Forging Ploughshares

Jon and Paul discuss gender reassignment surgery and issues of gender and possible theological approaches to the subject. Jon explains the fully affirming Episcopal perspective and the parameters and limitations of that perspective. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - In this secular age the experience of God may be lost, as Paul describes, due to a pursuit of human wisdom and signs. But in Christ the fulness of divine experience opens all of life to the fulness of a different reality and experience. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt, Jon, and Paul reflect on our conversation with Jordan, including his departure from David Bentley Hart, and Jon takes up Hart's understanding and suggests a rapprochement through Bulgakov.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.  

Paul Axton preaches - Is the incarnation finished with the resurrection and ascension of Christ or is this now an eternal fact about God and reality? There is a form of Christianity that posits a complete divide between faith and practice, body and soul, and heaven and earth (implicitly or explicitly assuming the incarnation is provisional) which misses the beauty of God revealed in the world and...

Matt and Paul discuss the UFO phenomenon with Ambrose Andreano, who has written the book Angels, Archons and Aliens. Some of the the explanations for the phenomena and possible implications are considered. Register now For the Class Marginalization and Restorative Justice https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support...

Paul Axton preaches - The portrayal in each of the resurrection appearances is grief, initial misrecognition of Jesus, and then a shift in perspective. It is within this shifted perspective that the gospel is proclaimed, the New Testament is written, the church is formed, and two thousand years of witnesses come forth.  Register now For the Class Marginalization and Restorative Justice: https://pb...

Paul Axton preaches - Colossians poses the incarnation of Christ and redemption as the true creation and the true beginning, in which Genesis 2 is made a reality and the false creation and incarnation of Genesis 3 is suspended. Register now For the Class Marginalization and Restorative Justice https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consid...

Matt and Paul discuss with Jon the upcoming class, Marginalization and Restorative Justice: A biblical and theological study of the Kingdom of God - an approach to issues of power and inequality among oppressed groups including gender, race, disability, and socio-economic status. Register now for the class https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast,...

In Part 3 of Matt and Paul's interview with Jordan Wood, Jordan differentiates his and Maximus' focus on the person of Christ from David Hart's clinging to formal categories and tendency toward abstraction. Jordan also addresses the issue of panentheism, his departure from Thomas Aquinas, and his understanding of the role of nature and grace in Maximus. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast...

Paul Axton preaches - The book of Philemon is a worked example of the implication of the gospel in that the slave/master relationship is displaced in the church by the koinonia of brothers and sisters. Yet this obvious implication of the gospel, worked out in Philemon, is rejected as is indicated in the reception of the book and the continuation of slavery among Christians. This may be because the...

In part 2 of our interview with Jordan Wood, Jordan soars to amazing heights.  Jordan explains to Matt and Paul, Maximus' formula "creation is incarnation" and the time and space bending implications of Jesus Christ as being at the beginning of all things. We also discuss how it is the fall occurs with the beginning with creation ex-nihilo. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please cons...

Paul Axton preaches - Paul’s depiction of the armor of God in Ephesians is a summary of his gospel with the focus on taking it up and doing it.  This is not simply an allegory or illustration, but the very center of Paul's gospel as presented in Ephesians. It is the power of the Constantinian shift which will tend to spiritualize and trivialize this depiction, and it is precisely against a Constan...

In this first in a series with Jordan Daniel Wood, Matt and Paul interview Jordan and discuss his journey from the Restoration Movement and a Bible College in Missouri to his groundbreaking work on Maximus the Confessor. Jordan, Matt, and Paul, share the overlap and development of their journey and discuss the present state of the academy and church, and Jordan introduces why Maximus is the theolo...

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...

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...

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 don...

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...

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 en...

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 enjoye...

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 pre...