Forging Ploughshares

Paul Axton preaches that the apostle Paul offers no room for dualism – for the notion that material reality is unreal and that it is only the soul that goes to heaven. This is the lie that deludes. It is this way of dividing up the world defeated in resurrection. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

To make the point that putting resurrection in the center constitutes an alternative Christianity, Paul Axton in this sermon sums up a few key ways in which a different emphasis on resurrection completely alters key doctrines. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton discusses identity through difference illustrated in Orientalism Part II. If Japan is a mud swamp which has successfully warded off Christianity (which it is and has for the most part), it is by virtue of the same power which has shaped Christianity so as to fit modern Western identity. This is an understanding defeated by a right understanding of sin as an orientation to death defeated in resurrection. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches on 1 Corinthians 14:34ff: This passage raises key questions about how we interpret Scripture and how we understand who God is. Our relationships and attitudes toward maleness and femaleness are not secondary but primary to our understanding of Christianity. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Orientalism serves as an example of identity through difference as a failed form of thought that necessarily involves us in the lie of attempting to reify a human construct. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: Truth comes to us in a person, through his words, but the truth is not in the form, the letter, the propositions of the words but in a deep spiritual communion which displaces the discommunion of the covenant with death. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Sharon Klingemann and Paul Axton discuss the effect of eternal torturous existence on Christianity and possible alternative understandings. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul is saying to those who speak in tongues, which apparently he wants everyone to do, to make themselves intelligible. There is an isolated and private part to all of us which can only be shared with God. This most intimate aspect of who we are should not create a sense of isolation – as if we cannot get outside of ourselves so as to share with others the deepest part of who we are. We should see this private interiority as the place God meets us with a word about which we tell others. Preached by Paul Axon. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton and Jason Rodenbeck discuss the newly-available Ploughshares Bible Institute (PBI) course on Romans: Salvation through the Body of Christ. You can register for the course here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/lm/offerings. Hurry, it begins on May 27th! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Continuing his conversation with Paul Axton, David Rawls explains how he led his congregation through the "clobber" passages on women in leadership. Part 2 of 2. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: What psychoanalysis misses and what Paul provides is passage beyond the mirror stage into mirroring the glory of the Father in the image of the Son by the Spirit. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

David Rawls discusses his church's biblical journey to allowing women in leadership with Paul Axton. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: The point of salvation, creation, life, and all things is love. Paul’s Gospel has as its central theme, not grace, or righteousness – which are certainly key but are not the center. Love, as Paul presents it, is the point of Christian faith. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton explains how the two premier thinkers of East and West (Heidegger and Nishida) converge on a singular idea which gets at the root of philosophical evil in the 20th century. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: Jesus appears and he is unrecognizable to them. At first, Jesus is still accursed in their sight – death has won out, the grave has consumed him, and their understanding is bound by this reality. In each instance they have to in some way change up their perspective in order to comprehend that it is the risen Jesus who stands before them. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: If salvation is a body united, sin is the resistant core, the alienating power, which as Paul depicts is the turning of self against itself. In the same way we can understand salvation as a harmonious body, we can understand the suffering of sin and even a damnable existence as people turned against one another. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

The premiere historian of the Restoration Movement, Richard Hughes, discusses his research with Paul Axton, tracing the core myth of white supremacy which stands behind the myth of America as a Christian Nation. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: The spiritual gifts may be misunderstood as miraculous magic apart from a grounding in true spirituality. An examination of I Corinthians 12. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton and Jason Rodenbeck continue their conversation on living in the tension of postliberalism which requires people to entrust themselves to God. Part 2 of 2. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton and Jason Rodenbeck differentiate postliberalism and liberalism. Part 1 of 2. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton begins a new series answering basic theological questions, beginning with original sin. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

In this sermon, Paul Axton sorts out the biblical picture from the various traditions and reactions that arose around the Lord's Supper. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Hayden Hagerman and Paul Axton discuss how Postliberalism intercedes into modern thought- as a disruption on the order of idolatry undone and absorbed by the strange new world of the Bible. Part 2 of 2. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: The reversal of sin is through the death of Christ because sin is an orientation to death which his death addresses. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton and Hayden Hagerman discuss how postliberalism goes beyond the liberal/fundamentalist controversy as well as beyond postmodernism and such thinkers as Quine and Davidson. Part 1 of 2. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: Male/female relations are a correlate of the Trinitarian relationship between the Father and the Son. Our success in gendered relationship is interwoven with our understanding of who God is. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

In this lecture, Paul Axton poses the possibility that nothingness, absence, negation, - is itself demonic. The recognition that the idol is nothing is not to disarm the demonic but to recognize the strength the idol exercises. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: I Corinthians 10 contrasts demons and glory - and equates simply suspending the law, naming the idol as nothing, as inadequate and destructive. It is the sort of destructiveness unleashed by Marxism and deconstruction which as a half-truth is more destructive than outright paganism. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Hayden Hagerman and Paul Axton discuss the key figures in postliberalism and the development of this alternative to modernist liberal and conservative theology. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Jason Rodenbeck and Paul Axton conclude their discussion of the 2018 film Vice and share their reflections on a the peaceable Kingdom's response to the pursuit of political power and our contemporary political situation. Part 2 of 2. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: The organizing principle of this world is idolatrous in that it would sacrifice people for principle, the few (the poor and weak) for the many (the strong). Paul pictures this as collusion with demons and call for anarchism - love against the organizing power of this world. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Jason Rodenbeck and Paul Axton discuss the 2018 film Vice and share their reflections on a the peaceable Kingdom's response to the pursuit of political power and our contemporary political situation. Part 1 of 2. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Hayden Hagerman and Paul Axton continue to lay out the significance of Wittgenstein and show how this correlates with part of an Augustinian understanding which correlates with Karl Barth and serves as the basis for Post-Liberalism. Part 2 of 2. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches on I Corinthians 9, where the apostle Paul's ideal of authority and leadership is contrasted with that of the Corinthians and contemporary notions of leadership. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Hayden Hagerman and Paul Axton discuss Wittgenstein's and Augustine's understanding of language and how this can result in two different theological understandings. Part 1 of 2. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton concludes his series on Anselm: Anselm works out the necessity of the death of Christ as part of the logic, already developed in his other arguments, of a pure reason. The necessity of the death of Christ is a violent logical necessity in his closed system of the human mind. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton Preaches: Paul is teaching the Corinthians of an alternative knowing - a self-awareness that must include a sensitivity to persons. It is not simply a matter of knowing a set of facts – idols are nothing and God is something. It is a matter of knowing persons – some are weak some are strong – and the principle found in Christ is that of a loving personal knowledge. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton connects Anselm to Hegel and Heidegger and to Lacanian psychoanalysis in tracing the turn to a reified language as a form of salvation. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton explains how Anselm reasons from ordinary differences to an absolute difference so as to attain to the thought of God and cross the ontological divide which separates the divine and human. To cross this divide using reason is an ultimate act of the will which will require the Cross. All of this depends upon an essentializing or absolutizing of human interiority. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton explains how Anselm gives us an alternative theory of atonement based on an alternative anthropology which depends upon pure reason. Mysticism and rationalism are seen to be fused and necessary in this key thinker who stands behind Western Christianity and Western thought. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: Salvation as Paul applies it in I Corinthians pertains to how we do marriage, how we regard sex, how we negotiate our social station, or how we negotiate identity. Clearly Paul’s message is not that you have now accepted Jesus into your heart and so you are going to heaven when you die – and everything else is secondary. Rather he says you have been bought with a price and what you have been bought out of is a world where sexual gratification, social station, or ethnicity or family may be thought to be the primary point of human existence. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: Anxiety is created by putting too much importance on the world of marriage, social status and ethnicity. Paul may be using end of the world language metaphorically so as to relativize worldly things but certainly he means these concerns to not have a definitive grip. The way we suspend this anxiety producing grip is to be found in Paul's phrase "as if not." If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton Preaches: The arc of Scripture contains a confrontation with the tragic that is an occasion for what Kierkegaard called the comedic. The Christian is in on the humor if it is not obstructed by bad theology. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: To get the freedom of sex in marriage correct one must sort out the principle of the flesh from the reality of the body. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

A brief conversation with Vangie Rodenbeck, developer of Ploughshares Bible Institute’s newest course: THE 250 Marginalization and Restorative Justice. The course is a practical and thought-provoking application the peaceful Gospel message at the heart of Forging Ploughshares’ mission to issues of power and inequality among traditionally marginalized groups. Vangie shares how her experiences raising a child with a documented disability have influenced her theology and her ideas about the justice offered by the powerlessness of Jesus’ cross. The course will be open for registration by the 14th of January. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

In this introduction to Kierkegaard, Paul Axton compares Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death with Lacanian psychoanalysis. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton continues his examination of the life and theology of John Howard Yoder. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton exams an absolute and Christian notion of Freedom and suggests our age is characterized by a pursuit of a false freedom giving rise to the sickness of the age. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton talks about John Howard Yoder, one of the premier theological thinkers of the 20th century who suffered from a sexual perversion. Since he consciously developed his theology to include the fullness of personality the test here is to work out how this failure is reflected in the theology of John Howard Yoder. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton poses the question, "Do Christians have recourse to the law when so-called Christians are abusing them sexually or financially?" If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound