Forging Ploughshares

John Dear, the world renowned peace activist, describes his theological focus on practicing the Sermon on the Mount.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Brad and Paul discuss sin, not as a legal failure giving rise to guilt, but as a loss of the divine model due to the obstacle posed by sin (a very different understanding of missing the mark) and the recovery of this model in Christ. This serves as an explanation of the sermon which follows the discussion.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

John Dear describes to Brad and Paul his life of peacemaking with Jesus along with his friends the Berrigans, Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, and others, recommending doing the Sermon on the Mount rather than simply studying about it. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: The vision of the apocalypse in which the slain Lamb reigns through nonviolent defeat of violence and death is the impetus behind the resistant nonviolence of the Sermon on the Mount. The interlocking logic of the vision and practice points to the necessity of universal salvation as the goal behind the practice. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

William Desmond describes the danger of the "all and all" in an Eastern sensibility, of subsuming all things into one rather than preserving difference. He describes the prejudice against belief and his preservation of Christian faith against the philosophical tide of the academy.   If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton Preaches: The Jewish confusion between God and evil results from the projection of their violence onto God, which Jesus identifies as marking their paternity as children of the Devil. The Jewish captivity to the lie of sin, is the human problem Jesus exposes and defeats, by defeating the power that killed him on the cross.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

William Desmond explains his reading of the Metaxological as the recovery of metaphysics as a being between, and he describes his deep reading of Hegel and points out the failure of the positive reading of Hegel in Rowan William and Gillian Rose, and debunks the Žižekian reading as untrue to Hegel.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: The saving peace of Christ is universal in its cosmic scope, inclusive of the world, all people, and everything about them, delivering from the violence of the world, infected by human violence. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

In this final discussion of Hegel and Anselm, the contrast between the two in the personal and propositional is brought out, with the idea that God's person is given to us in Christ (poured out in kenotic love) and in this sense can be known.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton preaches: Christ, in the kenotic love of the cross and incarnation, opens God to knowing and by imitating Christ there is a suspension of the oppressive understanding of God, the law, and the self, and the experience of the Spirit. The background to this kenotic interpretation is in Hegel's philosophy which is characterized by this kenotic understanding. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!