Category Archives: quotes

My pet, God

By ElShaddai Edwards | Published: July 15, 2009
Too many of our worship songs are more about us than God. [... We] praise God for holding us close, for keeping us secure, for making us feel loved and blessed and forgiven and warm and cozy in our electric blanket of eternal security (with a warm comforter of national security thrown in too). We [...]
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Election is not about heaven…

By ElShaddai Edwards | Published: July 15, 2009
“Election is not about who gets to go to heaven; election is about who God chooses [...] to bring healing to the world.” – Brian McLaren, Christianity Today (2004)
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Divine reality is like a fugue

By ElShaddai Edwards | Published: June 25, 2009
If only for my own reference, I want to duplicate a C.S. Lewis quote that Bob MacDonald published on his blog, Sufficiency. The quote is from the essay “Evil and God”, published in the book God in the Dock: Divine reality is like a fugue. All His acts are different, but they all rhyme or echo to [...]
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Give us this day our daily bread…

By ElShaddai Edwards | Published: January 1, 2009
From a local review of the new movie, Revolutionary Road, based on a novel by Richard Yates: The Wheelers are trapped in a milieu of stifling conformity, he commuting daily amid a crush of cattle in gray flannel to earn their bread, she tied tight in an apron at home, baking it. A nicely turned sentence, I [...]
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Linus’ questions

By ElShaddai Edwards | Published: December 22, 2008
Continuing the discussion of Matthew’s appropriation of OT scripture as prophecies fulfilled in Jesus Christ, we turn to these exegetical questions found in yesterday comic section of the newspaper. The passage in question come from Matthew 2.16-18 (REB): When Herod realized that the astrologers had tricked him he flew into a rage, and gave orders for [...]
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Gundry and Matthew’s midrash

By ElShaddai Edwards | Published: December 21, 2008
Thanks to my blessed wife, we started up a tradition this past year that I grew up with, that being a subscription to National Geographic magazine. I remember stacks of yellow dating back to the ’70s in our house in Alaska, so the small pile here is a welcome addition. The December issue has an article [...]
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Spiritual and social worship

By ElShaddai Edwards | Published: November 20, 2008
Henry Neufeld comments on his need for both spiritual and social worship: The idea of being spiritual without a social aspect bothers me. The more I study, the more I see the command to love God and to love one’s neighbor as almost identical. This week’s lectionary text, Matthew 25:31-46 (The Sheep and the Goats), brings [...]
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The end of a movement?

By ElShaddai Edwards | Published: November 7, 2008
Cal Thomas, a conservative political columnist and evangelical Christian, has written an excellent article about the future of the “Religious Right” on its upcoming 30th anniversary as a movement (HT: Peter Kirk). Here are some excerpts: Thirty years of trying to use government to stop abortion, preserve opposite-sex marriage, improve television and movie content and transform culture [...]
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The Biblical cadence of Barack Obama

By ElShaddai Edwards | Published: November 5, 2008
An incalculable number of commentators have noted Barack Obama’s oratory gifts – his unerring ease behind the microphone and ability to motivate an otherwise complacent mob into a roaring frenzy of support. Where does this skill come from? How does one man speak with the practiced ease of someone born to inspire, while another’s speech [...]
Also posted in bible translation, oratory | Comments closed

Vocabulary and cadence

By ElShaddai Edwards | Published: November 2, 2008
I was recently reading a Theology Today article written by Burton H. Throckmorton, Jr. in 1990 regarding the *new* NRSV and REB translations (both had been released in 1989); I thought that the opening paragraphs were worth quoting: For over forty years, the Revised Standard Version has been widely thought of as the best English version [...]
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