Forging Ploughshares

In this opening series on the Gospel of John Jim, Janice, Brian, Tim, Matt, Dan, and Paul, discuss the prologue of John and the meaning of the Logos, not as the pre-incarnate Christ but as the historical Jesus, and the difference this makes to conceptions of God, salvation, and the meaning of creation. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - God's Word is world constituting, self-authenticating, and a repetition of God while the human word may attempt to constitute a world in its own self-authenticating repetition - inducing human failure. God's Word is the cure for this failure. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jim, Janice, Matt, David, Brian and Paul discuss how gender, race, ethnicity, or simply language can become an oppressive tool of the culture or of the symbolic order and how the Christian community is defined by its suspension of this cultural oppression. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - Donald Trump has promoted the big lie that he did not lose the election, but this lie is a type of the big lie challenged and exposed by Christ which pictures the human, the political, this world as God's truth. Christ as truth exposes the big lie. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Janice, Jim, Brian, David, and Paul discuss how the theory of Rene Girard fits with the Bible, but how it points to the benefits of sacrificial religion over uncontrolled violence, and how the end of scapegoating leaves open the possibility of total violence. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - The truth of the Trinity, or Truth, unfolds historically with the realization of God as Father, the incarnation and recognition of the Son, and with the giving of the Holy Spirit and full human participation in God. This marks three possible errors: God as Father apart from the Son and Spirit can be confused with law or power, God as Son, apart from the Spirit and Father can be equated with the historical, and God as Spirit, apart from the Son and Father can be equated with the individual interiority and experience. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jim, Janice, David, Brian, Matt, Dan and Paul discuss the various ways that the matrix of bondage grips us (e.g., through capitalism, sexism, religion, ontotheology, dualism, psychology, and time) and how Christ, specifically in the resurrection breaks open this matrix and frees us. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - The now and not yet of the process of salvation can be split and made static and exclusive, missing the unfolding of entering this rest on a daily basis. This failure gives rise to all "not yet" (on the right, Christian fascism) or all "now" (on the left, Christian Marxism and liberalism), two forms of nihilism which can only be remedied by maintaining the tension of Christian hope. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - In this second sermon developing an allegorical reading, the specific displacement of a violent God through the God of peace revealed in Christ, including freedom from the law of sin and death or emancipation from the reign of violence is developed in conjunction with a spiritual hermeneutic. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - There is a spiritual or allegorical reading of Scripture which interprets through Christ and there is the fleshly reading concentrating on the letter or on history, which according to Paul, misses Christ and leaves one enslaved. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt, Jim, Janice, David, Brian, Dan and Paul discuss the origin of evil in the human unconscious and the presumption of life through the law apart from the body - the lie displaced through participation in the Trinity. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - In John atonement or salvation is new creation, a new humanity, a new birth, a redirected desire, a reorientation to death, recapitulation, Christus Victor, or simply creation completion. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jim, Janice and Paul review the psychoanalytic, philosophical, and biblical picture of death denial as constituting sin and discuss how the Cross of Christ defeats death denial through death acceptance. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - The trial of Jesus is the centerpiece of John, and the entire Gospel is framed as a trial, with witnesses and evidence presented against God/Christ and against the world, echoing the trial in Isaiah, in which salvific judgment is the verdict. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt, from an Eastern Orthodox tradition, and Jon, from an Episcopalian tradition, and Paul, discuss the spiritual life, prayer, and the experiential difference available in active spiritual practices and living life from a spiritual perspective. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - In the so-called cleansing of the Temple is the depiction of the theme of John: Christ is true Temple and true Passover Lamb, and there is a fulfillment of a Jewish order now destroyed (subsequent to 70 A.D.) as the cross marks the true defeat of death and the tomb now marks the spot of revelation and life previously assigned to the Holy of Holies and the Ark of the Covenant.

Jim, Matt, David, Brian, and Paul discuss how the idolatrous scene illustrates the shame/pride condition and the fear of death and how Christ's dissolution of death is illustrated in the transformation of the tomb into a similitude of the Ark of the Covenant. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - The lamb that takes away the sin of the world, is the Passover lamb which does not bear sin, but this result is finalized by Christ in his work of filling up all things, including Sheol, with his life - thus taking away sin through his life. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Dan, Rob, Ray, Matt, David, Jim, and Paul discuss the focus on the defeat of death in Ignatius as a defeat of sin and heresy and the shift with Augustine and Constantine which results in alternative atonement theories. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - The gap between heaven and earth is marked by Sheol or the place of the dead, a distance illustrated in the rites of the tabernacle and the distance between the Goat for the Lord and the Goat of Azazel, a gap closed by Christ and by his preaching to the dead and freeing those captive to Sheol. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jim, Matt, David, Janice, Rob, Ray, and Paul discuss how Anselm's shift to rationalism changed the register of theological discussion to abstractions surrounding identity (Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche) which develop in modernity, giving rise to the delusion of a self-grounding reason and identity; the false notion Christ defeats. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - The cross, as foolishness to Greeks and a scandal to the Jews, requires a world-view shift for both Jews and Greeks, in which God in Christ directly confronts the inhumanity, injustice, and demonic evil which constitutes the city of man and which put Christ on the cross. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt, Janice, Jim, Rob, and Paul discuss the inherent violence leading to and stemming from the doctrine of penal substitution. Penal Substitution is a manifestation of the problem of sin and violence which Christ defeats. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this lecture Paul Axton traces the intrinsic necessity of violence to the law, which accounts for the peculiar violence of the United States. The law founding and law keeping violence described in the work of Walter Benjamin supports the biblical depiction of "necessary violence" exposed as the lie which killed Christ. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Rob, David, Matt, Janice and Paul, discuss the early church understanding of Christus Victor and Recapitulation as developed through Irenaeus and this is compared to notions of the cross as God's punishment, culminating in Luther's notion that Jesus is viewed by God as the worst of sinners and Calvin's doctrine of Penal Substitution. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - The lame man at the pool, the Jews in their belief in sabbath law, and moderns in their belief in absolute law and that God has absconded, share a nihilistic belief in impersonal blind forces which Christ challenges and defeats. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this first in a series on sin and salvation Matt, Jim, Janice, Brian, Allan, Ray, and Paul discuss how sin can be equated with violence. A nonviolent hermeneutic, understanding the peace of Christ as the lens through which to abrogate the violence of God in the Old Testament, is introduced. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this lecture Paul Axton explains John's and Paul's spiritual reading of the Hebrew Scriptures which has been lost in modern scholarship (as witnessed to by Charles Hill) and at a popular level. Henri de Lubac points us to Origen of Alexandria as the cure for historicism and what might be a type of Gnosticism, which a correct reading of John cures. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this PBI discussion David Rawls explains Alexander Campbell's justification for nonviolence and Allan advocates for complete non-participation in nations and governments. Matt, Tim, and Paul join this final discussion on the peaceable kingdom. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - In Revelation and the Gospel of John the church is depicted as bringing forth the enfleshment of the Son in an ongoing incarnation or travail of birth. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this PBI discussion David, Matt, and Paul discuss the typical "what if" scenarios in regard to nonviolence and point to the early church discipline in which being peaceable was part of catechesis of every disciple and the common thread found in the early church and among Anabaptist groups of divinization. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. (Register for the upcoming Class on the Gospel of John starting May 9th here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)

Paul Axton Preaches - There is a Gnostic notion that evil arises before creation and that this is reflected in the chaos of Genesis or the nothing of creation ex nihilo. John locates and delimits evil and pictures its defeat and this is understood through correctly identifying the Logos with the "word of the cross." Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. (Register for the upcoming Class on the Gospel of John starting May 9th here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)

In this PBI discussion Trenton, Tim, Allan, and Paul discuss how a shift in atonement theory (away from penal substitution) accompanied rediscovery and preservation of a peaceable understanding among Anabaptists, while a failure to shift atonement theory accompanied the relinquishing of peace among groups who originally held to nonviolence. The case of Reinhold Niebuhr, and his Christian realism, is key. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. (Register for the upcoming Class on the Gospel of John starting May 9th here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)

Paul Axton preaches - John depicts the life of Christ from an apocalyptic perspective, unveiling the dwelling place of God with man established in his "lifting up" a new Temple established in a new humanity. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. (Register for the upcoming Class on the Gospel of John starting May 9th here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)

Tim, Trenton, Allan, and Paul discuss the tenets of the just war tradition and how most all of the churches indigenous to the United States began as peace churches but relinquished this original understanding to adapt some form of just war. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. (Register for the upcoming Class on the Gospel of John starting May 9th here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)

Paul Axton Preaches - The Gospel of John equates truth with the life of Christ shown forth at Easter. This truth relativizes all other notions of truth as other trues are always extrinsic trues (location, date, composition, etc.) while the life of Christ is a first order truth which only refers to itself. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. (Register for the upcoming Class on the Gospel of John starting May 9th here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)

David, Allan, Matt, and Paul discuss the implications of the accommodation of violence and the development of the just war tradition beginning with the Constantinian shift. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. (Register for the upcoming Class on the Gospel of John starting May 9th here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)

Paul Axton Preaches - There are two orders of language and meaning. The Word of the Cross is the eternal wisdom of God, the "I am" reversing time and space and undoing death dealing (sequential, cause and effect, time and space bound) ordering of human wisdom. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this interview with Dr. Timothy Boyle, an expert on Japan, the Japanese language, and the Japanese writing system, Paul and Tim discuss the discovery of the stories of Genesis in Japanese writing (Kanji) and the profound similarities between the group oriented shame concepts found in the Bible and Japan. Tim also tells the story of Wounded Tiger, which he is translating, and which soon will be made into a feature film. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - The Eucharistic meal is the institution of a new community, simultaneously enacting the self-sacrificial love of an economic sharing and the suspension of ethnic, sexual, socio-economic, or class distinctions. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jon, Matt, and Paul, discuss the notion that there might be a natural human cut off from the grace of God. Matt and Jon question Paul's reading of Romans 7, with the consensus pointing to redemption as the completion of creation in theosis. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - There is no nature and grace dualism, as conceived by Augustine (and as absorbed by Western Christianity), as humans are created, molded, and sustained by the Spirit of grace given at creation and completed by Christ. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Trenton, Tim, Dan, and Paul discuss how the Constantinian shift resulted in theological failure: a turn to law, to a closed universe in an attempt to preserve God's freedom (rather than focus on God's love). The result is the notion that God, in his absolute freedom and control, does evil so as to bring about the Good. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - The Gospel, proclaimed by the apostles, reads the Hebrew Scriptures through the precedent and lens of Christ. To reverse this amounts to a worship of angels and a deifying of what is not God; the error of the false teachers and contractual theology. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Tim, Trenton, Allan, Dan, and Paul, discuss three alternative ways of understanding church history, and how to account for failure and progress in the tradition and the fall into violence and the definition of peace. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

David, Isaiah, and Paul discuss the challenge Christ poses to Old Testament violence, and specifically to the portrayal of God as participating in and encouraging war and genocide. Understanding who God is through Christ, means that those who kill Christ represent the violence (and the God of violence) which Christ challenges and defeats. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Tim, Trenton, Allan, Dan, Jason and Paul, discus identity formation around war and violence in nationalism as experienced in the United States, Mexico, Canada, and New Zealand. The discussion centers on the alternative value of Christ, peace, as the abolishment of idolatrous human sacrifice. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - Building on the understanding that death is the predicament in which sin arises; this is illustrated through Thomas Hobbes, the Book of Wisdom, and James, explaining why defeat of fear of death enables love. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jino (in India), Isaiah (in Korea), Matt, David, and Paul discuss the failure of the Constantinian form of Christianity and the necessity to recognize that with James Cone, the untouchables of India and Japan, and the poor in Korea, authentic Christian experience will tend to be erased by those in power. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - Due, in part, to Augustine's misreading of Romans 5:12, Western theology has confused cause and effect between sin and death, and in the process lose how it is that sin is an orientation to death, and the defeat of death is a defeat of sin. The New Testament and the earliest gospel preached by the apostolic fathers, such as Ignatius of Antioch, see death as the cause of sin. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.