Forging Ploughshares

Paul Axton preaches: Paul describes the "end of the law" which is "nailed to the cross" and "set aside" along with the power of the "rulers and authorities" so that a fulness of Paul's reading gets beyond Luther's constricted understanding of grace and faith which are still functioning on the basis of the law.

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Brad and Paul discuss how Slavoj Žižek Extends the insights of René Girard, providing a deep reading of the problem of the law, accounting for Luther's depression, in spite of his discovery of "justification."

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Brad and Paul discuss the sermon that follows, showing that the Lutheran connection between Paul and the Law, often portrayed in a Lutheran-like conversion, misconstrues Judaism and the Law, and missed the apocalyptic failure and salvation Paul is portraying. 

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Anthony Bartlett explains to Paul and Brad the culmination of his work in Love's Entanglement: God as Nonviolent Relation and How That Brings the World to Peace. 

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Paul Axton preaches: This sermon follows the sacrificial stages in the life of Harry Truman as a prototype of the seeming necessity of the apocalyptic religion into which Christ intervenes. 

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Paul Axton preaches: Jesus claim to Thomas and Philip that they can see and know God in him, that he is the way and the truth and the life, call for a holistic understanding which has been disrupted by modernism but which is approached through Sophiology.

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Anthony Bartlett and Brad and Paul discuss the dropping of the bombs on Japan in light of the Girardian insight into the scapegoating mechanism, and Girard's turn from total condemnation of sacrifice due to the influence of Raymund Schwager, and the entry of Peter Thiel and JD Vance.

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Anthony Bartlett traces the rise of semiotics and the understanding that before being there is the sign, and that reality comes to us through a sign system of violence which will be exposed and displaced by the semiotic shift of the Logos.

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Brad and Paul discuss the convergence of William Desmond's understanding of the potencies of the ethical with Paul's depiction of the fruits of the Spirit, both of which would displace ethical systems with ethical realities.

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Anthony Bartlett traces the impact of the theory of Ferdinand de Saussure and Levi Strauss on the rise of structuralism and the deconstruction of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and René Girard, giving rise to a clear split between two notions of Logos.

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Paul Axton preaches: In Corinthians Paul contrasts human and divine wisdom and pictures the cross as the divide between the two, focusing on the absolute transcendence and immanence of Christ, not as a dualism, but as synthesizing these seeming antinomies, which is the continued project of the Christian life in theosis.

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Brad and Paul discuss the convergence of the work of William Desmond with that of Sergius Bulgakov, noting that Desmond's work can be read as on a continuum through Maximus, Hegel, and Bulgakov, which is perhaps the most serious contemporary attempt to think out philosophically and theologically the implications of the Gospel.

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Paul Axton preaches: Is the analogia entis the anti-Christ or is there the possibility of a renewed natural theology and metaphysics?

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Brad and Paul discuss the anti-metaphysical stance of René Girard as compared to William Desmond's renewal of metaphysics, with each bringing a necessary critique to modern metaphysics and surpassing this metaphysic in two needed but perhaps contrasting understandings.

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Paul Axton preaches: Behind this sermon on the fall and summing up of all things in Christ, including everything about the first Adam, is the approach to metaphysics found in William Desmond and Anthony Bartlett. The orientation of a sick metaphysics (Girard and Bartlett) provides the possibility of redemption or the realization of the fulness of metaphysics (Desmond), or the synthesis found in Christ.

From Spiritual Sickness to Divinization

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Anthony Bartlett explains Heidegger's turn to language in place of a philosophical metaphysics, and locates language as the origin integral to being and the essential nature of violence. 

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Paul Axton preaches: This sermon traces universal restoration (apokatastasis) and recapitulation, in the way this transforms human thought in the explanation of Origen, Maximus and Eriugena, and illustrated in the case of Peter.

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In this new series of podcasts with Anthony Bartlett, Anthony systematically introduces his extension of the Girardian system into theology and biblical studies. In this first lecture he describes the rise of meaning in the scapegoat and the semiotic shift introduced by Christ.

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Paul Axton preaches: This sermon brings together Paul's picture of creation ex-nihilo and resurrection as the thought behind his notion of epektasis or being stretched out, in the sense of going beyond the self, as further developed by William Desmond in conjunction with John Scotus Eriugena.

(Register for the course, Metaxology, taught by William Desmond, which will cover the philosophy and theology of William Desmond as it applies to ethics, aesthetics, peace, and the Christian life. The course will run from 2026/6/20–2026/9/19. Sign up here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)

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William Desmond introduces his metaxological philosophy and its implications for religion, ethics and aesthetics.

(Register for the course, Metaxology, taught by William Desmond, which will cover the philosophy and theology of William Desmond as it applies to ethics, aesthetics, peace, and the Christian life. The course will run from 2026/6/20–2026/9/19. Sign up here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)

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Paul Axton preaches: This sermon develops John Behr's understanding of the Logos along with William Desmond's picture of the betweenness of the intimate universal.

(Register for the course, Metaxology, taught by William Desmond, which will cover the philosophy and theology of William Desmond as it applies to ethics, aesthetics, peace, and the Christian life. The course will run from 2026/6/20–2026/9/19. Sign up here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)

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In this final class with David Dawson, David answers key question regarding Christ's recovery of language as the Word, the exposure of the victim, and the overcoming of religion.  

(Register for the course, Metaxology, taught by William Desmond, which will cover the philosophy and theology of William Desmond as it applies to ethics, aesthetics, peace, and the Christian life. The course will run from 2026/6/20–2026/9/19. Sign up here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)

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Paul Axton preaches: Jesus' promise of peace, not as the world gives but his peace, is the beginning of an alternative subjectivity which William Desmond calls the "intimate universal" or an opening of a communicative subjectivity with the transcendent. 

(Register for the course, Metaxology, taught by William Desmond, which will cover the philosophy and theology of William Desmond as it applies to ethics, aesthetics, peace, and the Christian life. The course will run from 2026/6/20–2026/9/19. Sign up here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)

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In this final conversation with Michael Hardin, Michael's friend David Dawson, author of "Flesh Becomes Word" describes Girard's entry into the discussion of structuralism, poststructuralism, and deconstruction. 

(Register for the course, Metaxology, taught by William Desmond, which will cover the philosophy and theology of William Desmond as it applies to ethics, aesthetics, peace, and the Christian life. The course will run from 2026/6/20–2026/9/19. Sign up here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)

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Paul Axton preaches: This sermon for Pentecost Sunday, compares life in the Spirit or in the Trinity to life in the absence of the Trinity, as Paul presents it in Romans 7 & 8. 

(Register for the course, Metaxology, taught by William Desmond, which will cover the philosophy and theology of William Desmond as it applies to ethics, aesthetics, peace, and the Christian life. The course will run from 2026/6/20–2026/9/19. Sign up here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)

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Michael Hardin explains how Christ's exposure of the scapegoating mechanism unleashes the potential for a final violence, which can only be disrupted if Christians can resist through the reality of living out the gospel.

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This discussion and attached sermon with Brad and Paul builds upon the work of Raymond Panikkar and William Desmond in their description of the "between" as this applies to the Trinitarian nature of truth. 

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Michael Hardin spells out his key advancement of Girardian theory in his development of a positive view of mimesis as the very mode of salvation. 

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Paul Axton preaches: In this sermon on the necessity of love of enemy to arrive at the perfection of God, the focus is on the possible insight the "enemy" such as Islam and Iran might have into the failures of Western Christianity. 

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Michael Hardin explains how René Girard scapegoated the term sacrifice and the book of Hebrews and how he corrected course in regard to Hebrews. Karl and Paul discuss attachment of fundamentalism to the historical critical method, and then Nate and Paul point out to Michael the same problem with theological liberalism, and propose an alternative Christocentric hermeneutic in place of historicism. 

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Brad and Paul discuss the attached sermon tracing a Jewish understanding of Sabbath as synonymous with God and with being joined to God, as in marriage, and the development of an event oriented understanding degraded into a space surrounding tabernacle and temple taken up and transformed by Christ.

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In this continued discussion with Michael Hardin, Michael lays out a theory of a nonviolent atonement, through Girardian theory. Michael pictures this as key to understanding the cross and the Bible. 

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Brad and Paul discuss the attached sermon, of how it is that the church seems to no longer be a resistant community, as Paul and Origen would have it, "putting on the full armor of God," and how it is that Augustinian just war theory, and its exterior/interior division points to a morally compromised church and culture marked by the rise of Jeffrey Epstein and friends.

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Michael Hardin, an expert and friend of René Girard, explains how a Girardian reading of the Bible solves the problem posed by Marcion, of distinguishing between the violent God of the Jews and the Father of Jesus Christ.

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Paul Axton preaches: In this sermon reversing the usual meaning of Christ "becoming sin for us" the working of the cross is examined at a deep psychoanalytic and personal level, through the lens of Julian of Norwich, and her reversal of theology. 

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Michael Hardin, the friend of and expert on René Girard, explains the comprehensive nature of mimesis, from the novel, to psychology, anthropology, and religion, explaining the scientific background and universal application of the theory.

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Paul Axton preaches: Bringing together the thought of William Desmond with Maximus the Confessor, this sermon traces how the seventh day is the revelation and reflexive divine presence fulfilled in Christ. 

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Michael Hardin leads a discussion on the life and work of René Girard, with whom he was friends, tracing the beginnings of his discovery and then the growth of appreciation and literature dealing with his work.

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Paul Axton preaches: This Easter sermon examines the first Christian proclamation of resurrection in its direct indictment of those who nailed him to the cross, but this scapegoating, nationalistic, religion in its captivity to death and killing exemplifies human religion and the human problem which Christ exposes and resolves in the resurrection. 

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(Sign up for “Do Not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled: Perspectives on Peace” Starting April 8th and running through May 27th on from 7 pm to 9 pm centr...

In this discussion with Karl, Andy, Jim, and Scott, Paul brings together Christian Anarchy as it coincides with an apocalyptic theology, but fills this out through the work of Ann Jervis, who describes the need to set aside "now and not yet" as a controlling metaphor which does not do justice to victory in Christ.

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(Sign up for “Do Not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled: Perspectives on Peace” Starting April 8th and running through May 27th on from 7 pm t...