Forging Ploughshares

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...

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 d...

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 s...

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 do...

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,...

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 wor...

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...

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,...

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.forgingpl...

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...

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. (...

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.