Forging Ploughshares

Brad and Paul discuss sin, not as a legal failure giving rise to guilt, but as a loss of the divine model due to the obstacle posed by sin (a very different understanding of missing the mark) and the recovery of this model in Christ. This serves as an explanation of the sermon which follows the discussion.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

John Dear describes to Brad and Paul his life of peacemaking with Jesus along with his friends the Berrigans, Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, and others, recommending doing the Sermon on the Mount rather than simply studying about it. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: The vision of the apocalypse in which the slain Lamb reigns through nonviolent defeat of violence and death is the impetus behind the resistant nonviolence of the Sermon on the Mount. The interlocking logic of the vision and practice points to the necessity of universal salvation as the goal behind the practice. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

William Desmond describes the danger of the "all and all" in an Eastern sensibility, of subsuming all things into one rather than preserving difference. He describes the prejudice against belief and his preservation of Christian faith against the philosophical tide of the academy.   If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton Preaches: The Jewish confusion between God and evil results from the projection of their violence onto God, which Jesus identifies as marking their paternity as children of the Devil. The Jewish captivity to the lie of sin, is the human problem Jesus exposes and defeats, by defeating the power that killed him on the cross.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

William Desmond explains his reading of the Metaxological as the recovery of metaphysics as a being between, and he describes his deep reading of Hegel and points out the failure of the positive reading of Hegel in Rowan William and Gillian Rose, and debunks the Žižekian reading as untrue to Hegel.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: The saving peace of Christ is universal in its cosmic scope, inclusive of the world, all people, and everything about them, delivering from the violence of the world, infected by human violence. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this final discussion of Hegel and Anselm, the contrast between the two in the personal and propositional is brought out, with the idea that God's person is given to us in Christ (poured out in kenotic love) and in this sense can be known.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: Christ, in the kenotic love of the cross and incarnation, opens God to knowing and by imitating Christ there is a suspension of the oppressive understanding of God, the law, and the self, and the experience of the Spirit. The background to this kenotic interpretation is in Hegel's philosophy which is characterized by this kenotic understanding. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this lecture Paul Axton traces the early church's understanding of the Logos as the incarnate Christ, the sensibility preserved best in the East and  taken up in Hegel's doctrine of atonement. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: Following the development of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his expanded Christocentrism and departure from Luther's notion of the two kingdoms, this sermon calls for a clear delineation between Christian Nationalism and authentic Christianity. The failure to delineate gave rise to National Socialism in Germany and is giving rise to fascism in the United States. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!  

Paul Axton describes Rowan Williams' reinterpretation of Hegel, which accords with Axton's reading of Hegel's work on the philosophy of religion and Anselm's ontological argument. In this understanding, Hegel provides an orthodox Eastern-like sensibility of the necessity of Trinity for thought. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: Romans 4 describes the experience of the sublime, in which the individual recognizes their unifying center outside of themselves, and are thus enlarged and liberated from the world. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

William Cavanaugh describes to Brad and Paul how the state came to dominate the Church, using Chile as a case study, and drawing links between Pinochet and Trump in the outworking of fascism through Christian nationalism in the US and in models such as Victor Orbán in Hungary. (Register now for the course Colossians and Christology which will run from June 3rd to July 29th https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: The Lord's Supper is instituted originally against Egypt, Rome, and Israel, but the Eucharistic power has been coopted by the modern state such that nationalism and capitalism have become the modern liturgy, which can only be resisted through the power of bodying forth Christ in the original Eucharistic sense. (Register now for the course Colossians and Christology which will run from June 3rd to July 29th https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this continued discussion of imaginative apologetics it is argued that the possibility of knowing is not contained within thought, the possibility and impossibility posed from Anselm, Descartes, and Kant, but as Hegel argues, it is contained in the personhood of God revealed in Christ. (Register now for the course Colossians and Christology which will run from June 3rd to July 29th https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Tim Turner and Paul discuss the work of the Macedonia Project and the opportunity to come to Japan for a mission internship. Contact the macedoniaprojectjapan@gmail.com or visit https://macedonianprojectjapan.com/  (Register now for the course Colossians and Christology which will run from June 3rd to July 29th https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Brad and Paul discuss the new monthly online fellowship as part of the necessary work of making peace through deep friendships and theology. The antagonism of the institution to the fullness of the gospel may require alternative means of finding fellowship.  Send an email to paulv.axton@gmail.com or to bradklingele@gmail.com in order to be put on the fellowship list. (Register now for the course Colossians and Christology which will run from June 3rd to July 29th https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!  

Paul Axton Preaches: The theology undergirding Donald Trump's expansion of presidential power is that of Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss, built upon nominalism and voluntarism, the opposite of Jesus Christ as Logos and Lord. In this understanding the rule of law through the political leader displaces Christ's defeat of death and evil, and leaves law and fear as primary and necessitates a sovereign political leader. (Register now for the course Colossians and Christology which will run from June 3rd to July 29th https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!  

Anthony Bartlett, a leading Girardian theologian who has extended Girard's theory into a more complete description of the the semiotic or meaning shift which takes place in our orientation to signs through Christ, here explains how it is that hominization results in an orientation to death that Christ releases us from in his death and resurrection and in our taking up the cross. (Register now for the course Colossians and Christology which will run from June 3rd to July 29th https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!