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How Christ Absorbs Violence
In no other way could we have learned, wrote Irenaeus, of God’s way of redeeming humanity from sin and evil than by the death of the mediator on the cross. In a single packed sentence (among the most influential in early Christian teaching of salvation), Irenaeus distinguished between the violence of the Deceiver and the Continue reading
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Spring (a repost)
This is the time when the sky awakes, buoyed by the swaying hands of shimmering trees, and when the warm morning pours early into the streets, softened only by stray clouds and a gentle rain. This is the time when you and I walk out love through the steady rhythm of grasped, swinging hands, and Continue reading
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A Letter To my Wife
Dear Amanda, I’ve spent the last 37 weeks watching you grow as Catherine grows within you. I’ve watched as your body has changed, as your mother-hips have taken on this second child. I’ve watched as you’ve turned inward, as you’ve felt Catherine moving and kicking–the quickening, the ancients called it. I’ve watched as you’ve gracefully Continue reading
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The Free Church
Perhaps most Christians view the Radical Reformation’s concept of a free church in a free state as the ideal, but its very limited implementation had often consigned it to theory rather than fact. Coupled with the new and dynamic concept of the church was a closer scrutiny of the sacraments, an attempt to rediscover their Continue reading
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Dance with Me
For Amanda: I know the terror of a night beneath eternal stars I know the fear of love made drear consuming hope and light. But that terror, and that fear, –though deep within and cold– is held at bay, and walled away with every passing year that we fulfill our promised love, to have to Continue reading
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Reversing the Hermeneutic of Suspicion
The most exposed and vulnerable aspect of the academic critics of scripture is the social location of the critics themselves. It is a neglected area of critique. While they are criticizing the social location of classic Christianity, their own social location has not been carefully enough observed and reported. The telling evidence is that they Continue reading
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Sir Gawain
Greatest was Gawain, whose glory waxed as times darkened, true and dauntless, among knight’s peerless ever anew proven, defence and fortress of a failing world. —J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fall of Arthur, pg 19 Continue reading
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Lent 2016: Repentance
Lent is a big time of the year for me. Liturgically, I don’t like it as much as Advent. I prefer the hopefulness and longing of Advent to the repentance and asceticism of Lent. I prefer the communal aspect of Advent, the shared longing for Christmas. Lent is always more individual, more about the personal soul work that Continue reading
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Theodicy and Providence
An unfree world where all evil is excluded would not be as good as the actual world in which freedom is permitted to fall into evil, called to struggle against evil, and offered redemption from evil. “If evil were completely excluded from things, much good would be rendered impossible. Consequently it is the concern of Continue reading
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The Virtuous Life Part 3: Gentillesse
Gentillesse is a concept in Middle English that is usually translated as “nobility.” In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, for example, Theseus (in “The Knight’s Tale”), the knight (in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”), and various characters involved in a love triangle (in “The Franklin’s Tale”) all exhibit some form of gentillesse. Perhaps the medievalists among us Continue reading
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It is a Long Journey, This Road Home
I have sat in empty streets and watched by lamplight while others retreat to their beds. I have felt the pangs of sorrow, the tragic joys of an inexpressible beauty. I have sat listening, quietly, to the thoughtless chatter of the television and wondered whether I am any different. I have felt the oddness of Continue reading
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Faith and Questions
One of the side effects of the notion that questioning comes out of our commitments is that not everyone will find our questions equally interesting or important, as they do not share our beliefs. Whether hell exists and whether anyone is in it are important questions to us Christians. But they have a good deal Continue reading
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O God, be Thou my Light
O God, be not far from me; O my God, make haste to help me! Closer than my breath to my lungs and closer than my blood to my heart; though I walk in shadow, O God be thou my light. May my accusers be put to shame and consumed; may they who seek my Continue reading
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The Birth of Venus
My students and I have been working through the Italian Renaissance over the last couple of weeks. Like most people when asked what they think of when they think of the Renaissance, my students initially thought of the great artists. They thought of the Renaissance as this period of time when geniuses walked the earth Continue reading
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Why I Left my PhD Program: A Summary
A more fundamental issue is that conservatives tend to be skeptics about the progressive epistemology that defines the modern university. According to this vision, the goal is to “discover new knowledge”. As a result, research is treated as more important than teaching, and teaching is understood as an assault on prejudice rather than the continuation of tradition. This conception of the academic enterprise makes Continue reading
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The Internet is a Mugger
The internet is also a mugger, but what it demands is not my money but my attention and my reaction, and it wants them right now. And “I’m thinking it over” isn’t an acceptable response. —Alan Jacobs, “I’m Thinking it Over,” The American Conservative Continue reading
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Knowledge is both Here and Out Beyond
The dialectic of Job 28, which looks back to confident experience and forward to inscrutability, is perhaps best stated in the formula of Job 1:21 “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.” At one level that sounds uncritically pious. But if we linger there, it may suggest something else. It may suggest that Continue reading
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Modifying my Habits in 2016
New Year’s Day is probably the holiday that I celebrate the least. I don’t celebrate Halloween really, but I usually do get a pumpkin. But New Year’s, especially this year when it fell on a Friday, just sort of rolled into my weekend. I think one reason I don’t really care about New Year’s is Continue reading
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A Poem For Christmas
history was rent in two that day–that day when earth, in all her groaning, gave birth to heaven’s brightest star. all the world had hummed along in banal cruelty with only lightening flashes of an alien hope. on that night the promise of a cosmic kairos–a nuclear flash, the first touch–was enfleshed. he cried his Continue reading
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Second Week of Advent: Peace
I originally wrote this post a year ago. I have modified it slightly to fit with current events. * * * Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with Continue reading
About Me
Gregory C. Jeffers
Anglican Christian | Husband | Father | Teacher | Scholar | Poet
G. C. Jeffers 