17th Theological Conference

May 3rd, 2008 by

As the conference was in progress, JohnO and I were live-blogging and uploading the audios. However, I thought it would be helpful to have all of the talks in the same place under one post. In addition, I now have many of the actual papers which are useful to follow along with while listening to the audio. DVDs of this conference are available for a fee by ordering from Restoration Fellowship. Unfortunately, the questions did not come out on many of the audio recordings, however, the DVD version should have them. In addition, Michelle Cox has put together a slideshow from the conference with lots of pictures (click here).

 name title description  listen  download  paper
 Alex Hall  The Sacrifice of the Son of God description listen save mp3 paper
 Kent Ross  Anabaptists/The Radical Reformers description listen save mp3 paper
 Lennox Abrigo  No Resolution – No Peace description listen save mp3 paper
 John Obelenus  Jesus and Atonement description listen save mp3 paper
 Ray Faircloth  The Misapplication of Romans 9 to Predestinarian Views description listen save mp3 paper
 J. Dan Gill  Yet Another Music City Miracle description listen save mp3 n/a
 Chuck Jones  Modern Idolatry or The Other Gospel description listen save mp3 paper
 Jesse Acuff  The Holy Spirit in the Old Testament description listen save mp3 paper
 Dustin Smith  Religion and Politics description listen save mp3 paper
 Sean Finnegan  Looking for the Historical Jesus description listen save mp3 paper
 Joel Hemphill  My Story: To God Be The Glory description listen save mp3 book
 Anthony Buzzard  Discerning the Difference Between Two Opposed Theologies description listen save mp3 paper

6 Comments »

6 Responses to “17th Theological Conference”

  1. on 05 May 2008 at 8:50 pm1 Dave Kroll

    I am in the process of doing an exhaustive study into the nature of God issue and I am reading the two books, “The Doctrine of the Trinity” and Jesus Was Not a Trinitarian.” I have a question: I know when the Masoretes began to add vowel points to the Hebrew text they left the sacred name YHWH as is and in 134 passages where YHWH appears in the text they substituted the Hebrew word Adonai because it was believed the name YHWH was too sacred to pronounce. Since our English translations of the Hebrew Scriptures are often taken from Masoretic Hebrew texts, we find Adonai translated as Lord in our English Bibles. Adonai appears 449 times in the OT as a reference to YHWH/Elohim.

    When looking at the derivation of Adonai, it appears to come from the same root as YHWH and means the same thing. In Hebrew concordances, lexicons and Word Studies I have checked, I see both YHWH and Adonai referenced to the same Hebrew root word. Why did the original authors of the Hebrew text use YHWH thousands of times but use another word, Adonai, 449 times if both these words mean the same thing? Furthermore, if the Masoretes were so concerned about the pronunciation of YHWH, why did they only “cover up” 134 occurrences of YHWH with Adonai and not the remaining 6,694 occurrences? Also, if the ancients had the same concerns about pronouncing YHWH as the Masoretes, why do we find YHWH as a name for God in the Hebrew text multiple thousands of times? You would think Adonai or other words would have been used as substitutes for YHWH all the time to avoid pronouncing YHWH. Your comments please:

  2. on 06 May 2008 at 8:21 pm2 Sean

    So far as I understand it Yahweh is the personal name of God. Adonai is the word for Lord. I don’t know of any connection between these two words. Could you explain that a bit more?

  3. on 07 May 2008 at 8:03 am3 Karen

    As I’m sure you know, Adonai is the word that devout Jews use instead of the tetragrammaton, so that they don’t pronounce the name of God:

    “The Greek translators of the Bible…took great care to render the name Π I Π I regularly Κυριός, Lord, as if they knew of no other reading but Adonai. Translations dependent upon the Septuagint have the same reading of the Name. Not from “superstitious fear” or misapplication of the third command of the Decalogue or of Lev. xxiv. 11, but from a reverential feeling that the Name ought not to be pronounced except with consecrated lips and to consecrated ears, the substitute “Lord” came into use. Yet this simple measure, introduced to guard the Name against profane use, formed one of the most powerful means of securing to the Biblical God the universal character with which He is invested as the Lord of Hosts and the Ruler of men and nations. YHWH, as the God of Israel, might still be taken as a tribal God; The Lord is no longer the God of one people; He is Lord of all the world, the Only One.”
    (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=840&letter=A&search=adonai)

  4. on 07 May 2008 at 11:45 pm4 Steve

    Sean and JohnO,

    Thanks very much for making these talks and papers available. I downloaded all the talks and burned them to CD so I could listen to them while driving around. I’ve been enjoying them immensely and really appreciate being about to participate from a distance in the theological conference.

    I’d love to make it to a future conference. In the meantime we are looking forward to our own inaugural Restoration Fellowship Conference in Australia in July.

  5. on 08 May 2008 at 8:13 am5 JohnO

    Steve,

    We’re praying for you all and your conference. But be sure to let us know how it goes, we want the highlights!

  6. on 08 May 2008 at 9:42 pm6 Ron S.

    On the subject of God’s proper name (YHWH), a great number of Orthodox Jews today use “HaShem” which in Hebrew means “The Name” instead of Adonai. I’ve also encountered devout Jews who in writing or communicating via text (web or on paper), won’t even spell out “God”. Instead they will write “G-d”. It seems a tad exessive to me, but I do admire their “reverence” and respect for God.

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