Forging Ploughshares

Christianity is proven in a lived faith, obedience, and love and does not depend upon arguments or evidences other than those living proofs of the embodied faith. Sign up for the next class, Imaginative Apologetics which will run through the first week of July through the week of August 23rd. https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jonathan, Matt, Jim, Brian, Matthew and Paul review the development of Girard's picture of the development of sacrificial religion, the darkness of human desire and rivalry, and tie this into shame and the Janus faced God in Hinduism, Vedantic religion, and Christianity gone bad.  Sign up for the next class, Imaginative Apologetics which will run through the first week of July through the week of August 23rd. https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Apologetic arguments often implicitly misconstrue the nature of Christian truth, which John describes as being witnessed to by the Trinity and this divine Testimony, John says, is present within the believer. Sign up for the next class, Imaginative Apologetics which will run through the first week of July through the week of August 23rd. https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul, Tim, Jim, Matt, and Simon discuss how it is that Rene Girard's theory explains and exposes myth and how this applies to the human condition in general. Sign up for the next class, Imaginative Apologetics which will run through the first week of July through the week of August 23rd. https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The only route to knowing God as Abba, according to Jürgen Moltmann, is through the crucified God on the cross. This God displaces the oppressive law-giving God of wrath, the God of paganism, but also the oppressive super-ego father of the human psyche. Through Christ we are liberated from the defense mechanism inclusive of the Unmoved Mover - the defense mechanism against death which enslaves. Sign up for the next class, Imaginative Apologetics which will run through the first week of July through the week of August 23rd. https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jim, David, Tim, Simon, and Paul discuss the work of Rene Girard and its unfolding in the novel, as illustrated in both Western and Japanese literature.  Sign up for the next class, Imaginative Apologetics https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Tim, Simon, Matt, and Paul discuss how a practical salvation is a 4th category, distinguished from inclusivism, exclusivism, and pluralism in that it is simultaneously universal and specific to the salvation to be found in Christ. How this then provides an approach to other religions is discussed.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jordan Peterson is not simply promoting conservative values but is setting forth his  own notion of truth, which has captured many Christians. This sermon sets forth the alternative in which Christ is the Truth, which contrasts with the world's truth as set forth by Peterson.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Simon, Tim, Matt, Jim, and Paul discuss how narrative theology or what is known as the Yale School or postliberalism defines Christianity as a community of practice, which can serve as entry into understanding religion in general. Following the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, narrative theologians such as George Lindbeck, Stanley Hauerwas, James McClendon and John Howard Yoder recognized doctrine and practice must be conjoined. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In Philippians Paul portrays kenotic love as the very substance of divine reality, power, and truth, and it is in imitating this self-emptying love and not grasping after life that we become imitators of Christ and a community of the Spirit. This marks the central message of Paul rediscovered by Hegel.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Trent Maxey, Professor at Amhurst College and author of "The Greatest Problem" runs down how Shinto as a native religion is an invention of the modern state in Japan, and how the "secular" state has used Shinto on the order of the American deployment of Christianity. He describes the dishonesty in supposed neutrality toward religion, and the difference with European religious tolerance. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

God is love is definitive of God's personhood and the opening of his personhood in Kenotic Love is the possibility of personhood. This personhood of knowing God is definitive of the personal and of what it means to know and think as persons. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Trent Maxey, of Amhurst College and author of "The Greatest Problem" on delineating the role of the secular, political and religious in Japan, continues to address the problem of a too simple narrative of secular and religious, and even of the way power functions. Jim, Matt, Jon, Simon, and Paul join the discussion. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Acknowledgement of God and access to wisdom, reason, and understanding of the self and the world are synonymous. Where Kant and the modern age deny access to God as foundation to reason, and attempt to establish foundations within reason, the Bible and Hegel point to God as the possibility giving rise to reason. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.  

Trent Maxey, Professor at Amhurst College and author of the book, "The Greatest Problem" describes the amorphous nature of Shinto, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam in connection with culture, economics, violence, and modernity. He questions the usual categories under which religion, east and west, is perceived and points to our continual enmeshment in religious-like issues such as capitalism and nationalism. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.  

The Prologue of John depicts the point of creation as incarnation and this is fulfilled through the Spirit. God would be known throughout creation as Christ knows him and makes him known, and this is the point of history and the work of the Spirit as depicted in John, developed by Origen and Maximus, and built upon by G.W.F. Hegel.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Allan, Brian, Jonathan, Jim, Matt, and Paul discuss Charles Taylor's secularization thesis, its factuality and reality as compared with Derrida's theory of difference, Slavoj Žižek's primordial lie and the reality of the knowledge of good and evil, and then how it is that Bulgakov's Sophiology addresses the secondary nature of creaturely sophia. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.  

David Bentley Hart and Sergius Bulgakov provide the basis for this discussion between Matt, Simon, Tim, Jim, and Paul on how the antagonism in religion has folded into secularism to create a secular experiential reality for fundamentalists of both atheism and religion. Bulgakov's Sophiology once again points toward the synthesizing reality of Christ. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Matt, Brian, Jason and Paul discuss the work of Sergius Bulgakov's sophiology in addressing transcendence and immanence and the futility connected to the new atheism, as compared to Slavoj Žižek's therapeutic atheism. The hope for goodness and truth as inherent to the personal faith journey is discussed. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.  

The final words of Jesus in Matthew summarize orthodox Trinitarian belief and the economy of salvation, and the Nicene Creed and Gregory of Nyssa take up this formula as the foundation for orthodoxy and combatting heresy and for describing the dynamics of sin (a dynamic of trinitarian absence) and salvation. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.