It’s plausible that the New Testament authors upheld the tradition of kurios as a centuries-old tradition that people were accustomed to using to refer to God in a personal way. Since they were trying to communicate clearly to a wide range of listeners, some of whom didn’t speak Hebrew and were already familiar with calling the God of Israel kurios, they kept it as a convention for avoiding confusion in their message.

We know that the inhibition for pronouncing God’s name came before Christianity, although we don’t know how widespread it was. It’s possible that rendering the divine name as “Lord” (kurios) had already been a strong tradition for centuries by the time we get to Jesus and the apostles. What’s clear is that the New Testament manuscripts we have all follow the tradition that the Septuagint set, which was to substitute the title “Lord” (kurios) for God’s name (YHWH). So, the fact that the New Testament never uses God’s personal name as revealed in the Old Testament, or even an approximation of it, is crucial.
Why did the New Testament authors choose to do this? Was it because they thought God’s name was too sacred to write out in Greek transliteration and feared that God might strike them down if they did so? Or, had its pronunciation already been forgotten to history? Were they afraid that the Jews might be angry about it? Or, was it some other reason(s)? The writers never tell us why, so everything that follows here is speculation. Nevertheless, it’s an honest attempt to grapple with the issue.
The New Testament Authors Knew the Old Testament
Because the New Testament authors knew their Hebrew Bible better than we do, it’s highly unlikely that they were ignorant of God’s desire expressed in Exodus 3:15, the way David and the prophets freely spoke to God, calling him by name, and other passages we looked at in part 1 of this series. So, it’s safe to say that they didn’t consider God’s name too sacred to use in transliteration. Finally, we can eliminate the idea that they did so out of fear of the Jews, since they consciously did many other things that infuriated the Jews and brought persecution on them. So, let’s explore some other possibilities.
The Influence of the Septuagint
First, it should be understood that the Septuagint became the standard for Jewish communities that were forgetting Hebrew in the midst of a world increasingly dominated by other languages like Greek, Aramaic, and Latin. The New Testament writers quoted from the Septuagint extensively, and it was a beloved text to the early Church. When a text is used as a standard for centuries like the Septuagint was, many things become ingrained in tradition.
So it’s highly probable that the Septuagint’s use of the title kurios in the place of God’s name came to be a strong tradition in many circles. And because of this, it’s also probable that kurios came to be treated as a proper name, even though it’s not technically or lexically accurate to call it a name. (A modern example of a proper name would be “Joe,” and his title is “Mr. President”) If a community treats a title like a proper name for long enough, it will inevitably begin to feel like a proper name. Subsequent generations will continue to use it, not because they believe it’s wrong to pronounce the actual name, but simply because it feels like God’s name. This has happened in English and many other languages with the title “the Lord.”
So it’s plausible that the New Testament authors upheld the tradition of kurios as a centuries-old tradition that people were accustomed to using to refer to God in a personal way. Since they were trying to communicate clearly to a wide range of listeners, some of whom didn’t speak Hebrew and were already familiar with calling the God of Israel kurios, they kept it as a convention for avoiding confusion in their message.
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Policymakers should do everything in their power to legally prevent the promotion of a harmful ideology, especially as directed to children. Just as citizens have rightly pushed back on critical race theory being mandated in K-12 schools, so, too, should we push back on the various transgender-ideology mandates taking place in public schools.

Last week a school district in Virginia passed a controversial policy mandating teachers use “transgender pronouns” in the classroom while the state of Texas moved to declare sex-reassignment surgeries for minors be treated as child abuse. This all comes on the heels of a federal court moving to block the Biden administration’s transgender mandate, protecting the rights of millions of doctors and nurses who are faced with violating their consciences. As the traditional family and our faith come under attack, it has become increasingly clear that we, as Catholics, must engage in war with these ideologies that are invading our homes and wreaking havoc on the minds of our children grappling with discerning the truth.
Catholic husband and father Ryan Anderson, the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has been a leading advocate for biology and the truth of such matters, especially as it pertains to male and female, with his highly acclaimed, and recently banned, book, When Harry Became Sally. In an email interview, Anderson discussed with the Register the recent federal court blocking of the transgender mandate, the need for conscience protections, and how Catholics can be best equipped to take on the nonstop onslaught of gender ideology. He also discusses several projects of the Ethics and Public Policy Center that are in place to help promote and protect the traditional family from secular assault.
With the news last week of a federal court blocking the transgender mandate — it’s now the second court ruling blocking the mandate — what are your thoughts, and what role is the EPPC’s HHS Accountability Project playing in shedding light on these violations of conscience? 
There should be no transgender mandate. And thank God for [law group] Becket’s work in litigating these cases. They’ve now successfully stopped both the Obama transgender mandate and the Biden transgender mandate. Of course, in between, there was no Trump transgender mandate, thanks to the hard work of Roger Severino, who was the head of the Office for Civil Rights at HHS throughout the Trump administration. He rightfully saw that the transgender mandate was unlawful — because the word “sex” does not mean “gender identity”; that it was bad medicine — because gender dysphoria should be treated without radically transforming the body with puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and surgery; and that it would violate the civil rights of conscientious medical doctors who sought to follow the Hippocratic Oath.
And I was proud to bring Roger Severino to EPPC as my first hire as president to head up EPPC’s new HHS Accountability Project. EPPC’s HHS Accountability Project monitors the largest federal agency (by budget) to ensure its actions further the common good under law. Particular attention is given to respect for conscience, religious freedom, the family and human life from conception to natural death. Roger was instrumental in rolling back the original transgender mandate imposed under Obama, and he and his team at EPPC have exposed the Biden administration’s abandonment of conscience protections regarding transgender treatments and abortion as both bad law and bad policy through scholarship, advocacy in the media, coalition building and collaboration with members of Congress. They’re keeping tabs on various other violations coming from HHS, including most recently the Biden administration’s refusal to penalize a hospital that forced a pro-life nurse to assist in performing an abortion.
Your book, When Harry Became Sally, took on gender dysphoria in a compassionate way, but also called out gender ideology. As you succinctly state in your book: “Biology isn’t bigotry.” Why should we as Catholics be concerned about this full court press of the “LGBT” movement, and what can families do who are concerned about this infiltrating their own homes? 
All of us, and Catholics in particular, should be concerned with transgender ideology because it isn’t true, and it causes harm to those who get caught up in it. All of us, and Catholics in particular, have a duty to bear witness to the truth and to promote the common good in all of its aspects. That includes a sound understanding of sex and gender. My book was one contribution to that discussion, a discussion that Amazon and others would rather we not have. But it is vital that we refuse to be silenced. If we don’t speak up, who will?
Parents in particular need to educate themselves about what activists are promoting through the schools, media, entertainment — the teen world, especially social media, is saturated with messages and images promoting “trans” identity and “gender diversity” as normal and healthy, which means kids are consuming those messages all day long. It will have an effect on how they think about themselves, the body and relationships in ways incompatible with both science (reason) and faith.
In addition to my book, my EPPC colleague Mary Hasson has created an entire set of wonderful resources to help parents, pastors and educators better understand and respond to “trans” ideology. The Person and Identity Project at EPPC has exactly what Catholics need — Q&As, “toolkits” and recommended resources — to understand the Christian vision of the person and counter the lies of gender ideology.
Beyond educating themselves, parents need to realize that “LGBT” content is flooding the public schools, not just in coursework, but in the school culture. And there’s no “opting out” of school culture the way you might be able to opt out of a given sex-ed class. One public-school principal in Atlanta recently told a Catholic family, “It doesn’t matter what class or teacher your kids have, ‘LGBT-inclusive’ materials will be in every classroom.” Parents need to realize their kids need a Catholic education more than ever — whether at home, in a Catholic classical school or the parish school — which means we need public policy making educational choice a reality, something EPPC Fellow Patrick Brown wrote on just last week.
The American Association of Pediatrics recently told the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, comprised of more than 100 clinicians and researchers who doubt so-called transgender science and ideology, that they couldn’t set up an information booth at the association’s national conference. We have also heard from many voices who have transitioned regretting their decision. Why is the debate on transgenderism stifled on such a grand scale, it seems? Of course, this follows after the digital book burning you experienced with Amazon and other outlets. 
The silencing, shaming and censoring that we see on this issue is a sign of weakness from the left, not strength. Sure, it’s strength in one sense, that they control so many powerful institutions of American life — from the news media, to entertainment, to big business and big tech, to the major medical associations. But it’s a sign of weakness because they know their ideology can’t stand up to scrutiny, and that’s why they have to use their power to shut down discussion. We’re on the side of the truth, and we need to be faithful in bearing witness to it, and in using legal mechanisms to reduce the power of various “woke” forces in our culture.
For example, legislation is needed to prevent adults from interfering with a child’s normal, natural bodily development. As I’ve argued before, “gender affirmation” procedures violate sound medical ethics. It is profoundly unethical to intervene in the normal physical development of a child as part of “affirming” a “gender identity” at odds with bodily sex.
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In the same sense, why does a minority insist on allowing the false teaching of ordaining self-described homosexual men to be pastors and church officers in the PCA? Why don’t they simply seek ordination and service in a denomination that is already set up to welcome them?

In 1967 the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA), in an attempt to compromise with the culture, changed the wording of its Confession of Faith. A key statement from PCUSA’s Confession of 1967 is as follows:
“The Bible is to be interpreted in the light of its witness to God’s work of reconciliation in Christ. The Scriptures, given under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are nevertheless the words of men, conditioned by the language, thought forms, and literary fashions of the places and times at which they were written. They reflect views of life, history, and the cosmos which were then current. The church, therefore, has an obligation to approach the Scriptures with literary and historical understanding. As God has spoken his word in diverse cultural situations, the church is confident that he will continue to speak through the Scriptures in a changing world and in every form of human culture”  [Book of Confessions 9.29].
That statement directly contradicts Scripture.
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17, NIV).
“Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20-21, NIV).
If Scripture is nothing more than “the words of men,” then Scripture can be twisted to fit any agenda. Matthew A. Johnson, Chairman of the Board of the Presbyterian Lay Committee stated:
“The Confession of 1967 was the first step of many in a departure from the historical standards of the Presbyterian Church (USA) as expressed in the Westminster Confession of Faith. It took the denomination from relying on Scripture as its source of authority to everyone doing what was right in his own eyes.”
And that is exactly what happened.
A pastor in the National Capital Presbytery, Mansfield Kaseman, was charged with apostasy because he denied Christ’s sinlessness, bodily resurrection, vicarious atonement, and deity. When the case was heard before the Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly Mr. Kaseman was acquitted. He was allowed to remain in good standing as a pastor in the PCUSA and allowed to continue teaching heresy. By acquitting Mr. Kaseman, the Judicial Commission itself became complicit in apostasy as well.
With the door open for pastors to teach as they pleased without regard to the Word of God many churches voted to withdraw the PCUSA. Many joined the newly formed (1973) Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), which affirmed that the Scriptures are the Word of God and affirmed the Westminster Confession of Faith as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Scriptures.
However, now almost fifty years after the formation of the PCA it finds itself tempted to compromise with false teachers. At the PCA’s 2021 General Assembly, one of the issues appeared to be a growing number of PCA church officers who self-identify as homosexual. These men claim to be committed to celibacy and refer to themselves as same-sex-attracted as their “sexual orientation.”
In July 2018, Memorial PCA in St. Louis, pastored by Greg Johnson, hosted the first Revoice Conference celebrating “Gay Culture.” Since that time Pastor Johnson has continued to participate yearly in Revoice conferences in order “to support and encourage gay, lesbian, bisexual, and other same-sex attracted Christians.” In his recently published book, “Still Time to Care: What We Can Learn from the Church’s Failed Attempt to Cure Homosexuality,” Pastor Johnson writes about “the relative fixity of sexual orientation” teaching, as his subtitle implies, that the Holy Spirit cannot change his “sexual orientation.”
Because of Greg Johnson’s association with the Revoice Conference, several presbyteries, sessions and individual PCA members requested Missouri Presbytery (MOP) to investigate his views. MOP claimed that there was not enough evidence to formally charge Dr. Johnson for his views and teachings.
I am reminded of the situation in Micah’s day when he asked: “What is the disobedience of Jacob? Isn’t it Samaria? (Micah 1:5).
In the same vein I ask: What is the disobedience of the PCA? Isn’t it Missouri Presbytery?
We must remember that the Scripture repeatedly refers to homosexuality as an abomination (Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1:27); that the Scriptures teach that pastors and other church officers are to be above reproach (Titus 1:7); and that Christians are a new creation in Christ, by the incomparable power of the Holy Spirit, and are no longer in union with their old sinful nature (2 Corinthians 5:17). And now the PCA General Assembly is currently considering two overtures to amend its Book of Church Order to clarify that those being considered for church office, who insist on self-identifying by their continued union with their old sinful nature, are not qualified to be ordained.
At this point the outcome of this debate is unclear. Despite overwhelming support for the proposed amendments at the General Assembly, it is clear that there is a small but determined group of pastors and elders working to defeat the proposed amendments. Some have even strongly suggested that if this minority prevails in preventing the amendments from being approved, there may be a fracturing in the PCA.
Referring to Micah again when he asked: If the people wanted to worship Baal why not simply go to the temple of Baal and worship him there? Why insist in bringing that abomination of false worship into the Lord’s Holy Temple?
In the same sense, why does a minority insist on allowing the false teaching of ordaining self-described homosexual men to be pastors and church officers in the PCA? Why don’t they simply seek ordination and service in a denomination that is already set up to welcome them?
Richard Loper is a member of Chapelgate Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Ellicott City, Md.