This week’s episode covers the birth of Jesus, death, resurrection, and everything in between! It’s only a few days until Christmas 2019—a celebration which, this year, Timothy has very helpfully renamed “The Star Wars: Episode IX After Party.” At some point between now and Christmas Day, millions of people throughout the world will hear these words […]
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Dan DeWitt: Why Do the Apologetics of C.S. Lewis Matter? + “All Along the Watchtower” (U2)
Welcome to a new episode of Three Chords and the Truth: The Apologetics Podcast, with Dr. Dan DeWitt, a discussion of C.S. Lewis, and a celebration of a duo of flagrant illegalities! This episode commemorates two illegal acts, both of which were captured on tape and involved live rock and roll. The first of these […]
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Timothy Paul Jones and Garrick Bailey: Why Everyone Needs Creeds + “Where the Streets Have No Name” (U2)
Welcome to the creed episode of Three Chords and the Truth! But don’t worry: we are not talking about the band Creed. (In case you’ve forgotten, Creed was the 1990s band whose videos were filled with embarrassingly-bad CGI and with way too many scenes in which the lead vocalist apparently couldn’t keep himself from flailing […]
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Eric Johnson: How Can a Good God Allow Evil in the World? + “Free” (Stryper)
How can a good God allow so much evil and suffering in the world? And why do some people seem to suffer so much more than others? According to a recent survey of college students, the problem of evil is the question about Christianity that college students find most difficult to answer. This week, Eric […]
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Peter Gurry and Elijah Hixson: Mistakes Apologists Make About Textual Criticism + “Learning to See” (Van Halen)
Finally, it’s the long-anticipated Van Halen episode, which manages to feature not only Eddie Van Halen and Alex Van Halen but also another important Dutch-born “Van”: Reformed theologian Cornelius Van Til! Plus, New Testament textual critics Elijah Hixson and Peter Gurry are back with us to discuss the mistakes that people defending the Christian faith […]
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Peter Gurry and Elijah Hixson: Was the Bible Copied Accurately? + “You Belong to the City” (Glenn Frey)
Has the Bible been copied accurately? Skeptics such as biblical scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman have suggested that it wasn’t. According to Bart Ehrman‘s book Misquoting Jesus, it makes no sense for Christians to refer to the Bible as God’s inspired Word “because we no longer possess the words that God supposedly inspired. … All that […]
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Jonathan Pennington: What Are the New Testament Gospels and Why Should We Trust Them? + “We Are the World” (USA for Africa)
According to bestselling religious scholar Reza Aslan, the New Testament Gospels “are not, nor were they ever meant to be, a historical documentation of Jesus’s life.” The Gospels are, Aslan claims, fictional compositions from early Christians who re-imagined a Jewish revolutionary named Jesus as an ethereal Christ of faith. But is it really reasonable to read […]
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Doug Blount: What Is the Relationship Between Evidence and Faith? + “Jack and Diane” (John Cougar Mellencamp)
“Faith is,” according to Christopher Hitchens, “the surrender of reason.” But is faith actually the antithesis of reason and evidence? That’s the question Garrick and Timothy explore in the first half of this week’s episode with Doug Blount, who completed master’s and doctoral degrees in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, an institution that may be found—according to some reports—within the borders of Indiana.
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Grady Adkins and Joshua Swindall: What Christian Beliefs Do College Students Struggle to Defend? + “Don’t Stop Believin'” (Journey)
In this special back-to-school episode, Garrick Bailey and Timothy Paul Jones are joined by Dr. Grady Adkins and Dr. Joshua Swindall, two researchers who have spent the past year exploring which specific Christian beliefs are the most difficult for college students to believe and to defend.
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Timothy Paul Jones and Garrick Bailey: Three Chords and the Truth Live with Five Oaks Church
In this special episode of Three Chords and the Truth: The Apologetics Podcast, Timothy Paul Jones and Garrick Bailey join the student ministry at Five Oaks Church, a radical band of young believers who gather near the metropolis of Minneapolis in the wild and crazy land of Minnesota. Students from Five Oaks Church ask questions […]
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Sean McDowell: Did the Apostles Really Die for Their Faith? + “Dust in the Wind” (Kansas)
One of the strongest evidences for the truth of the resurrection of Jesus is the martyrdom of his apostles in the decades that followed his death–or at least that’s what many Christian apologists have claimed. But is this claim sustainable on the basis of historical evidence? Did nearly all of the first followers of Jesus […]
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Sean McDowell: Resurrection, Sacrifice, and Why Sean McDowell Didn’t Love Avengers: Endgame + “Hotel California” (The Eagles)
Sean McDowell joins Garrick and Timothy to talk about love, sacrifice, superheroes, and resurrection. Then, Garrick and Timothy go looking for transcendent truth in the Grammy Award-winning classic “Hotel California.” Along the way, they talk about Sehnsucht, plagiarism, and that one time when Timothy was looking for the founder of the Church of Satan but couldn’t find him.
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Timothy Paul Jones and Garrick Bailey: Three Chords Goes to the Movies: Avengers: Endgame
In the 1960s, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby began creating comic book storylines that were interconnected in a shared universe and told a single story through many individual stories. In the early twenty-first century, that’s what Marvel Studios decided to do through the films that became the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The first of these films was released in 2008. Now—eleven years and twenty-two films later—all of these storylines have culminated in a single film, Avengers: Endgame. In this special episode of Three Chords and the Truth, Garrick Bailey and Timothy Paul Jones take a careful look at Avengers: Endgame.
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Rob Plummer: How Did Judas Iscariot Really Die? + “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” (Blue Öyster Cult)
One of the most difficult dilemmas in the entire Bible has to do with how Judas Iscariot actually died. According to Matthew’s Gospel, Judas Iscariot hanged himself, and priests purchased the field where he died for 30 pieces of silver. But, according to the book of Acts, Judas fell headfirst in a field that he had acquired and his intestines burst out. So which is it, and what does this mean for how we read the New Testament? Today, in the Three Chords segment of the program, Dr. Robert Plummer joins Timothy and Garrick to discuss the fate of Judas Iscariot. In the Truth segment, your intrepid cohosts discuss a Christian theology of death by examining “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” by the Blue Öyster Cult.
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Tom Schreiner: The Earliest Christian Confession about the Resurrection + “Cat’s in the Cradle” (Harry Chapin)
Was Jesus really raised from the dead? Every aspect of the Christian faith hinges on this single claim. If Jesus was raised from the dead, something divine has intersected human history in the person of Jesus. If Jesus never existed or if he stayed dead, everything about the Christian faith is a lie. On this Holy Week episode of Three Chords and the Truth, New Testament scholar Dr. Thomas Schreiner joins Garrick and Timothy to talk about what Paul says about the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15.
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Rob Plummer: Are There Historical Evidences of Supernatural Signs On the Day that Jesus Died? + “American Pie” (Don McLean)
According to the New Testament Gospels, the death of Jesus was accompanied by all sorts of signs and wonders, including supernatural happenings connected with the temple in Jerusalem. But is there any evidence outside the New Testament that any of these events really happened? As it turns out, there could be. That’s what Garrick and Timothy explore in this episode with renowned New Testament scholar Dr. Rob Plummer.
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Todd Miles: Jesus, Superman, Captain America, and Other Resurrected Superheroes + “The Great American Novel” (Larry Norman)
So what do Superman, Captain America, Professor X, and Jesus Christ all have in common? According to the canonical accounts of their lives, each one has been raised from the dead. So why is it that, even in fiction, humans yearn for heroes who die and return to life? That’s one of the questions that Timothy Paul Jones explores in this episode with cohost Garrick Bailey and Western Seminary professor Todd Miles, author of the B&H Academic book Superheroes Can’t Save You. Then, in the second half of the program, Garrick and Timothy go digging for God’s truth in the music of Larry Norman, the father of Christian rock.
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Timothy Paul Jones: Is There Enough Historical Evidence to Believe Jesus Was Really Raised from the Dead? + “Spirit in the Sky” (Norman Greenbaum)
Atheist Richard Dawkins has defined faith as “a state of mind that leads people to believe something—it doesn’t matter what—in the total absence of supporting evidence.” But is the evidence for Christian faith really that weak? On this week’s episode of Three Chords and the Truth: The Apologetics Podcast, bestselling apologist Timothy Paul Jones and theologian Garrick Bailey explore historical evidences for the resurrection of Jesus Christ; then, in the second half of the show, they take a look at the theology of “Spirit in the Sky.”
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Timothy Paul Jones and Garrick Bailey: The Cross and the Lynching Tree + “The Star-Spangled Banner” (Jimi Hendrix)
What happened to the body of Jesus after his death on the cross? According to the New Testament Gospels, his body was buried in a tomb and raised on the third day. And yet, according to some scholars, the body of Jesus was abandoned and consumed by wild beasts. So how do we know that Jesus was actually buried? That’s one of the questions that we’ll explore in the first half of the program. In the second half, we’ll search for truth in a song that Jimi Hendrix played at Woodstock and discover a yearning for justice that God has placed in every human heart that leads us to protest injustice. Then, we’ll reach inside the Infinity Gauntlet and pit Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters against Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
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Jonathan Pennington: Truth and Testimony in the New Testament Gospels + “All Along the Watchtower” (Jimi Hendrix)
According to bestselling biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, the New Testament Gospels “were not written … by people who were eyewitnesses, but by people living later.” Ehrman goes on to say that “sometimes Christian apologists say there are only three options to who Jesus was: a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. But there could be a fourth option—legend.” And legend is the possibility for which Ehrman argues. But is it true that the circulation of stories by word of mouth necessarily results in changes that turn testimony into legend? That’s what Timothy Paul Jones and Garrick Bailey discuss with New Testament scholar Jonathan Pennington on the Three Chords segment of the show.
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