Forging Ploughshares

Paul Axton preaches: The "sickness unto death” is despair at not having the self. Resurrection is the ultimate cure of this sickness – but rightly conceiving of the resurrection we can begin to conquer this despair now. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

Paul Axton traces the manner in which Freud was taken up in Japan and the deep resonance between his theory and a Japanese sensibility. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: The Corinthians, the evangelicals, the Roman Catholics, presume there is a naturally given recognition of good and evil in human wisdom. This "wisdom" is not the basis for Christianity but what Christ destroys. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

Paul Axton explains that orientalism is not simply academic or nationalistic but is intimately tied to psychology and human interiority. Japanese used the work of Sigmund Freud, very much an orientalist, so as to manufacture an identity to ward off and reverse the denigrating assessments of the West. Japanese psychologists and texts literally reverse Freud and his valuation system and this reversa...

Paul Axton preaches that the apostle Paul offers no room for dualism – for the notion that material reality is unreal and that it is only the soul that goes to heaven. This is the lie that deludes. It is this way of dividing up the world defeated in resurrection. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

To make the point that putting resurrection in the center constitutes an alternative Christianity, Paul Axton in this sermon sums up a few key ways in which a different emphasis on resurrection completely alters key doctrines. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

Paul Axton discusses identity through difference illustrated in Orientalism Part II. If Japan is a mud swamp which has successfully warded off Christianity (which it is and has for the most part), it is by virtue of the same power which has shaped Christianity so as to fit modern Western identity. This is an understanding defeated by a right understanding of sin as an orientation to death defeated...

Paul Axton preaches on 1 Corinthians 14:34ff: This passage raises key questions about how we interpret Scripture and how we understand who God is. Our relationships and attitudes toward maleness and femaleness are not secondary but primary to our understanding of Christianity. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

Orientalism serves as an example of identity through difference as a failed form of thought that necessarily involves us in the lie of attempting to reify a human construct. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: Truth comes to us in a person, through his words, but the truth is not in the form, the letter, the propositions of the words but in a deep spiritual communion which displaces the discommunion of the covenant with death. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

Sharon Klingemann and Paul Axton discuss the effect of eternal torturous existence on Christianity and possible alternative understandings. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

Paul is saying to those who speak in tongues, which apparently he wants everyone to do, to make themselves intelligible. There is an isolated and private part to all of us which can only be shared with God. This most intimate aspect of who we are should not create a sense of isolation – as if we cannot get outside of ourselves so as to share with others the deepest part of who we are. We should se...

Paul Axton and Jason Rodenbeck discuss the newly-available Ploughshares Bible Institute (PBI) course on Romans: Salvation through the Body of Christ. You can register for the course here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/lm/offerings . Hurry, it begins on May 27th! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

Continuing his conversation with Paul Axton, David Rawls explains how he led his congregation through the "clobber" passages on women in leadership. Part 2 of 2. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: What psychoanalysis misses and what Paul provides is passage beyond the mirror stage into mirroring the glory of the Father in the image of the Son by the Spirit. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

David Rawls discusses his church's biblical journey to allowing women in leadership with Paul Axton. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: The point of salvation, creation, life, and all things is love. Paul’s Gospel has as its central theme, not grace, or righteousness – which are certainly key but are not the center. Love, as Paul presents it, is the point of Christian faith. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

Paul Axton explains how the two premier thinkers of East and West (Heidegger and Nishida) converge on a singular idea which gets at the root of philosophical evil in the 20th century. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: Jesus appears and he is unrecognizable to them. At first, Jesus is still accursed in their sight – death has won out, the grave has consumed him, and their understanding is bound by this reality. In each instance they have to in some way change up their perspective in order to comprehend that it is the risen Jesus who stands before them. If you enjoyed this podcast, please con...

Paul Axton preaches: If salvation is a body united, sin is the resistant core, the alienating power, which as Paul depicts is the turning of self against itself. In the same way we can understand salvation as a harmonious body, we can understand the suffering of sin and even a damnable existence as people turned against one another. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support...

The premiere historian of the Restoration Movement, Richard Hughes, discusses his research with Paul Axton, tracing the core myth of white supremacy which stands behind the myth of America as a Christian Nation. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: The spiritual gifts may be misunderstood as miraculous magic apart from a grounding in true spirituality. An examination of I Corinthians 12. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

Paul Axton and Jason Rodenbeck continue their conversation on living in the tension of postliberalism which requires people to entrust themselves to God. Part 2 of 2. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

Paul Axton and Jason Rodenbeck differentiate postliberalism and liberalism. Part 1 of 2. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound

Paul Axton begins a new series answering basic theological questions, beginning with original sin. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music:  Bensound