Shows
Forging PloughsharesSermon: The Transformed Mind as an Alternative SubjectivityPaul Axton preaches, describing the transformed mind, or knowing God as the suspension of the common Jewish and Enlightenment notion of God and, recognized by Hegel. Paul's suspension of the law and Hegel's negation of the negation as the displacement of a mediated notion of God and direct knowing in Christ, are making the same argument about the necessity to cease believing in the God of the law so as to believe in the Father of Christ.
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2026-01-1040 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Theology of the Name - Jesus Christ as the Ground of LanguagePaul Axton preaches: appealing to the work of Sergius Bulgakov, Axton develops the significance of God's presence in the name given to Moses, and then Christ's assumption of this name and the opening to all the possibility of dwelling in the name, which describes the possibility of God pouring himself out in and through human language.
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2025-10-1829 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Is Knowing Christ Entry into a Fulness of the Mind/Brain?Paul Axton preaches: In this sermon, linking the left/brain right/brain theory of Iain McGilchrist with Paul's distinction between letter and Spirit, a connection is made between how it is the left hemisphere of the brain can take predominance in the same way the law can become its own end, and this is suspended in the opening up of Christ to the thought of God on the order of a full utilization of the right brain.
(Sign up for the class Human Language, Signs of God: using Anthony Bartlett’s two books, Theology Beyond Metaphysics and Si...
2025-09-1332 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Why I am a ChristianPaul Axton preaches: When asked the reason for following Christ, Axton poses a one word answer upon which he builds an alternative understanding to the partial answer of being saved and shows that the choice is between meaning or no meaning.
(Sign up for the class Human Language, Signs of God: using Anthony Bartlett’s two books, Theology Beyond Metaphysics and Signs of Change, as one continuous argument. The course will run from 2025/9/16 to 2025/11/4. Register here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/)
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2025-09-0629 minForging PloughsharesRowan Williams' Rereading of HegelPaul Axton describes Rowan Williams' reinterpretation of Hegel, which accords with Axton's reading of Hegel's work on the philosophy of religion and Anselm's ontological argument. In this understanding, Hegel provides an orthodox Eastern-like sensibility of the necessity of Trinity for thought.
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2025-06-0953 minForging PloughsharesSermon: The Nonviolence of Christ as the Final and Full Revelation of GodPaul Axton preaches: What Paul calls the ministry of death, is accentuated and exposed in the murder of Jesus, due to Jesus teaching and action in the Temple. The temple deals in the death of animals, which did not touch upon the deadly attitude of the human heart, and Jewish response to his interruption of the killing is the motive for killing Jesus bring this ministry of death to an end.
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2025-04-0525 minForging PloughsharesApplying Girard to Myth and the BibleIn this episode, Paul Axton discusses Girard's atonement theory - over against propitiation and penal substitution.
(To register for the upcoming class on René Girard with Michael Hardin, Rene Girard and Nonviolent Atonement, go to https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings. The Course will run from the second week of October to the first week in December.)
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2024-09-2329 minForging PloughsharesQuestioning Campbell’s Notion of the False TeacherBrian, Jon, Matt, Jim, and Jeff raise central questions about Douglas Campbell's theory of the false teacher in Romans 1-3 and Paul Axton offers possible explanations.
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2024-01-0852 minForging PloughsharesHow Justification Theory Fuses False Teaching With Paul’s GospelIn this introduction to Douglas Campbell's notion of the false teacher, Paul Axton explains justification theory, how it perverts Paul's Gospel, and the unconditional nature of Paul's Gospel. Jim, Brian, Jonathan and Matt act as interlocutors.
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2024-01-0152 minForging PloughsharesSermon: ”I Stand at the Door and Knock - The Encounter of Divine and Human PersonsPaul Axton preaches - The biblical picture of salvation is the melding or joining of Divine and human Spirit, Life, and Breath. The human image bears this eternal purpose which is only understood through the free joining, willing opening, or purposeful enacting of the grace of God in the person. Augustinian original sin and predestination have obscured this picture of salvation as willing participation of the human person in receiving Divine personhood.
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2023-08-0531 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Christ as Explanation of Creation’s Ground in SophiaPaul Axton preaches - Divine and created Sophia, as brought together in Christ, describes what is happening in the redemption of the cosmos. The created order is brought to its fulfillment in being joined to the Creator. Human wisdom alone though, leaves out the redemptive step. Creation ex nihilo opens creation to the possibility of being pictured in humans wisdom as grounded in some reified nothing, This produces the antinomies and antagonism from which the Divine-Human One saves.
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2023-07-2927 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Demonization and Scapegoating as the Blasphemy Against the Holy SpiritPaul Axton preaches - The demonization and scapegoating of Jesus are exposed by Jesus' death and resurrection and by his explicit teaching, describing the continuation of demonization in the Christian age as the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Where Christians continue to believe the lie of demonization and where they participate in scapegoating there is no forgiveness possible. This is the law of forgiveness, which demands forgiveness of enemies that forgiveness from God would be granted.
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2023-07-2224 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Cosmic Salvation Through Temple and KingdomPaul Axton preaches - The cosmic representation of the Temple is made an individual reality as the kingdom of God is establishes through Temple communities centered on life and peace rather than violence and death.
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2023-07-1523 minForging PloughsharesSermon: The Necessary Presupposition of Trinitarian RealityPaul Axton preaches - No single part of personhood is a sufficient beginning point, but only the fullness of Trinitarian reality can encapsulate the ground for reason, cognition, and experience. This is the center of the Eastern theology of Sergius Bulgakov, which points to a recovery of personhood as the experience of God as making personhood a possibility.
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2023-07-0820 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Madness (Mutually Assured Destruction) of the Human Heart ExposedPaul Axton preaches - Christ exposes the history of murder and the exposure, as in the case of Daniel Ellsberg's exposure of the Pentagon Papers and the Doomsday Machine and Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian exposing nihilistic violence, is the first step in confronting evil. The Gospel, by definition, opposes the violence embedded in the human heart.
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2023-07-0124 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Adopted as a Child of Abba Through the Story of the SonPaul Axton preaches - Recognition of the Abba relationship to God frees from slavery to the law, as the relationship sealed by the Spirit through the Son is a new form of subjectivity. The story of Christ lifts up every human story and every father/child relationship, giving it a depth of meaning and significance.
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2023-06-2417 minForging PloughsharesSermon: The Sophiology of Death as DivinizationPaul Axton preaches - The explanation of the death of Christ, the divine dying in the human, is explained through the created and uncreated aspects of Wisdom (as in the theology of Sergius Bulgakov). This explanation includes how it is that salvation in dying and resurrection is imparted to all through participation (divinization) - the divinization of Christ in which all participate.
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2023-06-1725 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Christ and World ReligionsPaul Axton preaches - God is working through all peoples, cultures and religions, as is demonstrated in the recent mass movements of Muslims coming to Christ. But this does not entail relinquishing the critical faculty of thought, as is often the case with Zen Buddhism.
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2023-06-1028 minForging PloughsharesSermon: The Liberating Work of Salvation with Gregory of NyssaPaul Axton preaches - The test of authentic Christianity is its liberating effect, and the most obvious example of this liberation pertains to chattel slavery in the modern period. The trans-Atlantic slave trade directly involved nearly every Christian group. Gregory of Nyssa provides the earliest critique of slavery and a theology that cannot tolerate this sort of moral and theological failure. His theology is the remedy to the modern theological failure.
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2023-06-0330 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Bonhoeffer’s Christocentrism as Rescue from the Beast of EmpirePaul Axton preaches - The Roman Empire is described in Revelation as the puppet of Satan, and Christ alone defeats this Beast. Empire threatens the church in the United States and the Christocentrism of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his challenge of Nazi Empire, indicates the failure of Lutheran Christocentrism with its notion of two kingdoms, and replaces it with the singular reality of the kingdom of Christ.
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2023-05-2730 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Jesus Reconciles Body and Soul and Masculine and FemininePaul Axton preaches - Jesus as ensouled body and embodied soul undoes dualism and antagonism which plays upon body/soul and male/female antagonism. In Christ, as the truly human one, theology is set upon a new foundation in which he defines the human condition and not the other way round. True motherhood and fatherhood, husband and wife, male and female relationship are restored in his flesh.
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2023-05-2022 minForging PloughsharesTom Evans Explains Eastern Ancestral Sin and Compares it to PsychotheologyTom Evans describes the difference between ancestral sin and Augustinian original sin and compares it to Paul Axton's Psychotheological approach. Where Augustinian original sin leaves both sin and salvation a mystery (giving rise to legal exchange theories like divine satisfaction and penal substitution), ancestral sin, like psychotheology, provides a diagnosis of the human predicament and a real-world cure.
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2023-05-1535 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Christ the Quintessential JewPaul Axton preaches - Christianity has often given rise to antisemitism, as with Martin Luther's direct inspiration of Adolph Hitler, but rightly understood Christ occupies the Hebraic universe of meaning and Christianity is simply a different orientation in this same symbolic universe.
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2023-05-1324 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Can Christianity Take Root in the United States?Paul Axton preaches - In Shusaku Endo's description, Christianity cannot take root in Japan, which he describes as a mud swamp, but every culture has its corrosive effects on the gospel, particularly as in America, where we may be blind to these effects. The resolution is to come to a correct understanding of Jesus relationship to Jewish culture and religion as its proper end.
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2023-05-0826 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Experiencing GodPaul Axton preaches - In this secular age the experience of God may be lost, as Paul describes, due to a pursuit of human wisdom and signs. But in Christ the fulness of divine experience opens all of life to the fulness of a different reality and experience.
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2023-04-2925 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Eternal IncarnationPaul Axton preaches - Is the incarnation finished with the resurrection and ascension of Christ or is this now an eternal fact about God and reality? There is a form of Christianity that posits a complete divide between faith and practice, body and soul, and heaven and earth (implicitly or explicitly assuming the incarnation is provisional) which misses the beauty of God revealed in the world and real world defeat of evil.
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2023-04-2225 minForging PloughsharesSermon: The Resurrection PerspectivePaul Axton preaches - The portrayal in each of the resurrection appearances is grief, initial misrecognition of Jesus, and then a shift in perspective. It is within this shifted perspective that the gospel is proclaimed, the New Testament is written, the church is formed, and two thousand years of witnesses come forth.
Register now For the Class Marginalization and Restorative Justice: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings
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2023-04-1523 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Two Creations and True and False IncarnationPaul Axton preaches - Colossians poses the incarnation of Christ and redemption as the true creation and the true beginning, in which Genesis 2 is made a reality and the false creation and incarnation of Genesis 3 is suspended.
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2023-04-1024 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Philemon and the Abolition of the City of ManPaul Axton preaches - The book of Philemon is a worked example of the implication of the gospel in that the slave/master relationship is displaced in the church by the koinonia of brothers and sisters. Yet this obvious implication of the gospel, worked out in Philemon, is rejected as is indicated in the reception of the book and the continuation of slavery among Christians. This may be because the implication of the gospel is a complete overturning of the city, the law, and the economy of the the city of man.
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2023-04-0129 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Putting on the Armor of the Gospel as SalvationPaul Axton preaches - Paul’s depiction of the armor of God in Ephesians is a summary of his gospel with the focus on taking it up and doing it. This is not simply an allegory or illustration, but the very center of Paul's gospel as presented in Ephesians. It is the power of the Constantinian shift which will tend to spiritualize and trivialize this depiction, and it is precisely against a Constantinian Christianity and this sort of insidious power that this armor protects.
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2023-03-2528 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Imitation is SalvationPaul Axton preaches - Imitation of Christ is the very substance of salvation. Apart from imitating his life there is no gospel, no tradition and no faith, yet this crucial motif supporting the language of discipleship, being in Christ, walking as Christ walked, is obscured by "faith alone" and theories of atonement focused on payment.
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2023-03-1826 minForging PloughsharesSermon: The Power of Life Versus the Power of DeathPaul Axton preaches - The power of coercion, the power of command and control, or power over other people is the power of death and violence that is universally recognized. Resurrection power redefines the meaning of power, linking it with the love and unity of being joined to Christ.
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2023-03-1129 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Cosmic Recapitulation as the Economy of SalvationPaul Axton preaches - Paul's notion of Christ's "summing up" of all things (Eph. 2:10) is taken by Irenaeus and the early church as descriptive of the economy of salvation and the means of defeating evil. Where this economy of participation is lost there is a simultaneous loss of a real world defeat of evil and a loss of a coherent frame explaining being "in Christ."
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2023-02-1126 minForging PloughsharesSermon: The Mystery Revealed in the Manifold Wisdom of GodPaul Axton preaches - The mystery revealed in the Gospel pertains to creations end and beginning, to salvation from sin and the defeat of the Prince of the Power of the Air, to cosmic peace and reconciliation, and according to Origen, to the logoi or arche laid in the foundation of Christ.
(Sign up for our next class Philemon and Ephesians: Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Paul https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)
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2023-01-2827 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Epiphany: The Transfiguring Presence of GodPaul Axton preaches - At the baptism and transfiguration of Christ are revealed the transforming power of God found in God's presence in Christ, in Scripture, and in the communion of the Saints.
(Sign up for our next class Philemon and Ephesians: Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Paul https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)
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2023-01-2123 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Christ as Analogy Versus the Lie of the Anti-ChristPaul Axton preaches - John describes the antichrist as denying the humanity of Christ and Karl Barth concludes the antichrist of the German church has also displaced Jesus as mediator with the world (in the form of the führer, the analogy of being, the state). There is a direct identity between Christ and the believer which brings together Creator and creation, flesh and Spirit, God and man, which is illustrated by Melchizedek and extended to Christ and all believers which directly counters the antichrist.
(Sign up for our next class Philemon and Ephesians: Forgiveness and Reconciliation in...
2023-01-1431 minForging PloughsharesSermon: The Contrast of Total Darkness and Total LightPaul Axton preaches - Isaiah depicts a world of darkness broken open by the light of the Messiah. The depth of the violence, oppression, and meaninglessness of this darkness must be appreciated so as to apprehend the world-changing nature of God conjoined to the world in the light of Christ.
(Sign up for our next class Philemon and Ephesians: Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Paul https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)
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2023-01-0722 minForging PloughsharesSermon: The Christocentric PrinciplePaul Axton preaches - the anthropic principle may accord or point to a Christian understanding, but Paul goes far beyond this in describing Christ as the motive force - the means and reason - for creation and creation's completion in redemption.
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2022-12-0524 minForging PloughsharesSermon: The Lost World of Origen’s Gospel MetaphysicsPaul Axton preaches - Origen, following Paul, held that the relation between the Father and the Son found in the incarnation is the eternal truth about God and creation. There is no other biography of God than that found in Jesus Christ, yet this simple Gospel understanding has been obscured in part due to the condemnation of Origen's development of it.
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2022-10-3128 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Recapitulation: The Hermeneutic that SavesPaul Axton preaches - Paul, in Ephesians, says all things are summed up in Christ. This doctrine of summing up or recapitulation, according to the church father Irenaeus, is at once the salvation and hermeneutic that constitutes the Gospel.
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2022-10-2426 minForging PloughsharesSermon: The Rule of Faith as Putting on the Mind of ChristPaul Axton preaches - The Apostle Paul uses the picture of the "analogy of faith" or the "rule of faith" and pictures it as part of having the mind of Christ. This rule is the measure of the canon of scripture, so that we go from Gospel to scripture both historically (in the formation of the canon) and in our interpretation of scripture.
(To register for our next class “Reading the Bible in Community” starting the week of September 26th and running through November 18th register at https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)
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2022-09-2630 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Reading Scripture According to the Flesh or the SpiritPaul Axton preaches - There is a spiritual or allegorical reading of Scripture which interprets through Christ and there is the fleshly reading concentrating on the letter or on history, which according to Paul, misses Christ and leaves one enslaved.
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2022-07-2328 minForging PloughsharesThe Lost HermeneuticIn this lecture Paul Axton explains John's and Paul's spiritual reading of the Hebrew Scriptures which has been lost in modern scholarship (as witnessed to by Charles Hill) and at a popular level. Henri de Lubac points us to Origen of Alexandria as the cure for historicism and what might be a type of Gnosticism, which a correct reading of John cures.
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2022-05-2145 minForging PloughsharesThe Law of Life in the Spirit Displaces the Law of Sin and DeathIn 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.
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2021-12-201h 02Forging PloughsharesBaptism as Defeat of the Lie of SinIn 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.
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2021-12-131h 08Forging PloughsharesHegel, Serial Killers, Kierkegaard, Žižek and JesusIn 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.
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2021-12-061h 07Forging PloughsharesDiscerning the Secular and SatanicMatt, 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.
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2021-11-291h 12Forging PloughsharesRomans 7 as Descriptor of Experience of the Secular AgeIn 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.
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2021-11-2257 minForging PloughsharesTraversing the Fundamental Fantasy Through BaptismIn 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.
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2021-11-1543 minForging PloughsharesSermon: The Primal Desire: To Be Recognized by GodPaul 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.
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2021-11-1321 minForging PloughsharesThe Sickness of the Masculine and the Feminine CureIn this PBI discussion of Paul Axton's book, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation, Tim, Rob, Thomas, Nathan, Matt, David, and Paul discuss the perversion of imagining an absolute law and how the feminine or hysteric orientation questions the law and opens up an alternative.
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2021-11-011h 00Forging PloughsharesThe Sickness of OntotheologyDavid and Paul review the failure of theology and philosophy as it has been caught up in an unquestioning orientation to the law and as is summed up in the introduction to Paul Axton's book The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation.
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2021-09-0438 minForging PloughsharesSlavoj Žižek, German Idealism, Psychoanalysis and the BibleIn this PBI discussion of Paul Axton's book, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation, Tim, Matt, Allan, Rob, Nathan, and Paul discuss how German idealism intersects with theology, psychoanalysis and the biblical depiction of the human problem and its cure.
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2021-08-301h 04Forging PloughsharesSermon: The Contrast Between the Failed and Redeemed Human SubjectPaul Axton Preaches - There is a brand of Christianity that imagines Paul, in Romans 7:14-25, is describing the normal Christian life. But to Miss how chapter 7 contrasts with Romans chapter 8 is to miss out the fulness of life in Christ.
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2021-08-2837 minForging PloughsharesThe Three Parts of the Pauline, Freudian and Lacanian SubjectIn this PBI course discussion referencing Paul Axton's book, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation, Tim, Nathan, Matt, Allan, Dan and Paul, discuss the dynamics of human subjectivity in Paul's depiction of the ego, law and body of death (in Romans 7), as they overlap with the Freudian/Lacanian registers.
2021-08-1657 minForging PloughsharesSermon: The Genealogy and Cure Of LonelinessPaul Axton Preaches - The continual theme of Scripture is God's sustaining, nurturing presence, which was once a presumed part of Christian experience. With the rise of modernity and modern theology there is a peculiar loneliness (a felt absence) which can be diagnosed as an aggravated form of Paul's picture of sin overcome in Christ.
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2021-08-1425 minForging PloughsharesRomans 16: Paul's Pax ChristusPaul Axton lectures on Romans 16, focusing on the significant role of women, such as the female apostle Junia, Phoebe - Paul's spokesperson and carrier of the letter, Priscilla and Aquilla, and the profound warmth and personal connection displayed in the conclusion of Romans.
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2021-08-0911 minForging PloughsharesRomans 15: New Temple KoinoniaPaul Axton lectures on Romans 15 the summation and conclusion of Romans, found in Paul's cosmic vision of a new fellowship and humanity which in its world wide vision comes to pertain to the particulars of loving relationship.
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2021-08-0214 minForging PloughsharesSermon: The Pervert's Guide to the GospelPaul Axton preaches - Human sinfulness is defined in Galatians as an incapacity to question a perverse orientation to the Law. This is exemplified by Mike Pompeo's rejection of critical race theory as potentially a questioning of the law that could bring down the country, yet Paul's picture is that the Jewish law is hostile and exclusive and Christianity resolves this hostility.
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2021-07-3129 minForging PloughsharesNietzschePaul Axton lectures on the life and work of Friedrich Nietzsche, tracing parallels to Freud, Hegel, and Paul, while also mining his insight into the possible directions of human culture and the human psyche.
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2021-07-2648 minForging PloughsharesRomans 14: Love as a New Form of Unified SubjectivityPaul Axton lectures on Romans 14, the culminating point in Paul's argument which foresees a new form of humanity emerging in the new temple communities of Christians.
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2021-07-1915 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Philosophy with PaulPaul Axton Preaches - The parameters of philosophy can be laid out along the lines of Paul's depiction of the subject. In the subject focused on the "law of the mind," the legal, philosophical order holds out life. With the focus on the ego there is a questioning of philosophy and law and the pointer to fullness in Christ alone.
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2021-07-1031 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Reading Paul with NietzschePaul Axton Preaches - Friedrich Nietzsche misreads Paul in the standard Lutheran contractual theological manner as suffering from guilt and resentment against God and the law. His pronouncement of the death of God is a prophetic pointer to the demise of western philosophical foundations which a correct, apocalyptic, reading of Paul and Christianity already address.
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2021-07-0327 minForging PloughsharesRomans 9: Vessels of Wrath and MercyPaul Axton argues that in chapter 9 of Romans Paul is not talking about a double predestination of the Calvinist type. He is speaking of the way in which Israel’s vocation to be the people of the creator God, including specifically its calling to be the “vessels of wrath,” was the focal point of the plan to save the world.
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2021-06-0707 minForging PloughsharesA Noncontractual Reading of Romans 1-8In this second lecture on Romans Paul Axton sets aside the pervasive notions of a contractual understanding which have obscured access to Paul's depiction of the human predicament and its resolution in Christ.
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Music: Bensound
2021-03-0134 minForging PloughsharesSermon:The Defeat of the Reign of DeathPaul Axton Preaches: The recent attack on the Capitol and the religion that supports this nationalism has parallels to German Christian thought and the rise of Hitler. Paul is describing the defeat of this death dealing orientation.
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2021-01-1128 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Conversion of the ImaginationPaul Axton Preaches - Paul, in Ephesians, describes the Christian life as seeing everything differently, a seeing from the heart or waking up to the light. C. S. Lewis described his baptism as a baptism of the imagination and his Narnia tales illustrate what this waking up or conversion of the imagination entails.
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2020-10-1234 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Apocalyptic ApologeticsPaul Axton Preaches - Deploying the three most famous apologies or trial defenses in history (the trial of Socrates, Jesus and Paul), the contrast between a defense grounded in this world order (law, reason, power) and one grounded in the Kingdom of God, is used to illustrate the apocalyptic (world disrupting) nature of a proper Christian apologetic.
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2020-09-2829 minForging PloughsharesDerridaIn this lecture on Jacques Derrida, Paul Axton explains Derrida’s philosophical project of “deconstruction,” aimed at understanding how self-consciousness is divided or already conceived in difference, which is the root problem of violence. Derrida's development follows and aids Paul's conception of the law.
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2020-09-1957 minForging PloughsharesSermon: The Ideology of EvangelicalismPaul Axton Preaches - The ideological form of American evangelicalism follows the pattern of counterfeit religion outlined by John and Paul. It is defined by what it is not and is an antagonistic structure that erupts in the perversion it would suppress.
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2020-09-0735 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Resisting EvilPaul 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.
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Music: Bensound
2020-08-0331 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Breaking Down the Wall of RacismPaul 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.
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2020-07-2731 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Witnessing to the PowersPaul 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.
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2020-07-2028 minForging PloughsharesSermon: The World of Christ Opposed to the World of SatanPaul Axton Preaches - In Chapter 1 of Ephesians Paul has described a world built upon Jesus Christ. In chapter 2 he begins to contrast this with a world controlled by the Prince of this world. The truth and morality of the one is pitted against the other.
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2020-03-0721 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Jesus is the Cosmic ChristPaul Axton Preaches - For Paul, Christ is Jesus – the reality of the one is inseparable from the other. It is not that Jesus is one phase of the making of the Christ. The truth of God, the truth of the world is found in the incarnation.
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2020-02-2925 minForging PloughsharesSermon: The Cosmic ChristPaul Axton preaches - Certainly, salvation is the overcoming of sin but the fullness of redemption is the completion of creation’s purpose. Paul has moved our understanding of God’s plan beyond the earth and the human race to its cosmic impact as part of the outworking of the love (the very essence) of God. The whole point of who God is and what God is doing in creation is summed up in the incarnate Christ (1:10).
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2020-02-2229 minForging PloughsharesInterview with Douglas CampbellPaul Axton interviews Douglas Campbell, a professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School who is known for studies of Paul's writings that command the respect of scholars worldwide, discussing the details of his work on Romans and his larger understanding of theology.
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2019-09-231h 06Forging PloughsharesSharon and Paul discuss Richard RohrRichard Rohr's depiction of the Universal Christ is providing an answer to a generational disaffection from Evangelicalism. Paul Axton and Sharon Klingemann discuss his work.
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Music: Bensound
2019-08-2744 minForging PloughsharesSermon - Naming the Idol of Capitalism Through the KoinoniaPaul Axton preaches: The dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile is broken down in Christ, and the removal of this barrier is, for Paul, the archetype of salvation. Money shared by Gentiles and accepted by Jews is the token of its accomplishment.
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Music: Bensound
2019-08-0328 minForging PloughsharesSermon - Resurrection as a Defeat of the Power of Sin and DeathPaul Axton preaches that the apostle Paul offers no room for dualism – for the notion that material reality is unreal and that it is only the soul that goes to heaven. This is the lie that deludes. It is this way of dividing up the world defeated in resurrection.
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Music: Bensound
2019-06-2927 minForging PloughsharesSharon and Paul Discuss the Doctrine of HellSharon Klingemann and Paul Axton discuss the effect of eternal torturous existence on Christianity and possible alternative understandings.
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Music: Bensound
2019-06-0346 minForging PloughsharesSermon - Passage Beyond the Mirror Stage to Reflecting ChristPaul Axton preaches: What psychoanalysis misses and what Paul provides is passage beyond the mirror stage into mirroring the glory of the Father in the image of the Son by the Spirit.
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Music: Bensound
2019-05-1827 minForging PloughsharesSermon - Love is Salvation, Salvation is LovePaul Axton preaches: The point of salvation, creation, life, and all things is love. Paul’s Gospel has as its central theme, not grace, or righteousness – which are certainly key but are not the center. Love, as Paul presents it, is the point of Christian faith.
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Music: Bensound
2019-05-1123 minForging PloughsharesSermon: Life Together - The Only Life There IsPaul Axton preaches: If salvation is a body united, sin is the resistant core, the alienating power, which as Paul depicts is the turning of self against itself. In the same way we can understand salvation as a harmonious body, we can understand the suffering of sin and even a damnable existence as people turned against one another.
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Music: Bensound
2019-04-3021 minForging PloughsharesSermon - Recovering Christian Anarchism in CorinthPaul Axton preaches: The organizing principle of this world is idolatrous in that it would sacrifice people for principle, the few (the poor and weak) for the many (the strong). Paul pictures this as collusion with demons and call for anarchism - love against the organizing power of this world.
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Music: Bensound
2019-03-0230 minForging PloughsharesSermon - Authoritarianism versus Apostolic AuthorityPaul Axton preaches on I Corinthians 9, where the apostle Paul's ideal of authority and leadership is contrasted with that of the Corinthians and contemporary notions of leadership.
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2019-02-1629 minForging PloughsharesSermon - Knowing God Through Christ – or Through Ourselves – Knowing as you OughtPaul Axton Preaches: Paul is teaching the Corinthians of an alternative knowing - a self-awareness that must include a sensitivity to persons. It is not simply a matter of knowing a set of facts – idols are nothing and God is something. It is a matter of knowing persons – some are weak some are strong – and the principle found in Christ is that of a loving personal knowledge.
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Music: Bensound
2019-02-0426 minForging PloughsharesSermon - Gaining the World and Eternity TooPaul Axton preaches: Salvation as Paul applies it in I Corinthians pertains to how we do marriage, how we regard sex, how we negotiate our social station, or how we negotiate identity. Clearly Paul’s message is not that you have now accepted Jesus into your heart and so you are going to heaven when you die – and everything else is secondary. Rather he says you have been bought with a price and what you have been bought out of is a world where sexual gratification, social station, or ethnicity or family may be thought to be the primary poin...
2019-01-2124 minForging PloughsharesSermon - The Cure for AnxietyPaul Axton preaches: Anxiety is created by putting too much importance on the world of marriage, social status and ethnicity. Paul may be using end of the world language metaphorically so as to relativize worldly things but certainly he means these concerns to not have a definitive grip. The way we suspend this anxiety producing grip is to be found in Paul's phrase "as if not."
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Music: Bensound
2019-01-1925 minForging PloughsharesSermon - Turn Him Over to SatanPaul Axton preaches: The apostle Paul deals with the origin and depth of evil and explains to the Church in Corinth how to insure the power of the Passover Lamb applies to them. Part of what needs to be gotten rid of is the notion that law and love are opposed.
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Music: Bensound
2018-12-0834 minForging PloughsharesSermon - A Liberated ConsciencePaul Axton preaches on I Corinthians 4, where the apostle Paul says he does not judge anyone nor even presume to judge himself. He is describing a relinquishment of judgmentalism achieved by presuming responsibility as a servant and not a legislator of over the church.
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Music: Bensound
2018-12-0126 minForging PloughsharesThe Importance of the Singular Foundation Through Niemöller and BonhoefferPaul Axton lectures on the importance of the singular foundation through Niemöller and Bonhoeffer. Paul pictures Christ as the One foundation in I Cor. 3 and indicates even though we may build on this foundation our life may be a futility. The work of the Church at certain periods in history may come to nothing - this is illustrated in the life of Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
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Music: Bensound
2018-11-1335 minForging PloughsharesSermon - Fake News Vs Good NewsPaul Axton preaches: Rhetoric, philosophy and law or debaters, philosophers, and scribes is Paul's way of describing the talk and talkers which are of this age. A fullness of speech marks a different age, a different identity, and a different orientation to language.
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Music: Bensound
2018-11-1031 minForging Ploughshares1 Corinthians - IntroductionPaul Axton introduces I Corinthians. He argues Paul is employing something like Austin's notion of a speech act - his "word of the cross" is deployed to create a unified community where the logos of wisdom is creating dis-community.
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Music: Bensound
2018-11-0722 minForging PloughsharesSermon - A Mystery Hidden Since the Foundation of the WorldPaul Axton preaches on I Cor. 2:6-8 - Human wisdom is responsible, according to Paul, for the death of Christ and those who killed him were blind to what they were doing. The Bible traces human religion and understanding to a death dealing lie and this is what the wisdom of Christ exposes and displaces.
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Music: Bensound
2018-11-0436 minForging PloughsharesSermon - Holiness as Unity and Unholiness as DivisionPaul Axton preaches on the opening section of I Corinthians. in which Paul calls them "saints," "sanctified," the "called out" holy ones, is the point of unity to which he is calling this divided community. God's holiness, his innermost unity, is the mode in which the Corinthians and all of us are to find unity.
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Music: Bensound
2018-10-2030 minForging PloughsharesThe Serious Jokes of ZizekPaul Axton explains Zizek and the core of Lacanian theory as it overlaps with the apostle Paul.
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Music: Bensound
2018-09-0318 minForging PloughsharesSermon - Philemon: The Subversion of CultureIn this sermon, Paul Axton suggests that the manner in which slavery is subverted by Paul is the mode in which the Kingdom is made a reality. Radical subordination enacts the subversion of the City of Man and marks the City of God.
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Music: Bensound
2018-09-0135 minForging PloughsharesConfessions of a Mask (Yukio Mishima Part 2)Paul Axton continues his exploration of Yukio Mishima, primarily working with his autobiographical novel Confessions of a Mask. Paul describes the turn away from love to self-destruction as a moral masochism in service to the law.
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Music: Bensound
2018-02-0525 minForging PloughsharesMission in JapanJonathan Totty interviews Paul Axton on his experience in Japan. Paul describes why and how he ended up doing an analysis of psychoanalytic readings of Paul as a result of his experience.
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Music: Bensound
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