Forging Ploughshares

Paul Axton Preaches - Paul, in Ephesians, describes the Christian life as seeing everything differently, a seeing from the heart or waking up to the light. C. S. Lewis described his baptism as a baptism of the imagination and his Narnia tales illustrate what this waking up or conversion of the imagination entails. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Jason and Paul indicate how the philosophical arguments play into a failed psychology and point to the need for a fuller and more robust recognition of the Gospel as part of an apologetic. Our course Imaginative Apologetics will begin on October 19th. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton Preaches - The events of history bear the truth of Christianity so that this truth invites a redefinition, not only of truth, but of legitimate human sovereignty, justice, and reason.   Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Jason and Paul discuss the approach of imaginative apologetics in contrast to the traditional approach to natural theology.   Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton Preaches - Deploying the three most famous apologies or trial defenses in history (the trial of Socrates, Jesus and Paul), the contrast between a defense grounded in this world order (law, reason, power) and one grounded in the Kingdom of God, is used to illustrate the apocalyptic (world disrupting) nature of a proper Christian apologetic. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound    

Vangie, Jason, and Paul discuss the existential threat posed by surveillance capitalist companies such as Facebook and Google but to which we have long been subject in the age of mass media. The manufacturing of consent and consumption is the lie of the principalities and powers in its modern guise. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound  

Paul Axton Preaches - The work of Christ, is one of the most contested aspects of Christianity.  Bad theories of the atonement have obscured the simplicity of the New Testament summed up by Romans 8:2, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death” (Romans 8.2).  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

In this lecture on Jacques Derrida, Paul Axton explains Derrida’s philosophical project of “deconstruction,” aimed at understanding how self-consciousness is divided or already conceived in difference, which is the root problem of violence. Derrida's development follows and aids Paul's conception of the law. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound  

Paul Axton Preaches - In the recapitulation view of the atonement, Christ is seen as the new Adam who succeeds where Adam failed. In psychoanalysis there is a similar diagnosis in which people live according to a fantasy or lie about themselves and the world and part of the goal of psychoanalysis, as with Christianity, is to traverse or expose and correct this fantasy.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

In this lecture, Paul Axton, traces how the lie surrounding the law (a lie of radical evil) is defeated by the work of Christ. This deliverance from death to life is the ground which every metaphor of atonement supports or, mistakenly, obscures. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton Preaches - The ideological form of American evangelicalism follows the pattern of counterfeit religion outlined by John and Paul. It is defined by what it is not and is an antagonistic structure that erupts in the perversion it would suppress. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound  

In this talk Paul Axton explains how the early Church doctrine of recapitulation, or the exposure of a false identity and the reconstitution of identity in Christ, is explained through the psychoanalytic notion of traversing the fantasy. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton Preaches: American religion, like American politics, is coming undone and the divide between the right and left is exposing the death dealing nature of the heterodoxy of American Evangelicalism while pointing to an orthodox faith with the opposite orientation. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

In this ongoing talk, Paul Axton demonstrates how radical evil might be equated with reification of the law. The law or the symbolic order may literally be taken as the voice of God, as in bicameral theory, and this explains the sort of perversion put on display by Jerry Falwell Jr. Sin establishes the self (in the law) so that punishment and pleasure are fused for the pervert, who would service the subject behind the law. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul describes Christ as breaking down the dividing wall of hostility, but to grasp the significance of this broken wall, it is necessary to understand how hostility constitutes our world in class and caste. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Part I In this first lecture Paul Axton, in an examination of the Kantian concept of evil as developed in Lacan and his followers, suggests that their concept of radical evil brings a corrective to theories of evil which can provide the background to understand how the cross addresses evil. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound  

Paul Axton Preaches - Today, seventy-five years ago, the second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. The great irony and sadness of this day was that an all Christian bomber crew, from a Christian administration, all from a so called “Christian Nation” dropped the bomb on the center of Christianity in Japan. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

In part 2 of their conversation of the dropping of the atomic bomb Matt and Paul describe the gospel alternative to mutually assured destruction. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton Preaches - In the world the goal or end is through violence, a redemptive violence. The gospel arms us with an alternative means, the way of peace, which contains the end.   Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

In part one of this two part conversation, Matt and Paul discuss the great irony that a "Christian Nation" should choose as ground zero the center of the Japanese Christian population in Nagasaki. The myth it was a necessity, along with the myth of redemptive violence is challenged. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound