Forging Ploughshares

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.

Mike Johnson has put on display the reigning religion of Christian Nationalism, in imagining God ordained his rise as Speaker so as to support Israel. The appeal to Romans 13 is a key part of this Christian Nationalism, but this misses the true message of Paul that the Christian defeat of evil government is not through fusion of church and state, but by Christian adherence to the Kingdom built on resurrection power not through directing the state power of death.

In part 2 of our conversation, John DePue explains the history of interpretation of Romans up to the Reformation, the manner in which Phoebe would have acted out the text, and how it is an apocalyptic reading avoids supersessionism or antisemitism. See Beyond Justification (https://wipfandstock.com/9781532678981/beyond-justification/) , by Douglas Campbell and John DePue. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The rise of Christian nationalism, first in England and then in the United States, has always been linked to Christian Zionism, which is now killing Palestinians, including Palestinian Christians. Ironically this is linked to Romans 11, where Paul sets forth the purposes of Israel to Christ, and refutes any eternalizing importance of the law or of ethnic Israel. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

John DePue explains to Jeff, Brian, Matt, David and Paul the historical and grammatical argument for reading Romans 1:18-32 and other places in Romans as Paul giving voice to the False Teacher. See Beyond Justification (https://wipfandstock.com/9781532678981/beyond-justification/) , by Douglas Campbell and John DePue. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Many, such as John Calvin, presume the law is definitive of the economy of salvation, and thus read Romans 7 as the normal Christian life. The tragic error of this misunderstanding is to confuse the lie of sin with the solution of Christ. The lie of this false teaching is brought out by contrasting chapters 7 (life under the law) & 8 (new life in Christ) of Romans. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The law always has its transgressive support – doing a particular form of evil so as to produce a particular form of the good. The law generates this embodied deception. In Paul’s imagery, the body can be attached to either law (Paul uses the phrase, “body of sin”) or to the body of Christ, the issue is, which is the constituting environment? Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In part 2 of our conversation concerning the book Beyond Justification (https://wipfandstock.com/9781532678981/beyond-justification/) , by Douglas Campbell and John DePue, John describes the shortcoming of the new perspective, but particularly the programmatic failure of N. T. Wright, along with the unnecessary divisions which occur between justification, sanctification, revelation and salvation, in justification theory. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In Part I of this two part conversation, Jonathan DePue, coauthor with Douglas Campbell, discusses their upcoming book (https://wipfandstock.com/9781532678981/beyond-justification/) with Paul, with particular focus on the problem of anti-Semitism in traditional Protestant justification theory. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The typical understanding of salvation, or the typical Protestant understanding, is that all people recognize God and his righteousness, and experience the incapacity to keep the law. This inability to keep the law is definitive of both the human problem and the solution of the cross of Christ, and this explains the curse of the law. This sermon proposes an alternative understanding of the human problem and a different soteriology, based on an alternative reading of the curse of the law in Romans and Galatians. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Brian, Matt, Jonathan, David, Austin, Jim, and Paul discuss John Howard Yoder's and David Bentley Hart's depiction of Constantinianism and the fusion of Church and State and the disappearance of the church. The only visible Christian is one armored by the gospel, resistant to and not armored by the state. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The impetus behind Paul’s writing and the work of the Christian life and theology is the conversion of the mind, the transformation of the Subject, the rise of a new form of consciousness including self-consciousness. God, the essence of reality, is not passively intuited or grasped by sight or images – which by definition remain objects – but God in Christ presents himself for the understanding, to be actively apprehended as part of human decision and judgment. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Brian, David, Matt, Brent, Jonathan, Jim and Paul discuss the armor of peace and nonviolence as the heart of resisting the powers, rather than, in the manner of Hart and Milbank, as a passive nonresistance. This resistance is salvific and the meaning of "putting on Christ." Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Faith brings coherence, intelligibility, and understanding, in the midst of the homelessness of being human. The foundations of culture, of law, of institutions, crumbled at Babel just as they have in postmodernism but faith secures meaning in the midst of this homeless condition. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Brian, Jim, Jonathan, Matt, Brent, David, and Paul discuss the picture of imitation in Ephesians and the New Testament as the basic motif of salvation in the New Testament. Christian imitation is a lived salvation delivering from the rivalry of mimetic desire. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.