Forging Ploughshares

In Part 1 of this 2 part conversation, Jon, Matt, and Paul, discuss the positive impact of the work of David Bentley Hart and consider what his recent confession might mean in understanding his work. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

The focus on Christ's faithfulness rather than merely our faith in Christ, creates a more holistic understanding of faith than an interior intensity of belief, focused on Christ as object. Faithfulness is Christocentric rather than anthropocentric, incorporating ethics and embodiment of the living out of faith in Christ. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Matt, Paul, and Jon continue the discussion of the baptist vision set forth by Stanley Hauerwas and James McClendon, focusing on unity and contrasting it with the forced and violent unity of Christendom. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Ephesians 3:10 describes the work of Christ as recapitulation, which is inclusive of all that it means to be human, and can be described as a different human experience and psychical difference. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

John, Matt, and Paul, inspired by articles by C. J. Dull, discuss the baptist vision set forth by Stanley Hauerwas and James McClendon, and discuss how this provides for a first order unity in the person and work of Christ. Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this sermon, the witness of Scripture to Christ and Christ as interpretive key to Scripture is spelled out, using the Gospel of John and Paul's illustration in Corinthians concerning Moses. Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this first podcast on Imaginary Apologetics, it is noted that Anselm's ontological and cosmological arguments pose a logic developed in his atonement theory, focused on a foundational logic, and this is contrasted with Hegel's understanding that the ontological argument is dependent on Christianity and the Person of Christ. Hegel is working from a Maximian-like understanding in which Christ brings together thought and being while Anselm does not reference Christ in the core of the argument. Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Philippians 3:13 describes a stretching forth, in which the past (failures and achievements) are forgotten as part of the focus on the goal of attaining to likeness of Christ. Gregory of Nyssa portrays this Pauline understanding as the eternal dynamic of life in Christ which offers true stability and peace. Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Also sign up for Sin and Salvation: An in-depth study of the meaning of sin and a description of the atonement as a defeat of sin and the basis of an alternative community in Christ. This course will run through the beginning of February to the end of March. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

The transformative power in conversion and salvation flows backward, redeeming all of our life, so that the end is in the beginning. Our finite lives make sense as they are stretched out in the beginning and end that is Christ. This self-transcendence is realized in being woken up religiously to the love of God, morally to others, intellectually to the cosmic Christ, and psychically or emotionally to the fruits of the spirit. Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Also sign up for Sin and Salvation: An in-depth study of the meaning of sin and a description of the atonement as a defeat of sin and the basis of an alternative community in Christ. This course will run through the beginning of February to the end of March. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron! J

Here is part 2 of the 2 part discussion of the upcoming course Sin and Salvation. John, Matt, and Paul, discuss their theological journey as a journey of friendship. (Sorry, the previous podcast was duplicated but here corrected.) Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Also sign up for Sin and Salvation: An in-depth study of the meaning of sin and a description of the atonement as a defeat of sin and the basis of an alternative community in Christ. This course will run through the beginning of February to the end of March. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Matt, John and Paul discuss the upcoming course with PBI, Sin and Salvation, which focuses on the peace of Christ, and which pictures the theological journey as only cohering as a continuing journey, in which the beginning is in the end, as with Christ. Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Also sign up for Sin and Salvation: An in-depth study of the meaning of sin and a description of the atonement as a defeat of sin and the basis of an alternative community in Christ. This course will run through the beginning of February to the end of March. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In part 2 of discussion of Flannery O'Connor, David, Jonathan, and Paul discuss how her depiction is an explicit defeat of liberal and pietistic notions which believe in the natural competency of the soul. Only an acknowledgement of judgment, evil, and purgation, even as part of a universal salvation, is adequate for the reality of the human condition. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Also sign up for Sin and Salvation: An in-depth study of the meaning of sin and a description of the atonement as a defeat of sin and the basis of an alternative community in Christ. This course will run through the beginning of February to the end of March. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this discussion Jonathan Heaps, Head of the Lonergan Institute at Seton Hall University, Editor of the Lonergan Review, and author of The Ambiguity of Being: Bernard Lonergan and the Problems of the Supernatural, describes his upcoming class with PBI on Bernard Lonergan. Jonathan describes the resolution that Lonergan brings to the modern theological impasse, a breakthrough broached by nouvelle théologie and ressourcement, but completed by Lonergan. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Also sign up for Sin and Salvation: An in-depth study of the meaning of sin and a description of the atonement as a defeat of sin and the basis of an alternative community in Christ. This course will run through the beginning of February to the end of March. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Colossians 1:15-20 stands at the center of the logic of the New Testament, taken up by Origen, the Cappadocian Fathers, Maximus, and in the modern period is recovered by Robert Jenson (among others). Apart from this understanding, that Christ is the realization of the eternality of God, Christianity becomes unintelligible. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Also sign up for Sin and Salvation: An in-depth study of the meaning of sin and a description of the atonement as a defeat of sin and the basis of an alternative community in Christ. This course will run through the beginning of February to the end of March. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Jordan Wood brings his series on Maximus to a conclusion, summing up his views on nature, hierarchy, and the possibility of annihilation. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Also sign up for Sin and Salvation: An in-depth study of the meaning of sin and a description of the atonement as a defeat of sin and the basis of an alternative community in Christ. This course will run through the beginning of February to the end of March. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

David, Jonathan, and Paul in part 1 of this 2 part podcast discuss the novels and short stories of Flannery O'Connor and their challenge to a modern liberal worldview, with their portrayal of inexplicable evil and love. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Also sign up for Sin and Salvation: An in-depth study of the meaning of sin and a description of the atonement as a defeat of sin and the basis of an alternative community in Christ. This course will run through the beginning of February to the end of March. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Jordan Wood describes key texts in patristics and philosophy and then describes the similarities between Hegel and Maximus. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Herod lied to the wisemen about his intent, pretending to want to worship Jesus, but slaughtered the innocent children of Bethlehem in an attempt to kill any rival. This provides a working principle for understanding the facade of piety among rulers and the powerful and how to understand the continued slaughter of the innocent in Palestine and elsewhere. It clarifies the mandate for the people of God to be citizens of the Kingdom of God rather than citizens of this world. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Jordan Wood leads a discussion on Maximus' view of the all-embracing and unbelievable love of God as the work being accomplished through the Trinity, in synthesis, personhood, and divine humility. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Mary consented to the formation of Christ within her womb, and Paul calls all people to consent to Christ being formed within. The other choice is bearing the subpersonal image. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method": "Bernard Lonergan, SJ (1904 - 1984) came to see the development of a modern scholarly method for theology as one of the most pressing challenges of 20th-century Christian thought. This course follows how Lonergan's view of theological method as a task and a problem developed on the way to his 1972 book, Method in Theology, and its major breakthrough: functional specialization." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Jordan Wood explains Maximus' understanding of the limited role of nature in universal salvation, which unlike in David Hart's theology in which nature contains the full potential of deification and salvation, there is the necessity of realization in time and history of the actual working out of salvation and the defeat of evil beyond nature in personhood. Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method": "Bernard Lonergan, SJ (1904 - 1984) came to see the development of a modern scholarly method for theology as one of the most pressing challenges of 20th-century Christian thought. This course follows how Lonergan's view of theological method as a task and a problem developed on the way to his 1972 book, Method in Theology, and its major breakthrough: functional specialization." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

The Lord's Prayer is answered by Christ in the incarnation and parallels and echoes the prayer of Mary and Zacharias as each of us become the bearers of the incarnate Christ through freely carrying out "Thy Will" in enacting the Kingdom of God on Earth. Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method": "Bernard Lonergan, SJ (1904 - 1984) came to see the development of a modern scholarly method for theology as one of the most pressing challenges of 20th-century Christian thought. This course follows how Lonergan's view of theological method as a task and a problem developed on the way to his 1972 book, Method in Theology, and its major breakthrough: functional specialization." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Jordan follows Maximus argument of deification to conclude that personhood, whether divine or human is not reducible or achievable apart from the reality of the person of Christ (in contradistinction from the work of David Bentley Hart's syllogistic understanding). (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method": "Bernard Lonergan, SJ (1904 - 1984) came to see the development of a modern scholarly method for theology as one of the most pressing challenges of 20th-century Christian thought. This course follows how Lonergan's view of theological method as a task and a problem developed on the way to his 1972 book, Method in Theology, and its major breakthrough: functional specialization." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Human conceptuality and understanding is limited by binaries, differences and irresolvable dualisms, but Paul describes the synthesizing work of Christ as a knowledge exceeding human conceptuality. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method": "Bernard Lonergan, SJ (1904 - 1984) came to see the development of a modern scholarly method for theology as one of the most pressing challenges of 20th-century Christian thought. This course follows how Lonergan's view of theological method as a task and a problem developed on the way to his 1972 book, Method in Theology, and its major breakthrough: functional specialization." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Jordan Wood lays out Maximus explanation of the Lord's Prayer, which not only explains how prayer can both seek action from God and change the one praying, but accords with the logic of creation as incarnation. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Jordan Wood addresses the determinate good and love of Christ, in contrast to abstractions, and addresses the Neo-Platonism of Hart and Milbank, and the true orthodoxy of Hegel, as opposed to the received neo-Kantianism of Lonergan. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Jordan Wood, in part two of a three part series on Maximus' Mystagogia, describes the paradoxical relationship between church and world, soul and body, idealism and realism, the apophatic and cataphatic, and creation and incarnation, demonstrating that these independent realms are integrated and interdependent. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In Romans 13:1, it was under the darkest of circumstances that Paul outlined the responsibility of Christians to the state. In light of the fact that Jesus has been slain and Paul himself will shortly be murdered, Christians can defeat the powers through the same revolutionary subordination, defeating death (the power of this world's kingdoms) and establishing a resurrection Kingdom through the particular form of Christian civil disobedience. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Jordan Wood introduces the alternative logic of the incarnation in which the symbol is the symbolized, and usual modes of ordering cause and effect and time and eternity, the apophatic and cataphatic, or the Platonic and Aristotelian are surpassed. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

The two on the Road to Emmaus, illustrate that the embodied, the fleshly, the historical, the scriptural is inadequate in recognizing Christ. To be stuck with the literal, which describes this theological/political moment in the United States, can be likened (according to Maximus and Origen) to being consumed by fleshly desire, while desire directed to God in Christ is infinitely stretched out. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Jordan Wood answers a series of questions concerning how Christ is to be conceived in regard to hierarchy, lower and higher, cause and effect, and Jordan depicts his embrace and occupation of the inside and outside of hierarchical order. He also discusses contemporary issues of biblical interpretation concerning the body and sexuality and how conscience and progress are to be applied to Bible reading. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Christ precedes and makes possible the fact of Scripture, both in its writing and formation, but also in the continuing reading and exegesis of Scripture. This fact is the unifying center of the faith, in answer to the multiplicities of Christian faiths now exposed in this politic moment, pointing to a deep theological crisis. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this discussion of Maximus' paradoxical view of the space and time bending elements of the Word/Scripture as the continuation of incarnation, Scripture is set in the context of Christ as Word - the Word incorporating and incorporated into all things. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

This sermon on coming to Christ outside the city (Hebrews 13:12-14) traces the inevitable collapse of every civilization, and the attempt of Republican politicians such as JD Vance, Josh Hawley, and Donald Trump, and cultural warriors like Jordan Peterson and Peter Thiel, to weaponize Christianity to aid in civilizational war is equated with the offer of the Devil to Christ. This is a paraphrasing and reapplication of the important talk of Paul Kingsnorth in a talk at First Things. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Maximus, unlike N. T. Wright or Peter Enns but like Origen and the Apostles, equates Scripture with the body, soul, and spirit of Christ, treating the inspiration of Scripture as continuing to occur through Christ, and not through the letter. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

The logic of Christ defeats the necessary logic surrounding death, in which life is fragmented and sequential in its beginning and end, but Christ's defeat of death introduces an order in which life reigns over death, and in this logic the life of Christ is an eternal reality, bringing together time and eternity, God and incarnation in a reciprocal relation in which beginning and end are united. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this conclusion to part 4, Jordan takes on the scholastic notion that creation and incarnation are not a necessity, suggesting that such a notion leaves us with no particular understanding of God or his love. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

The Gospel of John depicts a real world deliverance from fear, real world healing from sin and slavery, and this is captured in John's deployment of Passover and treatment of Isaiah and the Suffering Servant, in which human evil (not God) results in his suffering and God brings mercy and healing from out of his oppression. This stands in contrast to Calvin's depiction of God punishing Jesus because he is identified with the Azazel Goat, identifying him with sin and, in many Calvinist's view, hating Christ. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

The death of Christ encompasses all dying and the life of Christ encompasses all of life, so that every individual true beginning and end is to be found in Christ. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Yom Kippur, the sacrifice of the Yahweh Goat and the sending of the Azazel Goat into the Abyss is the primary holy day for understanding the work of Christ. Clearly dividing and understanding the work of each goat arrives at a different meaning then those theories (like Calvin's) which fuse the work of the goats. Christ's life and death, like that of the Yahweh Goat, cleanses from sin, and the result of this cleansing is an end of exile and Sheol (the place of exile). If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Jordan Daniel Wood explains how Maximus' notion of the end is the beginning constitutes an understanding of salvation that encompasses and goes beyond legal understandings or ideas of Christus Victor. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Christ connects to himself a long anti-sacrificial tradition in the prophets, connecting sacrifice with disobedience and violence, and not instituted by God. Christ sees himself as exposing the history of murder and murderous religion, but to reduce Christ to a propitiating sacrifice erases this central part of his message. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this repeat episode, Ryan Hemmer explains the significance of Paul Ricoeur, René Girard, and Sigmund Freud, in regard to the role of culture. What role for evil and desire or goodness and deity in language and culture? To register for the upcoming class on René Girard with Michael Hardin, Rene Girard and Nonviolent Atonement, go to https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings. The Course will run from the second week of October to the first week in December.) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron! Music: Bensound

In Galatians, Paul explains that Christians are to read the law allegorically for their edification and to cling to the law for interpreting Christ is to continue to be enslaved by the elementary principles. As Origen explains, to cling to the violence and lust of the law by reading literally and historically rather than applying spiritually is to continue in enslavement to lust, idolatry, and violence. To register for the upcoming class on René Girard with Michael Hardin, Rene Girard and Nonviolent Atonement, go to https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings. The Course will run from the second week of October to the first week in December.) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Here is a repeat of an earlier podcast on Girard and Peter Berger. Jonathan, Matt, Brian, Brent, and Paul discuss Ephesians 4-5 and the singular lie exposed by Christ creating entry into love. The function of a hostile lie in the reification of culture and religion, as in the work of Peter Berger and Rene Girard, and the necessity of this lies exposure so as to be "rooted and grounded in love" is discussed. (To register for the upcoming class on René Girard with Michael Hardin, Rene Girard and Nonviolent Atonement, go to https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings. The Course will run from the second week of October to the first week in December.) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron! .

Joy is integral to the Christian life as described by Peter, commanded by Paul, and as defined by love and mutual indwelling by Dionysius and Maximus, who describe this joy and love as ecstatic longing and giving, culminating in the kenotic love of Christ. (To register for the upcoming class on René Girard with Michael Hardin, Rene Girard and Nonviolent Atonement, go to https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings. The Course will run from the second week of October to the first week in December.) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this episode, Paul Axton discusses Girard's atonement theory - over against propitiation and penal substitution. (To register for the upcoming class on René Girard with Michael Hardin, Rene Girard and Nonviolent Atonement, go to https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings. The Course will run from the second week of October to the first week in December.) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

In this repeat edition of a PBI course discussion on science and language, Tim, Tyler, Trenton, and Paul discuss how Girard's theory might or might not fit evolutionary theory, or a deterministic or a free will universe, and how modern science accords with a particular theological understanding of language. To register for the course René Girard and Nonviolent Atonement, go to https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Here is a repeat of an earlier interview with Michael Hardin, who will be teaching a class with PBI beginning in the second week of October. In this fascinating interview with Michael, author of some ten books dealing with René Girard he tells of his relationship with both Girard and Walter Wink and he describes the essential element which Girard brings out in the Gospel and the Christian journey. To register for the course René Girard and Nonviolent Atonement, go to https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

In this conversation, Michael Hardin introduces his class with Ploughshares Bible Institute on the work of René Girard. He describes the 8 week course which will begin the second week of October. Michael was a friend of Girard and was present at the founding of the Colloquium On Violence and Religion, and he will share published and unpublished work from Girard and others detailing the important work of this key thinker. To register for the course go to https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.