“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 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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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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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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