Forging Ploughshares

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  

Paul Axton preaches - Skipping the particular, "black lives matter," for the universal, "all lives matter," deploys the logic that killed Christ. Christ and God are found in the place of the excluded, the lynched, the crucified.   Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound  

Jon and Paul continue their discussion of Luke Timothy Johnson and in this conversation trace the interaction of Paul's Hebraic, Pharisaical, and Christian approach to reality. Using the example of slavery and racism they discuss the implications of the Pauline model for this present moment.    Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton Preaches - In this sermon on Ephesians 4 the ancient doctrine of salvation as recapitulation is explained.   Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Jason and Paul discuss the upcoming class being offered through Ploughshares Bible Institute. The course is dealing with forgiveness and reconciliation in Paul. It will be a practical development of radical forgiveness and reconciliation from Philemon and Ephesians worked out in healthy community. Sign up here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/lm/offerings   Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

In this lecture, Paul Axton, makes the point that Ephesians describes the deconstruction of those categories that divide so as to reconstitute a unified humanity. Not all dualistic categories are the same - some will need to be obliterated and some reconstituted - but inasmuch as they partake of dualistic identities they are undone in Christ.   Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound