Forging Ploughshares

In this PBI Discussion Rob, Dan and Paul take up the issue of suffering and extend the discussion to a conclusion as to practical ways as to how to view and handle suffering - repudiating the notion that God needs suffering. 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 https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/student-applications/new

In this PBI discussion Allan, David, Justin, Dan, Matt, and Paul discuss types of suffering as perceived in East and West and as distinguished in Romans 7 & 8. In a critique of Sarah Coakley and Rowan Williams, the question is raised if there is a failure to distinguish a total futility of suffering and suffering love. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this PBI discussion Rob, Trenton, Allan, Justin, David, Matt, and Paul, discuss misdirected desire and its redirection through a real world connectedness of love in the Spirit. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this PBI discussion Matt, Allan, Dan, Justin, David, Rob, and Paul discuss how Mary is perceived in Catholicism and in Eastern Orthodoxy, and how the feminine role of the Spirit is preserved in an embodied experiential understanding of God. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this first PBI discussion on the Holy Spirit Dan, Matt, Robb, Justin, David, and Paul discuss Sarah Coakley's and Jürgen Moltmann's work on the Holy Spirit as it pertains to the sexual crisis and the subordination of the Spirit in the scholastic approach to the Trinity.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.  

Paul Axton preaches - Herod slaughters the innocent children of Bethlehem in an attempt to foreshorten the state mandated murder accomplished under Pilate. His lying pretense to find and worship the Messiah gives us a working principle on how to consider the desire of government to worship Christ as King.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - In Greek thought, represented in Plato's allegory of the cave, the material world is but a realm of shadows blocking out the sun (representative of transcendent truth), so that which is of the womb/cave is unreal and truth is thought to abide in the transcendent forms. The Virgin Birth finds the absolute, the sun, the equivalent of the the forms, in the womb. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this PBI discussion of the final chapter of Paul Axton's book, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation, Allan, Tim, Matt, Nathan, Rob, David, and Paul compare and contrast desire versus hope, the frustration of life in the imaginary with life in Christ, and the body of death with life in the Spirit.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - The shattering of the idols of a settled notion of God in Christ opens us to the world as a reflection of his activity and presence in human relationships and interdependence with the world. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this PBI discussion of chapter 9 of Paul Axton's book, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation, Allan, Tim, Matt, Nathan, Thomas, Trenton, Rob, and Paul discuss the three part structure of the human subject as revolving around a deception. Calvin's is taken as an example of one who misses the deception and in doing so believes the lie of sin, demonstrated in the failed treatment of baptism, the confrontation and resolution to the lie.  Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - The name Abba names and sums up the work of Christ in establishing God's Lordship over every aspect of the world, including all that it means to be human and it simultaneously displaces the "father problem" enslaving human-kind. 

In this PBI discussion Paul and Allan review Paul Axton's book, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation (chapters 3-7), explaining key points through philosophical thinkers and their impact on theology. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - A prayerful attitude allowing the for the work of the Holy Spirit engenders a new emotional life and alternative character summed up in a continual thanksgiving. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.  

Matt, Allan, and Paul continue discussion of Paul Axton's book, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation, expanding upon the link between Romans 7 and the secular, discerning the dual sense in which every age may manifest its own unique characteristics with its own leading personalities but every age shares in the same corporate deception. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - The feminine characteristics of God found in the Spirit tend to be muted or subordinated to a masculine image. Romans 8 portrays this masculine image being defeated by the Spirit's engendering into the Trinity - which amounts to the displacement of an idolatrous understanding of God. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this PBI course discussion of Paul Axton's book, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation, Trenton, Tim, Jon, Matt, Nathan, Thomas, Dan, and Paul discuss how nominalism and secularism fit into Paul's description of a law based ordering of reality. Jon depicts the nominalist predicament and Nathan, an expert on Emmanuel Levinas, poses a response to Slavoj Žižek's bleak depiction. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - The failure to delineate the sinful suffering of Romans 7 from the redemptive suffering of chapter 8 results in the recommendation of sinful suffering as if it is redemptive. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.  

In this PBI discussion of chapter 6 of Paul Axton's book, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation, David and Paul discuss the drive to gain life through fantasy and various symbolic orders and how this is addressed in Christ. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Paul Axton Preaches - The origin of desire in God also points to a surprising resolution to the primal human need. Paul indicates, with the Psalmist, it is not our knowing but being known by God that aligns with primal desire. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

In this PBI course discussion Trenton, Allan, Thomas, Nathan, Matt, and Paul discuss Slavoj Žižek's atheistic understanding of the saving work of Christ and compare it to Søren Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death and notions of healing from the disease of shame and the orientation to death. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.