Forging Ploughshares

Paul Axton traces the manner in which Freud was taken up in Japan and the deep resonance between his theory and a Japanese sensibility. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: The Corinthians, the evangelicals, the Roman Catholics, presume there is a naturally given recognition of good and evil in human wisdom. This "wisdom" is not the basis for Christianity but what Christ destroys. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton explains that orientalism is not simply academic or nationalistic but is intimately tied to psychology and human interiority. Japanese used the work of Sigmund Freud, very much an orientalist, so as to manufacture an identity to ward off and reverse the denigrating assessments of the West. Japanese psychologists and texts literally reverse Freud and his valuation system and this reversal has become a key part of the Japanese search for identity. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches that the apostle Paul offers no room for dualism – for the notion that material reality is unreal and that it is only the soul that goes to heaven. This is the lie that deludes. It is this way of dividing up the world defeated in resurrection. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

To make the point that putting resurrection in the center constitutes an alternative Christianity, Paul Axton in this sermon sums up a few key ways in which a different emphasis on resurrection completely alters key doctrines. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton discusses identity through difference illustrated in Orientalism Part II. If Japan is a mud swamp which has successfully warded off Christianity (which it is and has for the most part), it is by virtue of the same power which has shaped Christianity so as to fit modern Western identity. This is an understanding defeated by a right understanding of sin as an orientation to death defeated in resurrection. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches on 1 Corinthians 14:34ff: This passage raises key questions about how we interpret Scripture and how we understand who God is. Our relationships and attitudes toward maleness and femaleness are not secondary but primary to our understanding of Christianity. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Orientalism serves as an example of identity through difference as a failed form of thought that necessarily involves us in the lie of attempting to reify a human construct. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Paul Axton preaches: Truth comes to us in a person, through his words, but the truth is not in the form, the letter, the propositions of the words but in a deep spiritual communion which displaces the discommunion of the covenant with death. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound

Sharon Klingemann and Paul Axton discuss the effect of eternal torturous existence on Christianity and possible alternative understandings. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Music: Bensound