Forging Ploughshares

Paul Axton preaches: John combines his description of love and God with his picture of its reversal in the Antichrist. Friedrich Nietzsche, in recommending the Antichrist and his work (a recommendation taken up by the Nazis) depicts the reversal embraced by a German and American Christianity which would hate in the name of Christ. Agape love is the only counter to this demonic form of the faith. (Sign up for "Do Not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled: Perspectives on Peace": This class, with Ethan Vander Leek, examines “peace” from various perspectives: Biblical, theological, philosophical, and inter-religious. We will examine various forms of false peace and ask what peace is positively, its metaphysical and religious status as a concept and as a lived reality. Is peace possible? How is it characterized? How does Jesus make peace? Can difference be understood, lived, and resolved, not in violence and victory but in cooperation and mutuality? We will be guided into such questions by voices past and present, including Augustine, Thomas Merton, Raimon Panikkar, William Desmond, Rowan Williams, and more. Go to https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings.) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Brad and Paul interview peacemaker John Ashworth, who has spent his life bringing peace to Sudan, long torn by ethnic and political violence. John has been key in negotiating peace settlements and bringing peace to this troubled region and his expertise with the realities of peace as the resolution to violence is grounded in real-world reality and experience. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: Jesus encounter with the woman at the well transports her and those who follow the conversation to a world in which God is no longer delimited by religion, place and time, and opens up a direct knowing of God, and Truth in the Spirit. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In part 2 of our discussion of the physics of David Bohm reflected in the work of Hegel, Brad and I lay out the significance of Bohm's theory as it overlaps with Hegel's philosophy and also discuss the role of preaching, connected to these difficult topics. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: The slaying of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and the justification of this slaughter and its denial points us to Christ's exposure of the blind murderers who killed him in the name of law and order. Beyond this evil, there is a third tier of evil which acknowledges Christ's exposure of evil but which is now using this insight to manipulate the blind. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Brad and Paul, so as to explain recent blogs and podcasts, discuss Hegel's Logic as it applies to the quantum reality and theory of David Bohm and which describes how it is that Christ unifies all things, bringing together mind and matter through the understanding that thought or cognition is ultimate reality. Paul's depiction of two kinds of letter is the point of entry. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Ethan Vanderleek, a specialist on William Desmond describes to Paul, Desmond's project and its overlap with the Christology of Rowan Williams. William Desmond is one of our most important living philosophers, and Ethan explains how he poses a true metaphysical alternative to both modernism and postmodernism. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul, Nate, Jed, Karl, and Jim discuss how it is that meaning is always embodied, and how misorientation to the body constitutes sin, and salvation through Christ's body entails a new embodied meaning extended to all. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: The living letters brings together embodiment and meaning in the particulars of incarnation, and this is reflected in quantum mechanics and modern biology as discussed by David Bohm and Rupert Sheldrake. The letter that kills is on the order of a materialism which empties out meaning from embodiment. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul, Karl, Andy, and Jim discuss the role of language in Anselm and its development through Descartes into foundationalism, and pose the idea of personalism, found in Christ, as the resolution to this universal tendency to trade the impersonal for the personal. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: Corinthians says, "you are a letter of Christ" and this living letter resolves the problem of the letter or language that is deadly. The resolution between the difference between God and Creation, subject and object, or all seemingly unbridgeable differences inherent to language, psychology, philosophy, and law (summed up as "the letter that kills") are bridged in the living letter, or what Maximus calls the logoi. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this continued discussion of how the Constantinian shift impacted Christianity, Nate, Karl, Jim, Andrew and Paul, discuss the loss of non-violence, the turn from Christian ethics and the Sermon on the Mount, the turn to violent atonement, and the shift in the conception of authority and the church. A different "common sense" arose that pervaded every area of life so as to displace the uniqueness of Christian identity. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches, describing the transformed mind, or knowing God as the suspension of the common Jewish and Enlightenment notion of God and, recognized by Hegel. Paul's suspension of the law and Hegel's negation of the negation as the displacement of a mediated notion of God and direct knowing in Christ, are making the same argument about the necessity to cease believing in the God of the law so as to believe in the Father of Christ. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this discussion of how it is that Christianity became a religion, much like other religions, Paul, Nat, Jim, Andrew and Karl, discuss the impact of the Constantinian shift, the rise of Divine Satisfaction, the turn to a closed understanding of the world, and the relinquishing of the revolutionary nature of the faith. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: The theme of Mathew captured in Immanuel, is completed in the Lord's Supper, in which the efficacious presence of God is made to bear on the lives of believers in what Hegel calls "actualized Christian Freedom." There is freedom from the violence of blood spilled in the taking up of the blood of Christ in the life of believers. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: In this Christmas Sermon the role of presence ("God with us") and absence is traced in Scripture as the primary theme fulfilled in Christ; a theme also recognized in postmodern philosophy. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this continuation of discussions of sin and salvation, Paul Axton takes up and expands upon the early church understanding of recapitulation as an all-embracing understanding of atonement that accounts for the New Testament and the focus on the new divinized humanity found in Christ. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In a continuation of the discussion of the nature of sin and salvation and hermeneutics, the discussion turns to how the rule of faith, or biblical hermeneutics centered on the person of Christ, brings out Christ's deliverance from the human predicament through his defeat of the rule of death over human lives. This is not an answer defined by law, but a deliverance from this orientation. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this new series on sin and salvation, Paul Axton introduces a series on theories of atonement, beginning with Christ as the "rule of faith" interpreting Scripture and exegeting God. The issues of psychological healing in connection to death drive, cosmic bondage and apocalyptic deliverance, and the eternality of the historical Christ are introduced. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this talk Paul Axton gave at a local restaurant, the focus is on outlining the Gospel of Matthew as Jesus as Temple recapitulation, the implication of which is Jesus taking up the historical, social, and legal situation of the Temple and Israel, and this is worked out by Gillian Rose and G.W.F. Hegel as addressing the injustice of the law and the Temple or the City of Man. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Brad and Paul discuss the work of Wittgenstein, Maximus, Hegel and Bulgakov as they converge on embodied synthesis in Christ and then extend the conversation to the synthesis of Scripture overcoming the contention in Job, Daniel, Maccabees, and Jonah over the split and violent or unified and peaceable image of God. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In a continuation of the discussion of Philosophy of Science, the ideas of Rupert Sheldrake about the dogmatism of science, leads to a discussion of the work of Christopher Kaiser on the creationist tradition and the development of science. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

This discussion of the teleological argument takes us into modern philosophy of science and the debate between Thomas Kuhn and Michael Polanyi. Paul Axton demonstrates the superiority of Polanyi's thought as reaching beyond Kuhn's stunted understanding. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: Jesus sign in the Temple is not simply pointing to the need to clean up the pricing system but to halt the economy of violent sacrifice and to deliver his sheep into an alternative nonviolent way of being human. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this discussion Paul Axton explains the failure of William Lane Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument and how it is that Origen of Alexandria provides the resolution in his view of time and eternity brought together in Christ. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: Jesus says he will provide no sign other than that of Jonah to the Jews, which is a kind of non-sign in their value system. Jesus, like Jonah, presents a very different picture of God than Nahum and the Jews of Jonah and Jesus generation. This God cares for all and would go to the depths of the earth to retrieve everyone. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Continuing our discussion in Imaginative Apologetics, we discuss the view of the embodied understanding of Maximus and Hegel reflected in Wittgenstein in which the world is synthesized through embodiment and language. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: Do we respond to empire with the resurrection faith of the nonviolent martyrs of Daniel and Maccabees or with the violence of the Mattathias and his friends in the Maccabean revolt. Jesus identity with the Son of Man of Daniel and his invoking the nonviolent response to the coming desolation and destruction portrayed in Maccabees provides the resolution to how to respond to evil empires. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Brad and Paul reflect on the course recently completed with Anthony Bartlett, and discuss how this picture of a semiotic shift surrounding Christ serves as an alternative reading of the Bible and reality. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: This sermon compares two understandings of Israel and God as presented in Nehemiah, Ezra, and Ruth, with Ruth the Moabite foreigner serving in the messianic line and as a kinsman redeemer through her faithful loving kindness, over and against the retributive picture of God and exclusive picture of Jews in Ezra and Nehemiah. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Notre Dame Professor Emmanuel Katongole, founder of Bethany Land Institute in Uganda, describes the theology and work of nonviolence in a world divided by violence and hatred. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: There are competing images of God in the Bible between a God of law and vengeance and the God of mercy and love. This contention is resolved in Christ in which true deity is found in the face of the forgiving human victim, and this highlights a theme traceable throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Frederick Bauerschmidt describes the practical work of teaching about the peace of Christ in the Catholic Church when violent Christian nationalism is the norm. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: History is of eternal significance in that it pertains to God's identity, and the impact of this significance is in its liberation from an enslaving finite understanding into the liberating eternal reality of God found in Christ. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Jordan Daniel Wood continues the conversation with Matt and Paul and in part 2 describes Hegel's picture of an inadequate notion of the infinite, and he pictures Hart as falling into this failed understanding, which explains Hart's rejection of Jordan's Maximian-Hegelian understanding. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: appealing to the work of Sergius Bulgakov, Axton develops the significance of God's presence in the name given to Moses, and then Christ's assumption of this name and the opening to all the possibility of dwelling in the name, which describes the possibility of God pouring himself out in and through human language. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Jordan Daniel Wood, in conversation with Matt and Paul, explains the logic of Hegel as a natural development of Maximus' understanding of personhood, which also serves to address the failure of David Bentley Hart to grasp the paradigm shift Jordan is picturing in light of Hegel. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this talk at a gathering at a local restaurant (thus the country music in the background) Paul Axton presents the manner in which Christ defeats cosmic and personal trauma through the work of predestination. The Erasure of Cosmic and Personal Trauma in the Lamb Crucified from the Foundation of the World

Roberto J. De Noval and Mark Roosien describe Bulgaokov's entry into speculative theology through Sophiology. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: John identifies Jesus as the the rejected Logos, which means he is not the Greek logos, the Jewish logos, the philosophical logos, or the religious logos, or the logic, language, reason, or word that grounds this world’s systems of human thought. Martin Heidegger is the prime example of recognizing the violence of the Greek logos, and then of presuming the Logos of Christ is a continuation of the same. René Girard brings out the absolute difference, developed most completely by Anthony Bartlett. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Roberto J. De La Noval and Mark Roosien describe to Brad and Paul their encounter with Sergius Bulgakov and detail his understanding of universal salvation in its personal implications. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: Rene Girard pictures the body of the scapegoat as the original sign and signification, which accords with the depiction of religion in the Bible and in the religions of the world, and Christ directly reverses this sign and provides a new order of meaning. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Matt and Paul talk with David Artman, author and host of the podcast Grace Saves All. In this conversation we discuss how universal redemption is necessarily through Christ and may be completed through and beyond death. David also details his recent reading and podcasts on the rise of fascism through Pentecostalism. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: Death and judgment are not the end of the story in Scripture but either the continuation of the work begun in Christ or a restorative judgment in which all are drawn into restoration and salvation. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

The author of the book and podcast "Grace Saves All," David Artman, describes his entry into universalism and the development of his book and raises the issue of its playing the role of a theodicy. (Sign up for the class Human Language, Signs of God: using Anthony Bartlett’s two books, Theology Beyond Metaphysics and Signs of Change, as one continuous argument. The course will run from 2025/9/16 to 2025/11/4. Register here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: In this sermon, linking the left/brain right/brain theory of Iain McGilchrist with Paul's distinction between letter and Spirit, a connection is made between how it is the left hemisphere of the brain can take predominance in the same way the law can become its own end, and this is suspended in the opening up of Christ to the thought of God on the order of a full utilization of the right brain. (Sign up for the class Human Language, Signs of God: using Anthony Bartlett’s two books, Theology Beyond Metaphysics and Signs of Change, as one continuous argument. The course will run from 2025/9/16 to 2025/11/4. Register here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this continuation of our podcasts on Imaginative Apologetics, Paul addresses the moral argument as posed by Kant, and traces his coining the term "radical evil" and provide illustrations showing this is not simply a philosophical but a real world cause and effect - certain conceptions of morality are directly linked to the worst forms of evil. (Sign up for the class Human Language, Signs of God: using Anthony Bartlett’s two books, Theology Beyond Metaphysics and Signs of Change, as one continuous argument. The course will run from 2025/9/16 to 2025/11/4. Register here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: When asked the reason for following Christ, Axton poses a one word answer upon which he builds an alternative understanding to the partial answer of being saved and shows that the choice is between meaning or no meaning. (Sign up for the class Human Language, Signs of God: using Anthony Bartlett’s two books, Theology Beyond Metaphysics and Signs of Change, as one continuous argument. The course will run from 2025/9/16 to 2025/11/4. Register here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In part 2 J. Denny Weaver, the foremost Mennonite thinker, describes the role of the Church as an alternative peaceable kingdom to the violent kingdoms of the world. (Sign up for the class Human Language, Signs of God: using Anthony Bartlett’s two books, Theology Beyond Metaphysics and Signs of Change, as one continuous argument. The course will run from 2025/9/16 to 2025/11/4. Register here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In part 1 of a 2 part conversation Paul and Brad interview J. Denny Weaver, the most prominent theologian among contemporary Mennonites, on his understanding of the atonement he calls "narrative Christus Victor." (Sign up for the class Human Language, Signs of God: using Anthony Bartlett’s two books, Theology Beyond Metaphysics and Signs of Change, as one continuous argument. The course will run from 2025/9/16 to 2025/11/4. Register here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!