Forging Ploughshares

Allan, Brian, Jonathan, Jim, Matt, and Paul discuss Charles Taylor's secularization thesis, its factuality and reality as compared with Derrida's theory of difference, Slavoj Žižek's primordial lie and the reality of the knowledge of good and evil, and then how it is that Bulgakov's Sophiology addresses the secondary nature of creaturely sophia. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

David Bentley Hart and Sergius Bulgakov provide the basis for this discussion between Matt, Simon, Tim, Jim, and Paul on how the antagonism in religion has folded into secularism to create a secular experiential reality for fundamentalists of both atheism and religion. Bulgakov's Sophiology once again points toward the synthesizing reality of Christ. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt, Brian, Jason and Paul discuss the work of Sergius Bulgakov's sophiology in addressing transcendence and immanence and the futility connected to the new atheism, as compared to Slavoj Žižek's therapeutic atheism. The hope for goodness and truth as inherent to the personal faith journey is discussed. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The final words of Jesus in Matthew summarize orthodox Trinitarian belief and the economy of salvation, and the Nicene Creed and Gregory of Nyssa take up this formula as the foundation for orthodoxy and combatting heresy and for describing the dynamics of sin (a dynamic of trinitarian absence) and salvation. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this continued introduction to World Religions and Cultures a review of the work of Rene Girard as it folds into Mircea Eliade and Peter Berger helps define the interactive roles of culture and religion as modes of orientation in identity, and as completed in Christ and the Church. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In two passages from I and II Corinthians, Paul utilizes the mirror or mirroring to illustrate incompleteness and immaturity and fullness. He points to the focus on the spectral, the partial, the created - as in many religions which focus on the sun and its eclipse - as the problem. In Psychoanalysis this mirror stage is universal and without cure, but Paul depicts passage beyond the mirror stage in mirroring Christ. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jim, David, Tim, Brian and Paul discuss the possible relationships between Christ and culture, particularly in a secular age, and discuss the opposed positions of Mircea Eliade and Peter Berger and the resolution posed by David Bentley Hart and Sergius Bulgakov. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The Council of Chalcedon, as read by Maximus the Confessor, provides a solution to the issue of difference and unity, the problem of the one and the many, or the answer to how their can be unifying love in a universe seemingly built on dualism, difference, and multiplicity. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

There are a variety of Christianities in which resurrection is excluded (theological liberalism), not needed (fundamentalism and penal substitution), or deemphasized (evangelicalism or pietism). The answer to the resurrectionless or semi-resurrectionless religions is the gospel, as the defeat of death, a cosmic salvation, a lived righteousness, a resurrection kingdom, lived in the Spirit now. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In the conclusion to the interview with Girard specialist Michael Hardin, Michael explains how a non-sacrificial hermeneutic, taken up in the Wesleyan Quadrilateral of Scripture, tradition, reason and experience, given a Christological center is the dynamic for reading the Bible and understanding God, not through morality but in character and ethics. The notion of doubling, rivalry, the rise of passion, and the failure of evangelicalism in accounting for the Jesus Movement are also discussed. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In John's account of the triumphal entry the resurrection of Lazarus triggers the events leading to Jesus' kingly reception, and then the turning of the crowd and his death as a scapegoat. Jesus exposes the history of violence and murder and explains his coming death as the defeat of Satan and the answer to mythic religious violence. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In part one of this two part conversation, Michael Hardin, a leading expert on René Girard shows the direct parallels between Girard and Maximus on mimesis, desire, the object cause of desire, and the genealogy of violence, and how it is the very character of God, in kenotic love, delivers creation and the crown of creation from the futility of death. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this new series on world cultures and religions, Tim, Jon, Brian, David, Simon, and Paul discuss the impact of the secular on religion, creating a distinct category "religion" separate from culture in which faith and practice become visibly distinct. The obscuring role of religion in Peter Berger and Rene Girard are examples. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The serpent points to a false desire, sin points to a false understanding of the law, and the idol poses a false god, which in each instance serves as an obstacle to what it promises, giving rise to the obstacle cause of desire. Christ exposes this scandalous lie, but Christ and the cross become a scandal or a stone of stumbling for those who continue to believe the lie, or he is the chief corner stone of a new form of worship for those who believe this truth. (Sign up for the course, The Theology of Maximus the Confessor with Jordan Wood. https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings. The course will run from 2024/3/25–2024/5/17 and will meet on Saturdays at 9am central time.) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt and Paul discuss key points raised by Jordan Wood and his upcoming class for PBI concerning Hegel, concerning the depth of theosis, and the meaning of being subject to fire in a universal understanding of Christianity. (Sign up for the course, The Theology of Maximus the Confessor with Jordan Wood. https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings. The course will run from 2024/3/25–2024/5/17 and will meet on Saturdays.) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul and Matt discuss with Jordan the upcoming course on Maximus, discussing Christ as the foundation of a reason bringing together the antinomies (or limits of reason) pointed out by Kant, accounted for in the post-Kantians and incorporated into Bulgakov's sophiology, and Jordan suggests an alternative reading of Hegel in which he is an orthodox Christian working out a form of thought on the order of Maximus. (Sign up for the course, The Theology of Maximus the Confessor with Jordan Wood. https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings. The course will run from 2024/3/25–2024/5/17 and will meet on Saturdays at 9am central time.) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jim, Jeff, Brian, and Paul discuss Paul's use of Isaiah's picture of the covenant with death, and universal deliverance and salvation, as an alternative reading to Romans 10-11, as opposed to justification theory. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jeff, Jim, Brian, and Paul discuss the role of the false teacher in Romans 9-11, Douglas Campbell's idea that works of the law was a problem which occurred only with the advent of Christianity, and the role of Christian Zionism and anti-Semitism in justification theory. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jeff, Jim, David, Brian, and Paul compare and contrast the Human Subject of chapter 7 and the reconstituted Subject of Romans chapter 8. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jim, Jeff, Brian, David, and Paul discuss Romans chapter 7 as providing a diagnosis of the human disease, in which the self is divided against itself. In Calvinism and justification theory this is presumed to be the normal Christian life, but this is Paul's picture of the human disease. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In the conclusion to our discussion of Romans 6, Matt, Jim, Brian, David and Paul discuss the question as to how to describe the difference in the Christian life. God's universal plan of salvation and the reality of evil create the question whether there is an ontological distinction with those in Christ. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jim, David, Brian, Matthew, Jonathan, Matt, and Paul discuss how the law functions as a deep grammar giving rise to the antinomies of a dialectic which functions as an end in itself. Romans 6 describes baptism as the cure to this dialectical antagonism by being joined to the body of Christ in baptism. Here the sign no longer floats free of the signified. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jeff, Matt, Brian, Jon, David, and Paul discuss Louis Martyn's depiction of the Galatian heresy as captivity to the elementary principles as this can be equated with Douglas Campbell's picture of the false teacher, and how conversion pertains to mind transformation through deliverance from this cosmos through Christ as fundamental reason. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Modernity and secularism in capitalism are made of the same stuff as Aaron's Golden Calf, captured in Paul's picture of the law as an idolatrous temptation, after Christ. The principalities and powers continue to reify that which has no substance and the Gospel exposes this idolatrous power. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matthew, Brian, Jon, Matt, Jeff, and Paul discuss how the false teacher's understanding has melded with the Augustinian misreading of Romans 5 to make law and sin the primary human problem, while in Paul's Gospel, the orientation to death is the cause of sin and the primary human problem. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Treating the secular as a unique epoch in history runs the danger of reifying this reality as if it is a true description, when it is on a continuum with the age-old deception of the law of sin and death that has a grip on the human heart. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jim, Jeff, Brian, Matt, and Paul conclude their conversation about the false teacher, who embodies the human problem of reifying law and language, which is Paul's definition of sin and the psychoanalytic diagnosis of the human predicament. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Antinomies, dualisms, alienation, and divide, are reflected in every realm of human thought from the psychological, the philosophical, gender relations, and even religion. Male/female, Plato/Aristotle, Spirit/flesh, sociology of religion/religious studies all represent a partial truth grounded in the lie of division and antagonism. Jesus Christ is the singular synthesis, bringing together that which cannot synthesize itself, thus he is healing, fulfilling and completing the fractured human image. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jon, Matt, Brian, Jim, Jeff, David and Paul compare and contrast two meaning systems and two alternative approaches to reality connected to two alternative understandings of justification by faith. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jim, Brian, Matt, and Paul contrast the teaching of Romans 1:18-32 with Paul's Gospel in the rest of Romans and in in Ephesians and Colossians, suggesting this may be the gospel (including its anthropology and theology) from hell, which Paul is refuting. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jim, Jeff, Matt, Brian, and Paul discuss the opening three chapters of Romans as it contrasts to Romans 5-8, and as treated in Douglas Campbell, so as to delineate Paul's unconditional Gospel from justification theory's fusion of the false Teacher with Paul, resulting in the conditional Gospel. (Register now for the class in World Religions and Cultures: Go to https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings to register.) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jon, Matt, and Paul discuss the outline and scope of the upcoming course on World Religions and Cultures, dealing with both a theology of religions and the interactions of particular religions with culture, including also the issue of Orientalism and reverse Orientalism, Girard's theory of myth and scapegoating, nationalism, and a close look at the Bhagavad Gita. (Register now for the class in World Religions and Cultures: Go to https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings to register.) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Brian, Jim, Matt, Jeff, and Paul discuss how Campbell's theory of the Teacher accords with the psychoanalytic understanding of sin as a lie concerning the law, with all-pervasive consequences. (Register now for the class in World Religions and Cultures: Go to https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings to register.) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The Wise Men of Matthew traditionally represent the Gentile world and religion, and demonstrate the best of religion and human thought is a guiding star to Christ. (Sign up for our next class, World Religion and Culture, starting the week of January 22nd: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Brian, Jon, Matt, Jim, and Jeff raise central questions about Douglas Campbell's theory of the false teacher in Romans 1-3 and Paul Axton offers possible explanations. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The Aramaic term transliterated into Greek, Maranatha, sums up the final word of the Bible which is the creative aim toward which human effort and human history are moving. This prayer encompasses the meaning of time's movement and history's end. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this introduction to Douglas Campbell's notion of the false teacher, Paul Axton explains justification theory, how it perverts Paul's Gospel, and the unconditional nature of Paul's Gospel. Jim, Brian, Jonathan and Matt act as interlocutors. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The virgin birth is a sign of both the deity and humanity of Jesus. It signals the even more miraculous event of the incarnation, God with us, which reverses the typical human understanding portrayed in Plato's parable of the cave, which imagines the absolute requires escape from the created and material world. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The birth of Immanuel, God with us, means that a Person is at the center of reality. Other forms of conceiving reality will conceive of the categories of the mind as ultimate and fall short of personhood, but Christmas means personalism is final and full reality. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this conclusion to Jordan Daniel Wood's depiction of his departure from Hart, he locates the specifics of their difference in Jordan's focus on the personhood of Christ, which embraces sequence, development, and progress historically and in the learning of individuals, where Hart seems to set this aside. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Ever since the decree of Pope Nicholas in A.D. 1059, focus in the Eucharist has turned to the transformation of elements, rather than the transformation of persons into the person of Christ. Luther aggravates and moves the conversation forward, but the formula of Maximus combined with the developments of Aquinas and Luther, recaptures the early church understanding of the Love Feast. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jordan Daniel Wood lays out two possible understandings of David Hart's critique of his work on Maximus. He locates the central issue in Hart's depiction of nature, in which Hart would locate divinity but in which he would turn to the Person of Christ as uniting the natural and divine. Jonathan suggests that Bernard Lonergan's approach, dropping focus on nature but looking to human desire, may be a mediating understanding. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In Corinthians, Paul says some are sick and dying due to their practice of the Lord's Supper. Is this crude magical thinking or does it accord with the picture in modern science of mind/body holism in which sick meaning systems give rise to literal sickness? Paul's answer is to be incorporated into the body of Christ, inclusive of a new ethic, a new love, a new economy, and a new humanity. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jonathan leads the discussion of Pope Francis's Laudato si', with Tim, Brian, Jim, Jon, Jeff, Allan and Paul. What is the proper use of technology, such that it does not become a violent and shaping force and remains a means (not an end)? Global warming and overpopulation, must be addressed not simply at a technological but at a theological level. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The Lord's Supper is first known as the "love feast" which is both commanded by the New Testament and forbidden at the Council of Carthage, resulting eventually in the distorted meaning of the Mass. Correctly understood the love feast or eucharist is the enactment of the body of Christ - or the person of Christ - seen in sacrificial love. Literal reduction to blood and flesh reifies the sign and misses the person of Christ and the purpose of the meal, which is not to kill Christ but destroy what killed him in the lives of believers. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jonathan Totty leads the discussion with Brian, David, Jonathan, Allan, Jeff, and Paul on the once active social teaching of various churches, and the loss of this focus, and the return of Catholic Social Teaching as represented by Pope Francis. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matthew chapter 5 depicts Jesus' accomplishment or fulfillment of the law as a direct reference to his person, his teaching, and his kingdom which the Mosaic law only pointed toward. Jesus ushers in a righteousness that abrogates and contradicts the law, such that one cannot "keep" the law and be a follower of Jesus. One cannot hate the enemy, a requirement of the law, and follow Jesus. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jonathan, Matt, Matthew, Tim, Brian, Jim, David, and Paul continue their discussion of the book of Philemon, comparing it to Giorgio Agamben's notion of homo sacer, and Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and contrasting it to the letter from Pliny the Younger. Philemon as a worked example of revolutionary subordination is the Gospel in synopsis, and we discuss the practical way to apply the letter. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Some Jewish authorities are advocating the obliteration of Gaza, as this is Israel's by divine fiat, but Jesus saw himself as true temple and ushering in the true kingdom. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Tim, Jonathan, Brian, Jim, David, Matt, and Paul discuss how it is that the tiny book of Philemon fills out the revolutionary nature of the gospel in its undermining of slavery and the institution of a new social order. Slavery is the motif defining sin, yet in the history of reception of Philemon, the revolutionary challenge of the gospel to slavery was ignored, downplayed, and denied. Implicit in this overlooking of Philemon is the failure to recognize the world changing revolution of the gospel in its defeat of the enslavement of sin and the inauguration of a new social order. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.