Forging Ploughshares

In this continued introduction to World Religions and Cultures a review of the work of Rene Girard as it folds into Mircea Eliade and Peter Berger helps define the interactive roles of culture and religion as modes of orientation in identity, and as completed in Christ and the Church. 

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In two passages from I and II Corinthians, Paul utilizes the mirror or mirroring to illustrate incompleteness and immaturity and fullness. He points to the focus on the spectral, the partial, the created - as in many religions which focus on the sun and its eclipse - as the problem. In Psychoanalysis this mirror stage is universal and without cure, but Paul depicts passage beyond the mirror stage in mirroring Christ.

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Jim, David, Tim, Brian and Paul discuss the possible relationships between Christ and culture, particularly in a secular age, and discuss the opposed positions of Mircea Eliade and Peter Berger and the resolution posed by David Bentley Hart and Sergius Bulgakov.

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The Council of Chalcedon, as read by Maximus the Confessor, provides a solution to the issue of difference and unity, the problem of the one and the many, or the answer to how their can be unifying love in a universe seemingly built on dualism, difference, and multiplicity.

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There are a variety of Christianities in which resurrection is excluded (theological liberalism), not needed (fundamentalism and penal substitution), or deemphasized (evangelicalism or pietism). The answer to the resurrectionless or semi-resurrectionless religions is the gospel, as the defeat of death, a cosmic salvation, a lived righteousness, a resurrection kingdom, lived in the Spirit now.

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In the conclusion to the interview with Girard specialist Michael Hardin, Michael explains how a non-sacrificial hermeneutic, taken up in the Wesleyan Quadrilateral of Scripture, tradition, reason and experience, given a Christological center is the dynamic for reading the Bible and understanding God, not through morality but in character and ethics. The notion of doubling, rivalry, the rise of passion, and the failure of evangelicalism in accounting for the Jesus Movement are also discussed.

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In John's account of the triumphal entry the resurrection of Lazarus triggers the events leading to Jesus' kingly reception, and then the turning of the crowd and his death as a scapegoat. Jesus exposes the history of violence and murder and explains his coming death as the defeat of Satan and the answer to mythic religious violence.

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In part one of this two part conversation, Michael Hardin, a leading expert on René Girard shows the direct parallels between Girard and Maximus on mimesis, desire, the object cause of desire, and the genealogy of violence, and how it is the very character of God, in kenotic love, delivers creation and the crown of creation from the futility of death. 

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In this new series on world cultures and religions, Tim, Jon, Brian, David, Simon, and Paul discuss the impact of the secular on religion, creating a distinct category "religion" separate from culture in which faith and practice become visibly distinct. The obscuring role of religion in Peter Berger and Rene Girard are examples.

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The serpent points to a false desire, sin points to a false understanding of the law, and the idol poses a false god, which in each instance serves as an obstacle to what it promises, giving rise to the obstacle cause of desire. Christ exposes this scandalous lie, but Christ and the cross become a scandal or a stone of stumbling for those who continue to believe the lie, or he is the chief corner stone of a new form of worship for those who believe this truth.

(Sign up for the course, The Theology of Maximus the Confessor with Jordan Wood. https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings. The course will run from 2024/3/25–2024/5/17 and will meet on Saturdays at 9am central time.)

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