Forging Ploughshares

Paul Axton Preaches - In the recapitulation view of the atonement, Christ is seen as the new Adam who succeeds where Adam failed. In psychoanalysis there is a similar diagnosis in which people live according to a fantasy or lie about themselves and the world and part of the goal of psychoanalysis, as with Christianity, is to traverse or expose and correct this fantasy.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

In this lecture, Paul Axton, traces how the lie surrounding the law (a lie of radical evil) is defeated by the work of Christ. This deliverance from death to life is the ground which every metaphor of atonement supports or, mistakenly, obscures. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton Preaches - The ideological form of American evangelicalism follows the pattern of counterfeit religion outlined by John and Paul. It is defined by what it is not and is an antagonistic structure that erupts in the perversion it would suppress. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound  

In this talk Paul Axton explains how the early Church doctrine of recapitulation, or the exposure of a false identity and the reconstitution of identity in Christ, is explained through the psychoanalytic notion of traversing the fantasy. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton Preaches: American religion, like American politics, is coming undone and the divide between the right and left is exposing the death dealing nature of the heterodoxy of American Evangelicalism while pointing to an orthodox faith with the opposite orientation. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

In this ongoing talk, Paul Axton demonstrates how radical evil might be equated with reification of the law. The law or the symbolic order may literally be taken as the voice of God, as in bicameral theory, and this explains the sort of perversion put on display by Jerry Falwell Jr. Sin establishes the self (in the law) so that punishment and pleasure are fused for the pervert, who would service the subject behind the law. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul describes Christ as breaking down the dividing wall of hostility, but to grasp the significance of this broken wall, it is necessary to understand how hostility constitutes our world in class and caste. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Part I In this first lecture Paul Axton, in an examination of the Kantian concept of evil as developed in Lacan and his followers, suggests that their concept of radical evil brings a corrective to theories of evil which can provide the background to understand how the cross addresses evil. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound  

Paul Axton Preaches - Today, seventy-five years ago, the second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. The great irony and sadness of this day was that an all Christian bomber crew, from a Christian administration, all from a so called “Christian Nation” dropped the bomb on the center of Christianity in Japan. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

In part 2 of their conversation of the dropping of the atomic bomb Matt and Paul describe the gospel alternative to mutually assured destruction. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton Preaches - In the world the goal or end is through violence, a redemptive violence. The gospel arms us with an alternative means, the way of peace, which contains the end.   Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

In part one of this two part conversation, Matt and Paul discuss the great irony that a "Christian Nation" should choose as ground zero the center of the Japanese Christian population in Nagasaki. The myth it was a necessity, along with the myth of redemptive violence is challenged. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton Preaches - The Gospel does not teach nonresistance to evil. The New Testament informs us how to resist evil. John Lewis has clearly picked up the point as explained by Paul in Ephesians 6 and Jesus in Matthew 5, in his nonviolent civil disobedience.   Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound  

Matt and Paul continue their discussion of shame. In this conversation they discuss how the Gospel and the practice of Christianity, rightly understood, provides a real world resolution to this primary human problem.   Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton Preaches - We cannot see the world through the lens of our law, our constitution, our borders, our police, our armies, because in doing so we are defining ourselves through that which Paul calls a hostility. This hostility divides us from others, it is the hostility which killed Christ, but it is also the hostility which he defeated.   Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Matt and Paul discuss how refocusing the human predicament on shame, as opposed to guilt, shapes and grounds all of theology very differently. Shame is holistic, social, and directly connected to the experience of death and this understanding opens an alternative notion to the meaning of the work of Christ.   Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches - In Ephesians Paul is describing the principalities and powers as the spirit or personality of a country or group of people which is larger than the sum total of its parts. We can be controlled by this power or we can present an alternative or witness to the powers by exposing their false narrative.   Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Jason and Vangies interview the innovative artist, Lily Jurskis, on her well thought out approach to artistic creation. You can view her art by following this link: https://youtu.be/n71d0mVxEbY   Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton Preaches - The implication of the ancient view combined with a New Testament understanding is that the social and political is integrated with the spiritual. Perhaps every business, corporation, school, church denomination, bureaucracy, sports team— indeed, social reality in all its forms— is a combination of both visible and invisible, outer and inner, physical and spiritual.    Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches - Christ is enacting a revolution continued in the church, not through domination or taking control, but through a bottom up shift enacted through a disempowering subordination.   Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound