Forging Ploughshares

This conversation between Paul and Jason is inspired by Paul’s essay The Mystery Revealed.  The conversation explores legitimate and illegitimate understandings of the mystery of Christ and focuses largely on pagan understandings of the “idol” and the contrast of the “Image of God” as described by Genesis 1. As the conversation unfolds, what emerges is an understanding of loving God and loving neighbor as self as a restoration of the image of God and a correction of perverse notions of God which are more pagan than Christian.

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Music: Bensound

Paul begins a Bible study on I John. This introduction covers key ideas leading to universal false teaching as represented by Gnosticism.

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Paul explains how the image of God defines us.

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Paul and Frank continue their conversation on house church. Topics covered in this episode include what to call “house church,” confession, disciplinary action, and integrated learning.

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Paul and Jonathan Totty discuss the life of Søren Kierkegaard.

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Jonathan and Catie Totty visit and discuss mysticism within Eastern Orthodoxy, specifically Vladimir Lossky, and their baby joins the dialog.

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Paul and Frank begin a conversation about house church.

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Paul concludes the study of Galatians.

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Paul demonstrates how the Holy Spirit overcomes the various socio-cultural and personal barriers so as to bring about unity.

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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