Forging Ploughshares

Ryan, in an unusual move, combines Pauline theology and the Book of Revelation with the peaceable living of agrarianism.

He talks about Wendell Berry’s agrarian pacifism, it’s a sort of rooted peaceableness. In my mind, I can’t imagine anything more peaceable than rooting oneself on a piece of land, committing oneself and one’s family to live in tune with that place and embodying the gospel by your peaceable existence on that land and in that community. I can’t imagine anything less violent than saying, “I’m going to reject what the world says I should be doing in terms of pursuing all of these economic goals,” rejecting that whole system and instead saying, “I’m going to root myself here and I’m going to take my life from this land.” That’s how I connect the way I think about creation care and agrarianism and how, at its core, is concerned with a kind of patient peaceableness that I think the gospel calls us to. So, we can talk about peace all day, but at the end of the day if we’re still getting our food from an industrial system that destroys God’s creation and depends upon oil, then we’re still benefiting from other people committing acts of violence.

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Music: Bensound

Paul compares the two economies presented in Galatians.

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Music: Bensound

Paul interviews Michael Householder, who practices a very different “church growth” system than what we normally see in consumer-oriented mega-churches.

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Music: Bensound

That we have entered into this millennial kingdom in and through Christ—what should mean for us in our immediate experience is that we’re no longer desperate to save ourselves. If we understand the human enterprise—the kingdoms of this world—what are they all about? Well, they’re in the business of securing themselves. They’rein the business of saving themselves. And that is the desperate need that consumes peoples’ lives. It’s the driving force. And, so, when we talk about the millennial kingdom, it is a resolution that is enacted in baptism through the church now,so that we begin to live resurrection lives in the present.

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Music: Bensound

Paul and Frank continue their discussion on the meaning,  origin and practice of communion. This episode covers the purpose of the Levitical sacrifices and the significance blood, more readings from the Didache, whether communion and the assembly should be open or closed, and a little more detail on the way thanksgiving offerings were practiced.

For Further Learning:

1. Didache
2. Getting Political
3. Rediscovering Communion – Part I

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Music: Bensound

Romans chapter 10: The end of the law, or the purpose of the law is shown to be the way it points to covenental relationship which resolves the problem of shame and death which is the problem of sin.

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Music: Bensound

In this lecture, Paul discusses the root negative emotion, shame, and how Christ addresses it.

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Paul and Jonathan Totty have a conversation about the state of the restoration movement.

Paul: To my mind, this is the pernicious influence that we’re combatting: Donald McGavran church-growth philosophy which flows with American utilitarianism, pragmatism, and consumerism to produce the model of the mega-church as the goal which is pervasive—and I don’t mean just the big churches, but even in the little churches, the mega-church is just the goal. Is that your perception?

John: Yes, even in smaller congregations in smaller communities, Instead of thinking in terms of how do we best serve the community, how do we grow spiritually,and how do we grow deeper in our knowledge of the Word, the emphasis is still on how we grow numerically.

Paul: Right, and how you grow numerically is not through a scholarly engagement with the Old Testament, but a kind of concealed light treatment—a kind of “gospel-light.” But the whole trend in preaching is toward a kind of spectacle and production—as is the music—all bent upon delivering a product.

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Music: Bensound

What is the mystery resolved in Christ? Paul connects the resolution of this mystery to the meaning of world history and to the meaning of predestination and the role of Israel and the Church. (Romans 9-11)

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Music: Bensound

There is no personal relationship to God apart from the historical ground of the covenant with Abraham fulfilled in Christ. The perverse underside of the law draws us in through imagining we can gain righteousness through agonistic struggle or through intensified personal effort or emotion – through an intensified “personal” disembodied relationship. This leads to the fruits of the law.

The problem Paul struggles with is how to avoid the trap of perversion, that is, of a Law that generates its transgression. Paul presents a sinful perspective on the law which generates transgression (and transgressive desire), but he presents no way out of this bind other than through re-founding subjectivity in Christ.

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Music: Bensound