Forging Ploughshares

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 support our work.

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 consider donating to support our work.

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. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

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.

Rather than a contrast between Agape and Eros, Allan, Justin, Matt, David and Paul, discuss their interconnection and the key role of love as the end point of the work of the Holy Spirit. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.  

Rob and Paul discuss the harm that the masculine image of God and accompanying patriarchy continues to exercise among the young. Rob, describes the situation in Sydney, the center of the controversy of the heresy of subordinationism (in the Trinity) in order to support subordination of women. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton preaches - Christ breaks down the dividing wall of hostility, providing a peaceful hermeneutic in which God, the Bible, and Church are understood as nonviolent. The law is the wall of hostility put in place, not by God but by human violence and hostility which Christ has defeated.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Apply for our upcoming class, Sin and Salvation, by following the link Enroll