Forging Ploughshares

The Canadian broadcaster David Cayley describes his groundbreaking interviews with the thinker and theologian Ivan Illich, in which Illich describes how it is the very best, the church, became the very worst, in modernity. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!  

Paul Axton Preaches: Romans 3:25 is a key verse in determining Christ's relationship to the Temple. Is he a sacrifice of atonement to be fit into the Temple and Law, or is he the (hilasterion) Mercy Seat providing access to revelation of righteousness which is salvation?   If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In part 2 of Brad and Paul's  conversation with the theologian James Alison, the role of the church in marriage, divorce and the role of Church law are discussed especially as it relates to issues of gender and homosexuality. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: What Paul calls the ministry of death, is accentuated and exposed in the murder of Jesus, due to Jesus teaching and action in the Temple. The temple deals in the death of animals, which did not touch upon the deadly attitude of the human heart, and Jewish response to his interruption of the killing is the motive for killing Jesus bring this ministry of death to an end. If you...

Brad and Paul interview the Girardian theologian James Alison concerning the pastoral and practical application of Girard, and how this relates to the sexual crisis in Catholicism. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches on the inadequacy of now and not yet as a characterization of the Christian life. Victory in Christ holds out a fullness of truth, a complete adoption, and the reality of escaping evil.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Anselm's deployment of the ontological argument leads directly to the closed whole of his atonement theory in divine satisfaction, all of which depends upon the reification of language resisted and corrected in Hegel, and noted by Paul. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In the story of the Good Samaritan Jesus sets love above custom, law, and religious institutions but the corruption of this very best also poses the possibility of the very worst, in the words of Ivan Illich, in the institutionalization of the Church.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

John Pearson describes his work with the homeless and in sustainable farming leading to his work with wounded ministers through Ministry Support Services International https://www.mssint.org/  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

The fundamental lesson of the incarnation is that embodiment in general is the carrier of meaning a meaning for death or life, and that His embodiment is the fullness of meaning, life, extended universally.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In Part 2 of this 2 part conversation, Jon, Matt, and Paul, discuss the possible meanings and impact of David Bentley Hart's recent confession and discuss various alternative interpretations.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Personhood is definitive of God and humanity, meaning the relational, the infinite, and the universal, are inherent to truth, rather than the foundational, the propositional, the doctrinal, or the institutional, which reduce to the impersonal. Personal truth and knowledge overcomes the reductionistic, finite, and limited systems of this world. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating...

In Part 1 of this 2 part conversation, Jon, Matt, and Paul, discuss the positive impact of the work of David Bentley Hart and consider what his recent confession might mean in understanding his work. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

The focus on Christ's faithfulness rather than merely our faith in Christ, creates a more holistic understanding of faith than an interior intensity of belief, focused on Christ as object. Faithfulness is Christocentric rather than anthropocentric, incorporating ethics and embodiment of the living out of faith in Christ. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Be...

Matt, Paul, and Jon continue the discussion of the baptist vision set forth by Stanley Hauerwas and James McClendon, focusing on unity and contrasting it with the forced and violent unity of Christendom. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Ephesians 3:10 describes the work of Christ as recapitulation, which is inclusive of all that it means to be human, and can be described as a different human experience and psychical difference. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

John, Matt, and Paul, inspired by articles by C. J. Dull, discuss the baptist vision set forth by Stanley Hauerwas and James McClendon, and discuss how this provides for a first order unity in the person and work of Christ. Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th.    Register here  https:/...

In this sermon, the witness of Scripture to Christ and Christ as interpretive key to Scripture is spelled out, using the Gospel of John and Paul's illustration in Corinthians concerning Moses.  Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th.    Register here  https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/o...

In this first podcast on Imaginary Apologetics, it is noted that Anselm's ontological and cosmological arguments pose a logic developed in his atonement theory, focused on a foundational logic, and this is contrasted with Hegel's understanding that the ontological argument is dependent on Christianity and the Person of Christ. Hegel is working from a Maximian-like understanding in which Christ bri...

Philippians 3:13 describes a stretching forth, in which the past (failures and achievements) are forgotten as part of the focus on the goal of attaining to likeness of Christ. Gregory of Nyssa portrays this Pauline understanding as the eternal dynamic of life in Christ which offers true stability and peace. Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The cou...

The transformative power in conversion and salvation flows backward, redeeming all of our life, so that the end is in the beginning. Our finite lives make sense as they are stretched out in the beginning and end that is Christ. This self-transcendence is realized in being woken up religiously to the love of God, morally to others, intellectually to the cosmic Christ, and psychically or emotionally...

Here is part 2 of the 2 part discussion of the upcoming course Sin and Salvation. John, Matt, and Paul, discuss their theological journey as a journey of friendship. (Sorry, the previous podcast was duplicated but here corrected.) Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th.  Also sign up for...

Matt, John and Paul discuss the upcoming course with PBI, Sin and Salvation, which focuses on the peace of Christ, and which pictures the theological journey as only cohering as a continuing journey, in which the beginning is in the end, as with Christ. Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 1...

In part 2 of discussion of Flannery O'Connor, David, Jonathan, and Paul discuss how her depiction is an explicit defeat of liberal and pietistic notions which believe in the natural competency of the soul.  Only an acknowledgement of judgment, evil, and purgation, even as part of a universal salvation, is adequate for the reality of the human condition. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan &...

In this discussion Jonathan Heaps, Head of the Lonergan Institute at Seton Hall University, Editor of the Lonergan Review, and author of  The Ambiguity of Being: Bernard Lonergan and the Problems of the Supernatural, describes his upcoming class with PBI on Bernard Lonergan. Jonathan describes the resolution that Lonergan brings to the modern theological impasse, a breakthrough broached by nouvell...