Forging Ploughshares

David, Allan, Matt, and Paul discuss the implications of the accommodation of violence and the development of the just war tradition beginning with the Constantinian shift. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. (Register for the upcoming Class on the Gospel of John starting May 9th here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)

Paul Axton Preaches - There are two orders of language and meaning. The Word of the Cross is the eternal wisdom of God, the "I am" reversing time and space and undoing death dealing (sequential, cause and effect, time and space bound) ordering of human wisdom. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this interview with Dr. Timothy Boyle, an expert on Japan, the Japanese language, and the Japanese writing system, Paul and Tim discuss the discovery of the stories of Genesis in Japanese writing (Kanji) and the profound similarities between the group oriented shame concepts found in the Bible and Japan. Tim also tells the story of Wounded Tiger, which he is translating, and which soon will be made into a feature film. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - The Eucharistic meal is the institution of a new community, simultaneously enacting the self-sacrificial love of an economic sharing and the suspension of ethnic, sexual, socio-economic, or class distinctions. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jon, Matt, and Paul, discuss the notion that there might be a natural human cut off from the grace of God. Matt and Jon question Paul's reading of Romans 7, with the consensus pointing to redemption as the completion of creation in theosis. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - There is no nature and grace dualism, as conceived by Augustine (and as absorbed by Western Christianity), as humans are created, molded, and sustained by the Spirit of grace given at creation and completed by Christ. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Trenton, Tim, Dan, and Paul discuss how the Constantinian shift resulted in theological failure: a turn to law, to a closed universe in an attempt to preserve God's freedom (rather than focus on God's love). The result is the notion that God, in his absolute freedom and control, does evil so as to bring about the Good. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - The Gospel, proclaimed by the apostles, reads the Hebrew Scriptures through the precedent and lens of Christ. To reverse this amounts to a worship of angels and a deifying of what is not God; the error of the false teachers and contractual theology. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Tim, Trenton, Allan, Dan, and Paul, discuss three alternative ways of understanding church history, and how to account for failure and progress in the tradition and the fall into violence and the definition of peace. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

David, Isaiah, and Paul discuss the challenge Christ poses to Old Testament violence, and specifically to the portrayal of God as participating in and encouraging war and genocide. Understanding who God is through Christ, means that those who kill Christ represent the violence (and the God of violence) which Christ challenges and defeats. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Tim, Trenton, Allan, Dan, Jason and Paul, discus identity formation around war and violence in nationalism as experienced in the United States, Mexico, Canada, and New Zealand. The discussion centers on the alternative value of Christ, peace, as the abolishment of idolatrous human sacrifice. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - Building on the understanding that death is the predicament in which sin arises; this is illustrated through Thomas Hobbes, the Book of Wisdom, and James, explaining why defeat of fear of death enables love. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jino (in India), Isaiah (in Korea), Matt, David, and Paul discuss the failure of the Constantinian form of Christianity and the necessity to recognize that with James Cone, the untouchables of India and Japan, and the poor in Korea, authentic Christian experience will tend to be erased by those in power. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - Due, in part, to Augustine's misreading of Romans 5:12, Western theology has confused cause and effect between sin and death, and in the process lose how it is that sin is an orientation to death, and the defeat of death is a defeat of sin. The New Testament and the earliest gospel preached by the apostolic fathers, such as Ignatius of Antioch, see death as the cause of sin. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt, Jon, and Paul conclude their discussion on Hart's book, Tradition and Apocalypse, by examining the gap between the New Testament and the reality of the church in its Episcopal, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant forms. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt, Jon and Paul return to key questions raised by Hart's book, Tradition and Apocalypse, and suggest that what is needed is an alternative hermeneutic in reading Scripture and history which suspends the violence and reads from beneath the oppression of the powers. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt, Jon, and Paul continue to discuss Hart's recent book and turn the critique on their own traditions and discuss what it means to make progress in theology. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt, Jon, and Paul discuss Hart's recent book detailing an understanding of salvation which in its unfolding fully admits the contradictions of history and doctrine while looking to a future coherence in the eschaton. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - The New Testament describes a form of realism a connecting with ultimate reality, in which words and actions connect in the definitive giving (δίδωμι) of Christ which overcomes and defeats the “handing over” (παραδίδωμι) which delivered him to the cross. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this final discussion of the Holy Spirit Rob, Allan, and Paul, discuss the sense in which Freud's notion that belief in God is about sex, Marx's notion that religion is about economics, and Schmitt's view that the state in the equivalent of the Church, need to be flipped. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Rather than a contrast between Agape and Eros, Allan, Justin, Matt, David and Paul, discuss their interconnection and the key role of love as the end point of the work of the Holy Spirit. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Rob and Paul discuss the harm that the masculine image of God and accompanying patriarchy continues to exercise among the young. Rob, describes the situation in Sydney, the center of the controversy of the heresy of subordinationism (in the Trinity) in order to support subordination of women. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - Christ breaks down the dividing wall of hostility, providing a peaceful hermeneutic in which God, the Bible, and Church are understood as nonviolent. The law is the wall of hostility put in place, not by God but by human violence and hostility which Christ has defeated. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Apply for our upcoming class, Sin and Salvation, by following the link Enroll

In this PBI discussion Allan, Matt, Justin, David, and Paul review how masculine and feminine conceptions impact Trinitarian analogies and how Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine converge in their depiction of the Trinity in connection to Romans 5 and 8. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Apply for our upcoming class, Sin and Salvation, by following the link Enroll

Paul Axton Preaches - In the Western conception, as handed down through Augustine, Anselm, Luther, and Calvin, sin and salvation function as an extension of the law, making redemption a legal fiction. In the Bible, sin is a disease, a lie, enslavement, or corruption, all involved in an orientation to death, and all solved in a real world fashion through Christ's defeat of this orientation. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Apply for our upcoming class, Sin and Salvation, by following the link Enroll

Allan, Matt, David, Justin, and Paul discuss the history of iconography and Christian art and the implications of its depiction of the Trinity and the tendency to diminish the role of the Spirit, culminating in the Spirit's displacement by depictions of Mary. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Apply for our upcoming class, Sin and Salvation, by following the link Enroll

In this PBI Discussion Rob, Dan and Paul take up the issue of suffering and extend the discussion to a conclusion as to practical ways as to how to view and handle suffering - repudiating the notion that God needs suffering. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Apply for our upcoming class, Sin and Salvation, by following the link https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/student-applications/new

In this PBI discussion Allan, David, Justin, Dan, Matt, and Paul discuss types of suffering as perceived in East and West and as distinguished in Romans 7 & 8. In a critique of Sarah Coakley and Rowan Williams, the question is raised if there is a failure to distinguish a total futility of suffering and suffering love. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this PBI discussion Rob, Trenton, Allan, Justin, David, Matt, and Paul, discuss misdirected desire and its redirection through a real world connectedness of love in the Spirit. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this PBI discussion Matt, Allan, Dan, Justin, David, Rob, and Paul discuss how Mary is perceived in Catholicism and in Eastern Orthodoxy, and how the feminine role of the Spirit is preserved in an embodied experiential understanding of God. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this first PBI discussion on the Holy Spirit Dan, Matt, Robb, Justin, David, and Paul discuss Sarah Coakley's and Jürgen Moltmann's work on the Holy Spirit as it pertains to the sexual crisis and the subordination of the Spirit in the scholastic approach to the Trinity. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - Herod slaughters the innocent children of Bethlehem in an attempt to foreshorten the state mandated murder accomplished under Pilate. His lying pretense to find and worship the Messiah gives us a working principle on how to consider the desire of government to worship Christ as King. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - In Greek thought, represented in Plato's allegory of the cave, the material world is but a realm of shadows blocking out the sun (representative of transcendent truth), so that which is of the womb/cave is unreal and truth is thought to abide in the transcendent forms. The Virgin Birth finds the absolute, the sun, the equivalent of the the forms, in the womb. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this PBI discussion of the final chapter of Paul Axton's book, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation, Allan, Tim, Matt, Nathan, Rob, David, and Paul compare and contrast desire versus hope, the frustration of life in the imaginary with life in Christ, and the body of death with life in the Spirit. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - The shattering of the idols of a settled notion of God in Christ opens us to the world as a reflection of his activity and presence in human relationships and interdependence with the world. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this PBI discussion of chapter 9 of Paul Axton's book, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation, Allan, Tim, Matt, Nathan, Thomas, Trenton, Rob, and Paul discuss the three part structure of the human subject as revolving around a deception. Calvin's is taken as an example of one who misses the deception and in doing so believes the lie of sin, demonstrated in the failed treatment of baptism, the confrontation and resolution to the lie. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - The name Abba names and sums up the work of Christ in establishing God's Lordship over every aspect of the world, including all that it means to be human and it simultaneously displaces the "father problem" enslaving human-kind.

In this PBI discussion Paul and Allan review Paul Axton's book, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation (chapters 3-7), explaining key points through philosophical thinkers and their impact on theology. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - A prayerful attitude allowing the for the work of the Holy Spirit engenders a new emotional life and alternative character summed up in a continual thanksgiving. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt, Allan, and Paul continue discussion of Paul Axton's book, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation, expanding upon the link between Romans 7 and the secular, discerning the dual sense in which every age may manifest its own unique characteristics with its own leading personalities but every age shares in the same corporate deception. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - The feminine characteristics of God found in the Spirit tend to be muted or subordinated to a masculine image. Romans 8 portrays this masculine image being defeated by the Spirit's engendering into the Trinity - which amounts to the displacement of an idolatrous understanding of God. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this PBI course discussion of Paul Axton's book, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation, Trenton, Tim, Jon, Matt, Nathan, Thomas, Dan, and Paul discuss how nominalism and secularism fit into Paul's description of a law based ordering of reality. Jon depicts the nominalist predicament and Nathan, an expert on Emmanuel Levinas, poses a response to Slavoj Žižek's bleak depiction. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - The failure to delineate the sinful suffering of Romans 7 from the redemptive suffering of chapter 8 results in the recommendation of sinful suffering as if it is redemptive. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this PBI discussion of chapter 6 of Paul Axton's book, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation, David and Paul discuss the drive to gain life through fantasy and various symbolic orders and how this is addressed in Christ. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - The origin of desire in God also points to a surprising resolution to the primal human need. Paul indicates, with the Psalmist, it is not our knowing but being known by God that aligns with primal desire. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this PBI course discussion Trenton, Allan, Thomas, Nathan, Matt, and Paul discuss Slavoj Žižek's atheistic understanding of the saving work of Christ and compare it to Søren Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death and notions of healing from the disease of shame and the orientation to death. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - Conformity to Christ displaces the cultural conformity to fear we are witnessing in U.S. churches and culture - a direct parallel to Bonhoeffer's description to the conformity of the German church to the fear aroused by Hitler. Love of friends and marital love is an extension of the conforming power of Christ in the church which can overcome the conformity to fear and hatred. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this PBI discussion of Paul Axton's book, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation, Tim, Rob, Thomas, Nathan, Matt, David, and Paul discuss the perversion of imagining an absolute law and how the feminine or hysteric orientation questions the law and opens up an alternative. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - A key departure in the early church was the entry of a Greek philosophical view of God which gave rise to the doctrine of the economic and immanent Trinity. The rediscovery of key German theologians is that Christ and the passion of Christ is definitive of our understanding of God - most especially the passionate love of God - which means the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this discussion with Tyler Sims, a long time practitioner of contemplative healing prayer, Paul and Tyler discuss the real world access to the love and presence of God which brings about healing communal and individual connectedness. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.