Forging Ploughshares

Jordan Wood: Synthesis is Everything

Jordan Daniel Wood concludes the discussion of Maximus and synthesis, explaining how Christ, even in the midst of sin and false synthesis or through the passions, brings all things together in his life and the life of the Christian.

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Sermon: Embodied Versus Disembodied Faith

The Western tradition from Augustine and Descartes has developed focus on thought, propositions and doctrine separated from practice and ethics. This disembodied form of the faith stands in contrast to Paul's description of being embodied - living sacrifices and it contrasts with the Eastern understanding exemplified in Maximus the Confessor.

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Jordan Wood: Understanding the Life and Theology of Maximus as Incarnational Synthesis

Jordan Wood introduces the controversies surrounding the life of Maximus and also introduces the framework of his theology as cosmic incarnation, providing a synthesis for all things. 

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Sermon: The Scripture that Kills Versus the Spirit of Life

In 2 Corinthians Paul describes the letter or scripture as deadly, as this unenduring reality is not an end in itself. Absolutizing the symbolic order in law or in some form of moral imperative leads directly to evil, not because this is a possible reality but because it obscures the truth that freedom comes from God and there is no autonomous realm of law, nature, reason, or will.

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Orientalism and the Power of Ideology

In this concluding discussion of Orientalism Jon, Tim, Jim, Simon, Brian, Jonathan, and Paul, consider how human understanding is subject to cultural and nationalistic ideology, shaping science, psychology, and impacting Christianity, particularly in Japan and the United States.

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Sermon: Partakers of Divine Consciousness

Peter says we are partakers of the divine nature, which the early church called theosis or divinization. This is a concept obscured by western atonement theories and the taking up of Greek philosophical thought, but which in G.W.F. Hegel is reappropriated and expressed as obtaining God's consciousness.

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Orientalism and Cultures of Death

John, Jim, Brian, and Paul discuss how Japan reversed western notions of orientalism, particularly in psychology, so as to create a unified national identity dealing in death in both inward self-identity and outward colonialism. Japan is a case in point of how cultures reify death and obscure the truth of what it means to be human.

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Sermon: Kenotic Truth as the Foundation of Consciousness

In Philippians 2 Paul spells out an alternative picture of God and reality which is often thought to be an exception, but God poured out in Kenotic love on the cross is an alternative conception of God, reality, truth, thinking and consciousness.

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The Bhagavad Gita and Sophia

Matt explains to Jon, Tim, Simon, Jim and Paul how Sergius Bulgakov's sophia provides and explanation for the wisdom to be found in the Gita and world religions.

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Sermon: Coming to Christ Outside the City

Christian nationalism, the Trump Bible (including the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence in the Bible), and Christian Zionism, confuse the City of God with the city of man and the Word of God with the word of man. It is a blasphemous religion on the order of the faith of Judaizers who would displace the Gospel with law and with the anti-Christ John warned would infiltrate the Church.

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