Forging Ploughshares

Tim, Jonathan, Brian, Jim, David, Matt, and Paul discuss how it is that the tiny book of Philemon fills out the revolutionary nature of the gospel in its undermining of slavery and the institution of a new social order. Slavery is the motif defining sin, yet in the history of reception of Philemon, the revolutionary challenge of the gospel to slavery was ignored, downplayed, and denied. Implicit in this overlooking of Philemon is the failure to recognize the world changing revolution of the gospel in its defeat of the enslavement of sin and the inauguration of a new social order. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.  

Mike Johnson has put on display the reigning religion of Christian Nationalism, in imagining God ordained his rise as Speaker so as to support Israel. The appeal to Romans 13 is a key part of this Christian Nationalism, but this misses the true message of Paul that the Christian defeat of evil government is not through fusion of church and state, but by Christian adherence to the Kingdom built on resurrection power not through directing the state power of death.

In part 2 of our conversation, John DePue explains the history of interpretation of Romans up to the Reformation, the manner in which Phoebe would have acted out the text, and how it is an apocalyptic reading avoids supersessionism or antisemitism.  See Beyond Justification (https://wipfandstock.com/9781532678981/beyond-justification/) , by Douglas Campbell and John DePue. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The rise of Christian nationalism, first in England and then in the United States, has always been linked to Christian Zionism, which is now killing Palestinians, including Palestinian Christians. Ironically this is linked to Romans 11, where Paul sets forth the purposes of Israel to Christ, and refutes any eternalizing importance of the law or of ethnic Israel. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

John DePue explains to Jeff, Brian, Matt, David and Paul the historical and grammatical argument for reading Romans 1:18-32 and other places in Romans as Paul giving voice to the False Teacher. See Beyond Justification (https://wipfandstock.com/9781532678981/beyond-justification/) , by Douglas Campbell and John DePue. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Many, such as John Calvin, presume the law is definitive of the economy of salvation, and thus read Romans 7 as the normal Christian life. The tragic error of this misunderstanding is to confuse the lie of sin with the solution of Christ. The lie of this false teaching is brought out by contrasting chapters 7 (life under the law) & 8 (new life in Christ) of Romans. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The law always has its transgressive support – doing a particular form of evil so as to produce a particular form of the good. The law generates this embodied deception. In Paul’s imagery, the body can be attached to either law (Paul uses the phrase, “body of sin”) or to the body of Christ, the issue is, which is the constituting environment? Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In part 2 of our conversation concerning the book Beyond Justification (https://wipfandstock.com/9781532678981/beyond-justification/) , by Douglas Campbell and John DePue, John describes the shortcoming of the new perspective, but particularly the programmatic failure of N. T. Wright, along with the unnecessary  divisions which occur between justification, sanctification, revelation and salvation, in justification theory. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In Part I of this two part conversation, Jonathan DePue, coauthor with Douglas Campbell, discusses their upcoming book (https://wipfandstock.com/9781532678981/beyond-justification/) with Paul, with particular focus on the problem of anti-Semitism in traditional Protestant justification theory. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The typical understanding of salvation, or the typical Protestant understanding, is that all people recognize God and his righteousness, and experience the incapacity to keep the law. This inability to keep the law is definitive of both the human problem and the solution of the cross of Christ, and this explains the curse of the law. This sermon proposes an alternative understanding of the human problem and a different soteriology, based on an alternative reading of the curse of the law in Romans and Galatians. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Brian, Matt, Jonathan, David, Austin, Jim, and Paul discuss John Howard Yoder's and David Bentley Hart's depiction of Constantinianism and the fusion of Church and State and the disappearance of the church. The only visible Christian is one armored by the gospel, resistant to and not armored by the state.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The impetus behind Paul’s writing and the work of the Christian life and theology is the conversion of the mind, the transformation of the Subject, the rise of a new form of consciousness including self-consciousness.  God, the essence of reality, is not passively intuited or grasped by sight or images – which by definition remain objects – but God in Christ presents himself for the understanding, to be actively apprehended as part of human decision and judgment. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Brian, David, Matt, Brent, Jonathan, Jim and Paul discuss the armor of peace and nonviolence as the heart of resisting the powers, rather than, in the manner of Hart and Milbank, as a passive nonresistance. This resistance is salvific and the meaning of "putting on Christ." Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Faith brings coherence, intelligibility, and understanding, in the midst of the homelessness of being human. The foundations of culture, of law, of institutions, crumbled at Babel just as they have in postmodernism but faith secures meaning in the midst of this homeless condition. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Brian, Jim, Jonathan, Matt, Brent, David, and Paul discuss the picture of imitation in Ephesians and the New Testament as the basic motif of salvation in the New Testament. Christian imitation is a lived salvation delivering from the rivalry of mimetic desire. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Romans 1:18-32 are not Paul's gospel but the premises of a false Teacher opposing Paul, and in Romans 1-3 he deconstructs these premises, preparing for his conclusion that the law is part of the problem defeated by Christ. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Jonathan, Matt, Brian, Brent, and Paul discuss Ephesians 4-5 and the singular lie exposed by Christ creating entry into love. The function of a hostile lie in the reification of culture and religion, as in the work of Peter Berger and Rene Girard, and the necessity of this lies exposure so as to be "rooted and grounded in love" is discussed. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

The Romans may have had a law-based understanding of atonement connected to the notion that sin is simply breaking the law. Paul takes them from this understanding to the notion that sin is bondage to a lie in regard to the law from which Christ delivers through resurrection.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

This is the key conclusion to The Mystery Revealed: The Gospel as Exposure of the Lie of Evil as focus turns to individual participation in creation. As David Bentley Hart points out in All Shall Be Saved, humanity is in bondage, but then as he recognizes in You Are Gods, this bondage does not preclude human participation in self-creation. In this discussion Tim, Jonathan, Matt, Jim, Brent, Matthew, Austin, and Paul discuss the implication of these poles of reality in the encounter with and defeat of evil. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In Romans 1-3 Paul is giving voice to and refuting a false teacher, yet justification theory takes all of Romans 1-3 as the teaching of Paul, ending up with a contradictory gospel which Paul might call the accursed gospel. By not sorting out the voice of the false teacher from Paul's refutation of this teacher, justification theory imagines the law, human capacity, and human recognition of its need is the precursor to coming to Christ. By way of contrast, Paul believes humanity is in bondage to sin and death and Christ alone delivers and only Christ is the foundation for right understanding. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.