Lutheran and otherwise great fellow Gene Edward Veith agrees with The Vatican’s latest pronouncement: The name of the Lord Almighty, spelled YHWH, should not be spoken. I don’t know what to think about this. I love the names of the Lord. I think modern Christians would have a closer relationship with Him if they knew several of his glorious names, which mean The Lord who see, The Lord provides, The Lord is my peace, The Almighty, and The All-Sufficent. Didn’t the Lord tell Moses His name when he asked, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” (Exodus 3)
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.'” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.
Remembered but never spoken is awkward.
Yes, I didn’t comment on his post over there because I was uncertain, and everybody there is way more erudite than I am.
But it seems to me the prohibition on speaking the Name is part of the Jewish tradition of “setting a hedge about the Law,” that is, creating lesser laws far more rigorous than the actual Levitical Law, so that if you keep them it will be impossible to get anywhere near breaking the real ones.
This is very prudent, but I’m pretty sure that much of Jesus’ teaching was aimed at demolishing just that arrangement.
This could be a hedge about the Law for the commandment about taking the name of the Lord in vain, but I think it’s more a matter of respect for authority. When you go to court, you don’t call the judge “Joe”, or even “Mr. Doe”, but “Your Honor”. Similarly, when we address God we usually use a term such as “Adonai” (Lord(1)).
Then again, we might need this more than other people. The first ancestors of ours we remember haggled with God (Genesis 18). His grandson got renamed “He who fights with God”. We are not the most respectful of people, in much the same way that Alaska is not the hottest place on Earth.
(1) It’s actually plural, Lords, but that’s probably just the same as addressing royalty.