him as Lord. They might not address him as redeemer. They won't acknowledge him as the one who atoned for their sins. They won't do that. But when you come into the presence of Jesus, he will be there as judge and God and the proper title for him will be Lord. Now, we can expand this even a little bit further. In one of the other previous questions, we pointed out to Romans Chapter 9 Verse 5 -- this the best translation is to suggest that Jesus is God blessed forever, that he is overall. And in the very famous and well-known confession of Thomas when Jesus confronts him after the resurrection, Thomas says to him "My Lord and my God." And so there are references -- direct references where Jesus is called God. However, the ordinary way in the New Testament of referring to the Father is God. And the ordinary reference to referring to Jesus in his divinity is Lord. For example, it's the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the Communion of the Holy Spirit. Some people add to that particular formula. They shouldn't. They shouldn't say the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God the Father and the Communion of the holy ghost be with you. No, the benediction should remain intact exactly as it appears in the scripture and given by the Holy Spirit. Because the first person of the Trinity is known as God. We don't have to be informed by anybody else that it's the Father. God applies to the Father. And Lord applies to Jesus. And Paul does a very clever thing in I Corinthians. He says, "Now in the world there are many so-called gods and many so-called lords. But for us there is only one God, the Father and there is only one Lord Jesus Christ. That lord and God are equally valuable in referring to the deity of Jesus. What Paul did in that case, by the way, he took the phrase from the Old Testament. ***Herosae woe, the Lord your God is one Lord. Jewish congregations, synagogues, still say this in Hebrew ***herosae woe, the Lord your God is one Lord. And Paul went on to explain it like this: The God in that phrase, he applied to the Father. And the Lord he applied to -- he applied to Jesus. We're just not used to that particular phrase, that Lord refers to deity. But here is an area, here is something we can inform the way we think by actually looking at what the New Testament says. We mentioned before that Jesus is given the name Immanuel. I think that's a passage which Lutheran theology has overlooked. And very valuable. God with us. He is God with us. The scriptures do call him God. But the ordinary title more frequently is Lord. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***