Michael Kruger, president of the Charlotte campus of the Reformed Theological Seminary and preeminent scholar of early Christianity, joins us to talk about the reliability of the copies and the canon of the New Testament.
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Garrick Bailey and Timothy Paul Jones: Good Times with the End Times (Part 1) + “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” (R.E.M.)
It’s eschatology and R.E.M. in part one of this two-part almost-the-end-of-the-season mega-episode. The topic is the end times. After discussing some of the greatest apocalyptic tunes in the history of rock and roll, your intrepid cohosts settle on a 1987 hit from R.E.M., “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine).”
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Food Trucks in Babylon: Moral Apologetics, Prayer, and the Impassibility of God
A few months ago, one of our most faithful listeners and favorite supporters Tanner Billson asked a question about apologetics and the impassibility of God. It was a difficult dilemma, so Garrick and Timothy headed to the best place in the world to determine how to deal with difficult dilemmas: superhero comics. That’s because, in […]
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Garrick Bailey and Timothy Paul Jones: The Evidential Problem of Evil + “God’s Love” (Bad Religion)
In the previous episode, Garrick and Timothy debunked the logical problem of evil. But dealing with the problem of evil requires far more than mere logic! The problem of evil also calls for a close examination whether or not the overwhelming amount of evil in the world might make God’s existence unlikely. That brings your […]
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Apologetics: Were the Gospels Meant to Be Taken as Historical Testimony?
How do we know if the testimonies preserved about Jesus in the New Testament Gospels were intended to be taken as historical testimony in the first place? It is possible, after all, that the Gospels that came to be included in the New Testament were never meant to describe actual occurrences. Perhaps they were written […]
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Josh Chatraw: The Apologetics of Blaise Pascal + “Superstition” (Stevie Wonder)
Faith happens, and this week’s episode of Three Chords and the Truth: The Apologetics Podcast is all about how faith happens. In the first half, Garrick and Timothy are joined by Josh Chatraw, the apologist extraordinaire who has been freshly forgiven for his many missteps when it comes to being conversant in the art of […]
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Apologetics: Were the Stories of Jesus Based on Pagan Parallels?
Pagan parallels to Christianity! Is it possible, as some people claim, that the stories of Jesus were based on Pagan myths? It’s an accusation that’s been around a long time. Even in ancient times, critics of Christianity noticed some parallels between Christian beliefs and pre-Christian myths. In the late second century, a philosopher named Celsus charged, “The […]
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Apologetics: Which Canon Contains the Right Books?
Believing What Jesus Believed About the Old Testament Canon Different communities of people who call themselves Christians use different Old Testaments. Here’s what I mean: Everyone agrees about thirty-nine of the texts in the Old Testament, but—if you attended Mass in a Roman Catholic congregation this weekend—the Old Testament readings would come from a canon […]
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Apologetics: Did Cornelius Van Til Really Teach that Non-Christians Know Nothing?
I am not a Van Tilian presuppositionalist, though I am sympathetic with certain aspects of Cornelius Van Til’s approach. Over the past few years, I have—to the best of my knowledge—read every book and syllabus that Van Til wrote related to apologetics. Even after reading several thousand pages of Cornelius Van Til’s writings, I do […]
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Apologetics: Fragments of Otherwise Unknown Gospels
Gnostic Gospels and other unorthodox texts receive a lot of attention in popular media. The Gospel of Judas and the forged Gospel of Jesus’ Wife both became major news stories, for example, and a wide array of Gnostic texts are mentioned in novels like The Da Vinci Code that feed on bizarre conspiracy theories. It’s worth remembering, however, that there are […]
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Apologetics: An Overlooked Difference between the New Testament Gospels and Gnostic Gospels
Richard Bauckham points out a distinction between the New Testament Gospels and most of the Gnostic Gospels which—while rather obvious when one reads the Gnostic Gospels—is frequently overlooked: The [New Testament] Gospels are biographical narratives whereas most of the Gnostic Gospels are post-resurrection revelations. Typically in Gnostic Gospels Jesus appears to the disciples after the […]
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Apologetics: The Providence of God in Persecution
In his article “For Whom Were the Gospels Written?,” Richard Bauckham points out that a small minority group experiencing alienation and opposition in its immediate social context could compensate for its precarious minority position locally by a sense of solidarity with fellow believers elsewhere and a sense of being part of a worldwide movement destined […]
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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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Family Ministry: DiscipleGuide Church Leaders Cruise
Interested in apologetics and family ministry? If so, then you’re likely to be interested in this upcoming conference. God willing, I will be part of an experience in January 2018 that will bring together apologetics and family ministry in a way that will equip you and your church’s staff for far more effective future ministry.
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Blog: Most-Read Posts of 2016 and Plans for 2017
Around twenty-seven thousand people racked up nearly one hundred thousand views of this blog in 2016. If you were one of them, thank you! Since there are no advertisements on my site, I don’t profit from any of the content. And so, if you’ve profited from what I’ve written, please consider purchasing a book (or two […]
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Culture: Iron Man 2 and the Metanarrative of God
This exploration of Iron Man 2 is the fourth in a series of posts exploring theological themes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You can find the rest of the series here. I recommend using VidAngel to filter the content of this film for your family. Every part of Tony Stark seems to have been forged in […]
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Apologetics: Was Jesus Married?
Ariel Sabar, writing for The Atlantic, has presented clear and convincing evidence that the so-called Gospel of Jesus’ Wife is a forgery. Dr. Karen King unveiled the fragment in 2012 and suggested that the Coptic text came from a fourth-century copy of an otherwise-unknown second-century Gospel. The clause that gave the fragment its name was found […]
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Apologetics: Early Testimonies about the New Testament Gospels
In an earlier blog post, I explored the evidence that the four New Testament Gospels were linked with the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John from the time they first began to circulate in the churches. In this post, I want to dig a bit deeper into specific first- and second-century testimonies about the authorship of the […]
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Apologetics: Who Really Wrote the Gospels?
So who really wrote the Gospels? How do we know that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John dictated the books that bear their names? According to skeptics, these four first-century personalities had little or nothing to do with the four New Testament Gospels. One scholar of the more skeptical sort has described the process in this way:
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Apologetics: Were the Gospels Written While the Eyewitnesses Were Still Alive?
“The four Gospels that made it into the official canon were chosen,” Richard Dawkins declares in The God Delusion, “more or less arbitrarily, out of a larger sample of at least a dozen including the Gospels of Thomas, Peter, Nicodemus, Bartholomew, and Mary Magdalene. … The Gospels that didn’t make it were omitted by…ecclesiastics perhaps because […]
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