Forging Ploughshares

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.

Romans 1:18-32 are not Paul's gospel but the premises of a false Teacher opposing Paul, and in Romans 1-3 he deconstructs these premises, preparing for his conclusion that the law is part of the problem defeated by Christ. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The Romans may have had a law-based understanding of atonement connected to the notion that sin is simply breaking the law. Paul takes them from this understanding to the notion that sin is bondage to a lie in regard to the law from which Christ delivers through resurrection. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

This is the key conclusion to The Mystery Revealed: The Gospel as Exposure of the Lie of Evil as focus turns to individual participation in creation. As David Bentley Hart points out in All Shall Be Saved, humanity is in bondage, but then as he recognizes in You Are Gods, this bondage does not preclude human participation in self-creation. In this discussion Tim, Jonathan, Matt, Jim, Brent, Matthew, Austin, and Paul discuss the implication of these poles of reality in the encounter with and defeat of evil. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In Romans 1-3 Paul is giving voice to and refuting a false teacher, yet justification theory takes all of Romans 1-3 as the teaching of Paul, ending up with a contradictory gospel which Paul might call the accursed gospel. By not sorting out the voice of the false teacher from Paul's refutation of this teacher, justification theory imagines the law, human capacity, and human recognition of its need is the precursor to coming to Christ. By way of contrast, Paul believes humanity is in bondage to sin and death and Christ alone delivers and only Christ is the foundation for right understanding. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Ambrose, Matt, and Paul, discuss how the United States, due to the culture of secrecy surrounding the various intelligence agencies and classified history has come to resemble churches that cloak sex scandals or closed societies that keep their citizens in the dark. Ambrose traces this secret history surrounding UFO crash retrievals, such as that which retired Major David Grusch exposed in his testimony to Congress. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Luther's justification by faith, though it may have been aimed at an unconditional understanding over and against works-righteousness, melded conditionalism and unconditionalism and injected much of Christian thought and biblical interpretation with this confusion. Romans is the place these two systems collide, and particularly how we read Romans 7 brings out the contrast in epistemology, anthropology, the doctrine of revelation, the understanding of God, and of Christ and atonement. (Sign up for our next class, Romans: Salvation through the Body of Christ A theological study of the faithfulness of God revealed in Christ Jesus as articulated in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Focusing on Paul’s exposition of God making the world right through Christ. Starting September 4th https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Megan, Shaila, Jess, and Paul continue the discussion surrounding Megan's Women's Chapel, as it has addressed the destructive nature of how women and human sexuality are viewed in teachings surrounding both purity culture and complementarianism as they have become part of church and Christian teaching. (Sign up for our next class, Romans: Salvation through the Body of Christ A theological study of the faithfulness of God revealed in Christ Jesus as articulated in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Focusing on Paul’s exposition of God making the world right through Christ. Starting September 4th https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Justification by faith can either be understood as the "accursed gospel" of the false teachers or entry into the unconditional good news. The manner in which justification by faith must include every category is worked out in this message. (Sign up for our next class, Romans: Salvation through the Body of Christ A theological study of the faithfulness of God revealed in Christ Jesus as articulated in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Focusing on Paul’s exposition of God making the world right through Christ. Starting September 4th https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Megan, Shaila, and Jess describe to Paul the Women's Chapel started by Megan as a project through Washington University to provide a space for women to share their church journey through, what is sometimes a stifling and traumatic experience. (Sign up for our next class, Romans: Salvation through the Body of Christ A theological study of the faithfulness of God revealed in Christ Jesus as articulated in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Focusing on Paul’s exposition of God making the world right through Christ. Starting September 4th https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Justification and faith have been skewed by a gospel that defines these terms as if the law is the baseline and as if retributive justice defines the work of Christ. In this understanding all comprehend who God is and his requirements, yet they simultaneously are depraved. In this false gospel suffering bring righteousness, forgiveness is granted only after wrath is propitiated, and God's anger is pitted against his love. This is not the Gospel. (Sign up for our next class, Romans, starting in September https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt, Tom, and Paul continue their discussion of the film, Oppenheimer, and discuss the portrayal of sin and evil acknowledged and unacknowledged by the man and the film. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

On August 6th, 1945 the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, bringing to a conclusion three hundred years of scientific discovery in the holocaust unleashed on Japan and still threatening the world. The individual credited as the father of the atomic bomb, demonstrated the Adam-like struggle tying great good to profound evil, which haunts the human race. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt, Tom and Paul discuss the Christopher Nolan film, Oppenheimer, and the book which serves as the basis of the film, American Prometheus, setting it in the context of the dropping of the Bomb on Hiroshima (August 6th) and Nagasaki (August 9th), and the theological and moral implications. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - The biblical picture of salvation is the melding or joining of Divine and human Spirit, Life, and Breath. The human image bears this eternal purpose which is only understood through the free joining, willing opening, or purposeful enacting of the grace of God in the person. Augustinian original sin and predestination have obscured this picture of salvation as willing participation of the human person in receiving Divine personhood. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Tim, Jonathan, Matt, Jim, Brent, Matthew, Austin, and Paul discuss the mystery revealed through the Gospel (in Ephesians) as unfolding of the will of God in creation's completion through redemption. Examples of the mystery compounded are Girardian scapegoating, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Calvinist predestination, each of which reify a mysterious nothing. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - Divine and created Sophia, as brought together in Christ, describes what is happening in the redemption of the cosmos. The created order is brought to its fulfillment in being joined to the Creator. Human wisdom alone though, leaves out the redemptive step. Creation ex nihilo opens creation to the possibility of being pictured in humans wisdom as grounded in some reified nothing, This produces the antinomies and antagonism from which the Divine-Human One saves. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jim, David, Matthew, Brian, and Paul discuss the nature of radical evil as the underside of the law (as exemplified by Paul the Pharisee and as duplicated in all radical evil), and how Christ defeats this evil by exposing its deception. This is necessarily cosmic and universal. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.