Forging Ploughshares

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.

In this interview with Dr. Timothy Boyle, an expert on Japan, the Japanese language, and the Japanese writing system, Paul and Tim discuss the discovery of the stories of Genesis in Japanese writing (Kanji) and the profound similarities between the group oriented shame concepts found in the Bible and Japan. Tim also tells the story of Wounded Tiger, which he is translating, and which soon will be...

Paul Axton preaches - The Eucharistic meal is the institution of a new community, simultaneously enacting the self-sacrificial love of an economic sharing and the suspension of ethnic, sexual, socio-economic, or class distinctions.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jon, Matt, and Paul, discuss the notion that there might be a natural human cut off from the grace of God. Matt and Jon question Paul's reading of Romans 7, with the consensus pointing to redemption as the completion of creation in theosis. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - There is no nature and grace dualism, as conceived by Augustine (and as absorbed by Western Christianity), as humans are created, molded, and sustained by the Spirit of grace given at creation and completed by Christ.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Trenton, Tim, Dan, and Paul discuss how the Constantinian shift resulted in theological failure: a turn to law, to a closed universe in an attempt to preserve God's freedom (rather than focus on God's love). The result is the notion that God, in his absolute freedom and control, does evil so as to bring about the Good.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to supp...

Paul Axton Preaches - The Gospel, proclaimed by the apostles, reads the Hebrew Scriptures through the precedent and lens of Christ. To reverse this amounts to a worship of angels and a deifying of what is not God; the error of the false teachers and contractual theology. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Tim, Trenton, Allan, Dan, and Paul, discuss three alternative ways of understanding church history, and how to account for failure and progress in the tradition and the fall into violence and the definition of peace.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

David, Isaiah, and Paul discuss the challenge Christ poses to Old Testament violence, and specifically to the portrayal of God as participating in and encouraging war and genocide. Understanding who God is through Christ, means that those who kill Christ represent the violence (and the God of violence) which Christ challenges and defeats. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consid...

Tim, Trenton, Allan, Dan, Jason and Paul, discus identity formation around war and violence in nationalism as experienced in the United States, Mexico, Canada, and New Zealand. The discussion centers on the alternative value of Christ, peace, as the abolishment of idolatrous human sacrifice. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - Building on the understanding that death is the predicament in which sin arises; this is illustrated through Thomas Hobbes, the Book of Wisdom, and James, explaining why defeat of fear of death enables love. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jino (in India), Isaiah (in Korea), Matt, David, and Paul discuss the failure of the Constantinian form of Christianity and the necessity to recognize that with James Cone, the untouchables of India and Japan, and the poor in Korea, authentic Christian experience will tend to be erased by those in power. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - Due, in part, to Augustine's misreading of Romans 5:12, Western theology has confused cause and effect between sin and death, and in the process lose how it is that sin is an orientation to death, and the defeat of death is a defeat of sin. The New Testament and the earliest gospel preached by the apostolic fathers, such as Ignatius of Antioch, see death as the cause of sin....

Matt, Jon, and Paul conclude their discussion on Hart's book, Tradition and Apocalypse, by examining the gap between the New Testament and the reality of the church in its Episcopal, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant forms. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt, Jon and Paul return to key questions raised by Hart's book, Tradition and Apocalypse, and suggest that what is needed is an alternative hermeneutic in reading Scripture and history which suspends the violence and reads from beneath the oppression of the powers.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt, Jon, and Paul continue to discuss Hart's recent book and turn the critique on their own traditions and discuss what it means to make progress in theology.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt, Jon, and Paul discuss Hart's recent book detailing an understanding of salvation which in its unfolding fully admits the contradictions of history and doctrine while looking to a future coherence in the eschaton.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - The New Testament describes a form of realism a connecting with ultimate reality, in which words and actions connect in the definitive giving (δίδωμι) of Christ which overcomes and defeats the “handing over” (παραδίδωμι) which delivered him to the cross. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this final discussion of the Holy Spirit Rob, Allan, and Paul, discuss the sense in which Freud's notion that belief in God is about sex, Marx's notion that religion is about economics, and Schmitt's view that the state in the equivalent of the Church, need to be flipped.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.