Forging Ploughshares

Paul Axton preaches - Imitation of Christ is the very substance of salvation. Apart from imitating his life there is no gospel, no tradition and no faith, yet this crucial motif supporting the language of discipleship, being in Christ, walking as Christ walked, is obscured by "faith alone" and theories of atonement focused on payment.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - The power of coercion, the power of command and control, or power over other people is the power of death and violence that is universally recognized. Resurrection power redefines the meaning of power, linking it with the love and unity of being joined to Christ.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jim, David, Austin, Drew, Brian, and Paul discuss Luther's approach to faith and reason as building upon a nominalist understanding which leads to his focus on forensics and his notion of a necessary and continuing dialectic between law and grace. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - The blindness of sacrificial religion, of idolatry, of cultural hostility, creates a fabricated reality described as a process of externalization, objectivation, and internalization in which the origins of human culture create a necessary blindness or mystery which Christ exposes and displaces.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - Creation ex-nihilo poses the possibility of evil as a return or defeat of the fulness of creation in redemption and participation in the divine. Thus we are co-participants in our own creation, willing the fulness of our completion in Christ through our echoing the "Yes" of Christ the the Father and the Spirit. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Brad, Brian, Matthew, Drew, Jim, Austin, Matt, and Paul conclude their discussion of Maximus the Confessor and his notion of theosis and take up possible problems and implications.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt, Jim, Brian, Brad, Drew, Matthew, and Paul examine together the Christo-logic of Maximus the Confessor found in his formula “The Word of God, very God, wills that the mystery of his Incarnation be actualized always and in all things.” The radical implications and potential issues with this understanding are discussed.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - The holistic cosmic vision of Ephesians also details how this integrated vision defeats the partial vision of sin, in which the finite is invested with ultimate meaning. The genealogy of the desire of the flesh, involves investing the flesh with a semantic load it cannot bear or satisfy. The antagonism this creates is resolved in the Body of Christ. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matthew, Rob, Matt, Brian, Drew, Brad, and Paul conclude their discussion on Augustine's departure and contrast to Origen and develop the practical difference this will make in reading the Bible. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - Paul's notion of Christ's "summing up" of all things (Eph. 2:10) is taken by Irenaeus and the early church as descriptive of the economy of salvation and the means of defeating evil. Where this economy of participation is lost there is a simultaneous loss of a real world defeat of evil and a loss of a coherent frame explaining being "in Christ." Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jim, Brian, David, Matthew, Drew, Rob, Matt, and Paul, discuss the shift that occurs with Augustine's rejection of Origen's apocatastasis and his turn to a dualism and notions of language and interiority that will come to define the modern in its nihilism and secularism. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

If Paul's gospel is summed up by Ephesians, this means the Lutheran or Protestant focus on Law versus grace or faith over and against works does not figure. This recentering of Paul's gospel entails a different perspective on Judaism (based on covenant and not contract) and also the understanding that Christ fulfills the covenant and does not meet the obligations of a contract, and this is God predestined plan for the cosmos. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Brian, Austin, and Paul discuss how Origen's Christology constitutes a metaphysics. In describing the relation between the Son and the Father Origen establishes his first principle, the foundation of the Christian worldview.  (Sign up for our next class Philemon and Ephesians: Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Paul https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - The mystery revealed in the Gospel pertains to creations end and beginning, to salvation from sin and the defeat of the Prince of the Power of the Air, to cosmic peace and reconciliation, and according to Origen, to the logoi or arche laid in the foundation of Christ. (Sign up for our next class Philemon and Ephesians: Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Paul https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Brian, Matt, David, Austin, Drew, Matthew, Brad, and Paul discuss the key and foundational role, in spite of his condemnation, played by Origen of Alexandria.  (Sign up for our next class Philemon and Ephesians: Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Paul https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - At the baptism and transfiguration of Christ are revealed the transforming power of God found in God's presence in Christ, in Scripture, and in the communion of the Saints. (Sign up for our next class Philemon and Ephesians: Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Paul https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Brian, Brad, David, Matthew, Drew, Jim, Allan, Matt, Rob, and Paul discuss how Irenaeus' recapitulation as salvation/hermeneutic is taken up by Origen in his book, On First Principles, as the first theology spelling out how Christian logic departs from Greek philosophy. (Sign up for our next class Philemon and Ephesians: Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Paul https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - John describes the antichrist as denying the humanity of Christ and Karl Barth concludes the antichrist of the German church has also displaced Jesus as mediator with the world (in the form of the führer, the analogy of being, the state).  There is a direct identity between Christ and the believer which brings together Creator and creation, flesh and Spirit, God and man, which is illustrated by Melchizedek and extended to Christ and all believers which directly counters the antichrist. (Sign up for our next class Philemon and Ephesians: Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Paul https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Austin, Brad, Brian, Matt, Drew, Matthew, Allan, Jim and Paul, discuss the work of the early church father, Irenaeus, and his approach to both his reading of the Hebrew Scriptures and the economy of salvation, including cosmic salvation, through the summing up (recapitulation) of all things in the Gospel. (Sign up for our next class Philemon and Ephesians: Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Paul https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - Isaiah depicts a world of darkness broken open by the light of the Messiah. The depth of the violence, oppression, and meaninglessness of this darkness must be appreciated so as to apprehend the world-changing nature of God conjoined to the world in the light of Christ. (Sign up for our next class Philemon and Ephesians: Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Paul https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.