In this first podcast on Imaginary Apologetics, it is noted that Anselm's ontological and cosmological arguments pose a logic developed in his atonement theory, focused on a foundational logic, and this is contrasted with Hegel's understanding that the ontological argument is dependent on Christianity and the Person of Christ. Hegel is working from a Maximian-like understanding in which Christ brings together thought and being while Anselm does not reference Christ in the core of the argument. S...
Feb 10, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast Philippians 3:13 describes a stretching forth, in which the past (failures and achievements) are forgotten as part of the focus on the goal of attaining to likeness of Christ. Gregory of Nyssa portrays this Pauline understanding as the eternal dynamic of life in Christ which offers true stability and peace. Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Also sign up for Sin and Salvation: An i...
Feb 08, 2025•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast The transformative power in conversion and salvation flows backward, redeeming all of our life, so that the end is in the beginning. Our finite lives make sense as they are stretched out in the beginning and end that is Christ. This self-transcendence is realized in being woken up religiously to the love of God, morally to others, intellectually to the cosmic Christ, and psychically or emotionally to the fruits of the spirit. Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theolog...
Feb 03, 2025•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Here is part 2 of the 2 part discussion of the upcoming course Sin and Salvation. John, Matt, and Paul, discuss their theological journey as a journey of friendship. (Sorry, the previous podcast was duplicated but here corrected.) Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Also sign up for Sin and Salvation: An in-depth study of the meaning of sin and a description of the atonement as a de...
Feb 01, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast Matt, John and Paul discuss the upcoming course with PBI, Sin and Salvation, focusing on the formation of friendship through a theology that is open ended, opening to relationship with God and others in the ongoing theological journey. Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Also sign up for Sin and Salvation: An in-depth study of the meaning of sin and a description of the atonement as...
Feb 01, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Matt, John and Paul discuss the upcoming course with PBI, Sin and Salvation, which focuses on the peace of Christ, and which pictures the theological journey as only cohering as a continuing journey, in which the beginning is in the end, as with Christ. Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Also sign up for Sin and Salvation: An in-depth study of the meaning of sin and a description o...
Jan 27, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast In part 2 of discussion of Flannery O'Connor, David, Jonathan, and Paul discuss how her depiction is an explicit defeat of liberal and pietistic notions which believe in the natural competency of the soul. Only an acknowledgement of judgment, evil, and purgation, even as part of a universal salvation, is adequate for the reality of the human condition. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April...
Jan 25, 2025•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this discussion Jonathan Heaps, Head of the Lonergan Institute at Seton Hall University, Editor of the Lonergan Review, and author of The Ambiguity of Being: Bernard Lonergan and the Problems of the Supernatural, describes his upcoming class with PBI on Bernard Lonergan. Jonathan describes the resolution that Lonergan brings to the modern theological impasse, a breakthrough broached by nouvelle théologie and ressourcement, but completed by Lonergan. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan ...
Jan 20, 2025•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Colossians 1:15-20 stands at the center of the logic of the New Testament, taken up by Origen, the Cappadocian Fathers, Maximus, and in the modern period is recovered by Robert Jenson (among others). Apart from this understanding, that Christ is the realization of the eternality of God, Christianity becomes unintelligible. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Also sign up for Sin an...
Jan 18, 2025•21 min•Ep 1019•Transcript available on Metacast Jordan Wood brings his series on Maximus to a conclusion, summing up his views on nature, hierarchy, and the possibility of annihilation. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Also sign up for Sin and Salvation: An in-depth study of the meaning of sin and a description of the atonement as a defeat of sin and the basis of an alternative community in Christ. This course will run throug...
Jan 13, 2025•1 hr 19 min•Ep 1018•Transcript available on Metacast David, Jonathan, and Paul in part 1 of this 2 part podcast discuss the novels and short stories of Flannery O'Connor and their challenge to a modern liberal worldview, with their portrayal of inexplicable evil and love. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Also sign up for Sin and Salvation: An in-depth study of the meaning of sin and a description of the atonement as a defeat of si...
Jan 11, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Ep 1017•Transcript available on Metacast Jordan Wood describes key texts in patristics and philosophy and then describes the similarities between Hegel and Maximus. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings ) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!...
Jan 06, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Ep 1016•Transcript available on Metacast Herod lied to the wisemen about his intent, pretending to want to worship Jesus, but slaughtered the innocent children of Bethlehem in an attempt to kill any rival. This provides a working principle for understanding the facade of piety among rulers and the powerful and how to understand the continued slaughter of the innocent in Palestine and elsewhere. It clarifies the mandate for the people of God to be citizens of the Kingdom of God rather than citizens of this world. (Sign up for the upcomi...
Jan 04, 2025•20 min•Ep 1015•Transcript available on Metacast Jordan Wood leads a discussion on Maximus' view of the all-embracing and unbelievable love of God as the work being accomplished through the Trinity, in synthesis, personhood, and divine humility. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method." The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings ) If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patro...
Dec 30, 2024•1 hr•Ep 1014•Transcript available on Metacast Mary consented to the formation of Christ within her womb, and Paul calls all people to consent to Christ being formed within. The other choice is bearing the subpersonal image. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method": "Bernard Lonergan, SJ (1904 - 1984) came to see the development of a modern scholarly method for theology as one of the most pressing challenges of 20th-century Christian thought. This course follows how Lonergan's view of theological me...
Dec 28, 2024•18 min•Ep 1013•Transcript available on Metacast Jordan Wood explains Maximus' understanding of the limited role of nature in universal salvation, which unlike in David Hart's theology in which nature contains the full potential of deification and salvation, there is the necessity of realization in time and history of the actual working out of salvation and the defeat of evil beyond nature in personhood. Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method": "Bernard Lonergan, SJ (1904 - 1984) came to see the devel...
Dec 23, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Ep 1012•Transcript available on Metacast The Lord's Prayer is answered by Christ in the incarnation and parallels and echoes the prayer of Mary and Zacharias as each of us become the bearers of the incarnate Christ through freely carrying out "Thy Will" in enacting the Kingdom of God on Earth. Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method": "Bernard Lonergan, SJ (1904 - 1984) came to see the development of a modern scholarly method for theology as one of the most pressing challenges of 20th-century C...
Dec 21, 2024•27 min•Ep 1011•Transcript available on Metacast Jordan follows Maximus argument of deification to conclude that personhood, whether divine or human is not reducible or achievable apart from the reality of the person of Christ (in contradistinction from the work of David Bentley Hart's syllogistic understanding). (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method": "Bernard Lonergan, SJ (1904 - 1984) came to see the development of a modern scholarly method for theology as one of the most pressing challenges of 2...
Dec 16, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Ep 1010•Transcript available on Metacast Human conceptuality and understanding is limited by binaries, differences and irresolvable dualisms, but Paul describes the synthesizing work of Christ as a knowledge exceeding human conceptuality. (Sign up for the upcoming class, "Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method": "Bernard Lonergan, SJ (1904 - 1984) came to see the development of a modern scholarly method for theology as one of the most pressing challenges of 20th-century Christian thought. This course follows how Lonergan's vi...
Dec 14, 2024•24 min•Ep 1009•Transcript available on Metacast Jordan Wood lays out Maximus explanation of the Lord's Prayer, which not only explains how prayer can both seek action from God and change the one praying, but accords with the logic of creation as incarnation. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!
Dec 09, 2024•56 min•Ep 1008•Transcript available on Metacast Jordan Wood addresses the determinate good and love of Christ, in contrast to abstractions, and addresses the Neo-Platonism of Hart and Milbank, and the true orthodoxy of Hegel, as opposed to the received neo-Kantianism of Lonergan. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!...
Dec 07, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep 1007•Transcript available on Metacast Jordan Wood, in part two of a three part series on Maximus' Mystagogia, describes the paradoxical relationship between church and world, soul and body, idealism and realism, the apophatic and cataphatic, and creation and incarnation, demonstrating that these independent realms are integrated and interdependent. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!...
Dec 02, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep 1006•Transcript available on Metacast In Romans 13:1, it was under the darkest of circumstances that Paul outlined the responsibility of Christians to the state. In light of the fact that Jesus has been slain and Paul himself will shortly be murdered, Christians can defeat the powers through the same revolutionary subordination, defeating death (the power of this world's kingdoms) and establishing a resurrection Kingdom through the particular form of Christian civil disobedience. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating...
Nov 30, 2024•27 min•Ep 1005•Transcript available on Metacast Jordan Wood introduces the alternative logic of the incarnation in which the symbol is the symbolized, and usual modes of ordering cause and effect and time and eternity, the apophatic and cataphatic, or the Platonic and Aristotelian are surpassed. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!...
Nov 25, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep 1004•Transcript available on Metacast The two on the Road to Emmaus, illustrate that the embodied, the fleshly, the historical, the scriptural is inadequate in recognizing Christ. To be stuck with the literal, which describes this theological/political moment in the United States, can be likened (according to Maximus and Origen) to being consumed by fleshly desire, while desire directed to God in Christ is infinitely stretched out. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!...
Nov 23, 2024•28 min•Ep 1003•Transcript available on Metacast Jordan Wood answers a series of questions concerning how Christ is to be conceived in regard to hierarchy, lower and higher, cause and effect, and Jordan depicts his embrace and occupation of the inside and outside of hierarchical order. He also discusses contemporary issues of biblical interpretation concerning the body and sexuality and how conscience and progress are to be applied to Bible reading. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!...
Nov 18, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep 1002•Transcript available on Metacast Christ precedes and makes possible the fact of Scripture, both in its writing and formation, but also in the continuing reading and exegesis of Scripture. This fact is the unifying center of the faith, in answer to the multiplicities of Christian faiths now exposed in this politic moment, pointing to a deep theological crisis. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!...
Nov 16, 2024•28 min•Ep 1001•Transcript available on Metacast In this discussion of Maximus' paradoxical view of the space and time bending elements of the Word/Scripture as the continuation of incarnation, Scripture is set in the context of Christ as Word - the Word incorporating and incorporated into all things. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!...
Nov 11, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep 1000•Transcript available on Metacast This sermon on coming to Christ outside the city (Hebrews 13:12-14) traces the inevitable collapse of every civilization, and the attempt of Republican politicians such as JD Vance, Josh Hawley, and Donald Trump, and cultural warriors like Jordan Peterson and Peter Thiel, to weaponize Christianity to aid in civilizational war is equated with the offer of the Devil to Christ. This is a paraphrasing and reapplication of the important talk of Paul Kingsnorth in a talk at First Things. If you enjoye...
Nov 09, 2024•29 min•Ep 999•Transcript available on Metacast Maximus, unlike N. T. Wright or Peter Enns but like Origen and the Apostles, equates Scripture with the body, soul, and spirit of Christ, treating the inspiration of Scripture as continuing to occur through Christ, and not through the letter. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work. Become a Patron!...
Nov 04, 2024•1 hr•Ep 998•Transcript available on Metacast 
