I had a wonderful time talking with Dr. Tim McGrew, who teaches philosophy at Western Michigan University. He is also the Director of the Library of Historical Apologetics. It’s very important that we Christians think well and understand what philosophy is in order that we might become better apologists. I hope you were blessed by the wisdom that Dr. McGrew displayed in this episode. If you want to capitalize on the matching grant opportunity available to the Library AND became a sustaining monthly donor to receive a free 8 GB USB flash drive (preloaded with data from the Library) then click here.
Listen to “Episode 23: Christianity & Philosophy” on Spreaker.
Kurt: Good day to you and thanks for joining us here on another episode of Veracity Hill. I’m excited for today’s discussion. We’ll be talking about the relationship between Christianity and philosophy and a lot of people have different perspectives on us and I’m looking forward to being joined by Dr. Tim McGrew of Western Michigan University. He’s a contributor to a recent book, Four Views on Christianity and Philosophy put out by Zondervan and so I’m looking forward to getting his perspective and also to tell us a little bit about the different views as well and I’ll be sharing a little bit about my experience and my discussions with people on how they’ve understood philosophy.
I think there’s a large misconception out there about what philosophy is and so we’ll be talking about that as well, but before we get into that we’ve got a few announcements and then a brief discussion about a movie that Chris and I saw. Chris is here in the studio with me. The brief announcements. I’ve mentioned this the past couple weeks. We have a matching grant opportunity up through the month of December by a generous foundation that’s supporting Defenders Media so if you are interested in supporting the work that Defenders does and if you’re interested in supporting the work that Veracity Hill provides and does for yourself or for others, then please consider giving a donation, whether it’s a single one time or a monthly either way.
Of course, we prefer the monthly for the long-term benefits, but at this point with this matching grant opportunity, we’ll take anything that you are willing to give and what the Lord has put on your heart to give, so that’s a great opportunity to support a good Christian apologetics ministry. So we’ve got that and if you want to participate in our discussion today, you can give us a call. The number is 505-2STRIVE. That’s 505-278-7483. Also, did you know that you can text into the show? Just text the word VERACITY to the number 555-888 and once you do that, you’ll be subscribed to our list. We don’t send a text message out all that often, but it’s a great way for you to get in touch with me. You can send me questions that you may have or topic or guest requests. Again, that’s the word VERACITY to 555-888.
Discussion about Rogue One. Chris.
Chris: Yes.
Kurt: We saw this fantastic film. Yes. If you’re listening here, this is hopefully going to be a spoiler-free brief discussion about Rogue One, because we don’t want to spoil any of the good stuff.
Chris: Of course not.
Kurt: You are a bigger Star Wars fan than I am. Fan which is the short form of the word fanatic.
Chris: Fittingly so.
Kurt: Even though I like going to the imaginary words and exploring them, you had all these characters’ names down. I just knew the one guy’s last name and I didn’t even get that right and maybe we shouldn’t spoil that, but what were your thoughts?
Chris: My initial thoughts were as a Star Wars fan, it’s a good film to go see. If you drop money on it now you’ll be pleased with what you walk away from. The film’s main purpose is to connect to the events leading up to episode IV and as you watch the film you start to realize this literally takes place hours before the opening credit roll of Star Wars Episode IV and they do a brilliant job connecting a lot of events and setting up almost everything that happens in Episode IV and some things that do happen in episode VI, however, like most of a lot of the things Abrams is involved in in some way, the first act is a little weak and it’s very chaotic…
Kurt: Yeah. As someone, I mean, you probably knew more what was going on. It was only till afterward I knew what they were trying to do, but when you’re watching it for the first time it can be confusing.
Chris: There are a bunch of characters that are introduced at the very beginning and they go through things that it seems like we’re supposed to care about, but we have no knowledge of these characters and don’t particular care about what’s happening.
Kurt: That’s a good point.
Chris: Once we get into its second and third act it’s relatively smooth sailing from there aside from some clunky writing which Star Wars fans have gotten used to overlooking by this point.
Kurt: One of my buddies, Sam, he said that it’s an amazing hour and a half film. It’s a really really good two-hour film, cause he’s talking about the first act, so now I want to get the thoughts here of a friend of mine, Mark, who does movie reviews.
Chris: Alright.
Kurt: We’ll bring him in here and get his thoughts since he had an even more critical perspective on this. Mark. Are you there?
Mark: Thanks for inviting me.
Kurt: Yeah. Of course. I figured I’d give you a heads up that we were talking about Rogue One. I know you’ve put out a blog post with your review. As we’ve mentioned this is supposed to be a brief spoiler-free discussion Mark, so as best you can without spoiling anything for people who haven’t seen it, tell us what were your thoughts about the film?
Mark: I am a Star Wars fan going back as most every nine-year-old boy. I was excited to see it and a little bit disappointed and I hope I don’t lose any friends or followers for this, but my feelings of it were it was nicely well made and stuff. They didn’t mention it was supposed to be what was called a stand alone, but they brought in a few cameos or Easter eggs if you will of characters that you’ll know, and some of them are minor which I was okay with. There were some major ones to which I was “Really? Why were they there?” and I won’t go into saying who they are, but there were also some parts where you expected to be in the Star Wars movie and it wasn’t including one very specific thing at the beginning of the movie which I won’t say…
Chris: I hear you Mark.
Mark: It ended up really making me feel a lot more upset than I thought I would be. Also to the fact that there was, the music was done for the first time not by John Williams.
Chris: That’s right.
Kurt: Michael Glacchino. Right?
Mark: Yeah. Thank you for pronouncing that name. I wasn’t going to be able to. But, yeah, and he does a fair job with the music and what not, but I mean John Williams is John Williams. There’s no one near his level of talent. So for my blog, my website which was, I do it, out of five stars I give it a 2 and a half, which isn’t necessarily saying it was bad or horrible. It’s in the middle, but if I had to pick positive or negative, it would be a slight negative as well.
Kurt: Yeah. Mark is one of those critical reviewers. What was that Mark?
Mark: I was saying it wasn’t the worst Star Wars movie I’ve ever seen. For me that’s still Episode II, but it wasn’t as good as The Force Awakens in my mind.
Kurt: I know that discussion is going on now in Social Media. Hey Mark, we’ve got to get to our next segment but thanks so much for calling in and if you want to read more about Mark’s film reviews you can go to checkmarkedfilmreviews.com. Thanks, Mark
Mark: Yes. No problem. Thank you sir. You guys have a good one.
Kurt: You too. Alright. So thank you to Mark for coming on and talking about his view on Rogue One there. He definitely has more of the critical reviews if you check out his website, but I appreciate that. It’s not just the regular website where he just says “Oh this is a great review” and he says that about any movie he sees which you certainly get that out there. For me, Chris you mentioned this, like you said it takes place in the hours preceding up to Episode IV. Now some of the things that would not be ruining the spoilers are because if you’ve seen the trailer, then you’ve seen….Darth Vader’s in the film which is great. He’s got a really good scene as well in that film, and also I put on Facebook as a joke, “Major Spoiler alert” and then I go down and I write, “They get the plans to the Death Star”, and I don’t think some people realized I was joking and of course you know they have the plans for the Death Star if you’ve seen Episode IV, so I do apologize to any people that didn’t understand that, that I was joking about that. At any rate, very good film. Yes. I haven’t staked a claim about if it’s better than The Force Awakens or not. Chris. What are your thoughts and then we’ll get to the main segment of the show.
Chris: What of them is better? I’d say it’s not as good. It’s better than Episodes I, II, and III, and what it’s supposed to do it does very well, but it suffers from some Act I problems and some clunky writing. Other than that, it’s watchable. You can spend money today and you will not be disappointed. It’ll be fine.
Kurt: Cool. Great. Awesome. So let’s move on over then to the main segment of today’s show. We are talking about Christianity and philosophy and we have the deep pleasure and those that are watching on Facebook live on our Facebook page, they can see that we have printed an image of a smiling Dr. Tim McGrew. This is something that we’re going to try doing new every week.
Chris: We’re going to have a Tim McGrew every time we have a speaker?
Kurt: Boy I wish. No. We are going to do our best to print up an image