Forging Ploughshares

David, Jonathan, and Paul, discuss the profound influence of Wendell Berry on each of us in realizing the spiritual sense of place and belonging, addressing also alienation, racism, waywardness, and the redemptive grace made available in friendship. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

Paul Axton Preaches: The particular expression of spiritual rootedness found in Wendell Berry and Dolly Parton is an entry into the meaning of universal salvation. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!  

Anthony Bartlett provides a Girardian reading of Genesis and Exodus, in which the Hebrew people are formed from oppressed outcasts, and in which liberation from violence and oppression, through the experience of Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, and the experience of Abraham, provides for the formation of the nonviolence pictured in creation and culminating in Christ. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!  

Paul Axton preaches: There is an apocalyptic logic laid out in the New Testament, which the Lutheran notion of justification misses, in which there is a crisis and implosion, an attempt to silence God, and it is from the midst of this attempt to destroy him that Christ speaks.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!  

Anthony Bartlett explains to Brad and Paul the significance of Benoît Chantre, the biographer and last key conversation partner with René Girard with whom the book Battling to the End, Girard's last word. Chantre attempts to direct Girard away from a dark apocalypticism toward what he calls an intimate mediation in Christ. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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." If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!  

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. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!  

Paul Axton preaches: Is the analogia entis the anti-Christ or is there the possibility of a renewed natural theology and metaphysics? If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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 Become a Patron!

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.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!  

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. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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.  If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!

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. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!