Forging Ploughshares

Paul Axton preaches - Jesus quotes Psalm 82, "You are Gods," to explain his own claim to deity and his extension of eternal life to his disciples, which restores humankind to the reign assigned to Adam and which Peter pictures as a "participation in the divine nature." Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this opening series on the Gospel of John Jim, Janice, Brian, Tim, Matt, Dan, and Paul, discuss the prologue of John and the meaning of the Logos, not as the pre-incarnate Christ but as the historical Jesus, and the difference this makes to conceptions of God, salvation, and the meaning of creation. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - God's Word is world constituting, self-authenticating, and a repetition of God while the human word may attempt to constitute a world in its own self-authenticating repetition - inducing human failure. God's Word is the cure for this failure. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jim, Janice, Matt, David, Brian and Paul discuss how gender, race, ethnicity, or simply language can become an oppressive tool of the culture or of the symbolic order and how the Christian community is defined by its suspension of this cultural oppression. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - Donald Trump has promoted the big lie that he did not lose the election, but this lie is a type of the big lie challenged and exposed by Christ which pictures the human, the political, this world as God's truth. Christ as truth exposes the big lie.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Janice, Jim, Brian, David, and Paul discuss how the theory of Rene Girard fits with the Bible, but how it points to the benefits of sacrificial religion over uncontrolled violence, and how the end of scapegoating leaves open the possibility of total violence. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - The truth of the Trinity, or Truth, unfolds historically with the realization of God as Father, the incarnation and recognition of the Son, and with the giving of the Holy Spirit and full human participation in God. This marks three possible errors: God as Father apart from the Son and Spirit can be confused with law or power, God as Son, apart from the Spirit and Father can be equated with the historical, and God as Spirit, apart from the Son and Father can be equated with the individual interiority and experience.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.    

Jim, Janice, David, Brian, Matt, Dan and Paul discuss the various ways that the matrix of bondage grips us (e.g., through capitalism, sexism, religion, ontotheology, dualism, psychology, and time) and how Christ, specifically in the resurrection breaks open this matrix and frees us. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - The now and not yet of the process of salvation can be split and made static and exclusive, missing the unfolding of entering this rest on a daily basis. This failure gives rise to all "not yet" (on the right, Christian fascism) or all "now" (on the left, Christian Marxism and liberalism), two forms of nihilism which can only be remedied by maintaining the tension of Christian hope.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - In this second sermon developing an allegorical reading, the specific displacement of a violent God through the God of peace revealed in Christ, including freedom from the law of sin and death or emancipation from the reign of violence is developed in conjunction with a spiritual hermeneutic. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - There is a spiritual or allegorical reading of Scripture which interprets through Christ and there is the fleshly reading concentrating on the letter or on history, which according to Paul, misses Christ and leaves one enslaved. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt, Jim, Janice, David, Brian, Dan and Paul discuss the origin of evil in the human unconscious and the presumption of life through the law apart from the body - the lie displaced through participation in the Trinity. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - In John atonement or salvation is new creation, a new humanity, a new birth, a redirected desire, a reorientation to death, recapitulation, Christus Victor, or simply creation completion. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jim, Janice and Paul review the psychoanalytic, philosophical, and biblical picture of death denial as constituting sin and discuss how the Cross of Christ defeats death denial through death acceptance. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

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.