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Did the Apostles Have Doubts? with J. D. Atkins

Here is my conversation with Dr. J. D. Atkins. You can listen to the podcast here.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and space. 

J.D. Atkins 

Hello. My name is J.D. Atkins. I am Associate Professor of New Testament, Language and Literature at Tyndale Theological Seminary in the Netherlands, and I’m also the Chair of the Department of Biblical and Exegetical Studies. 

David Capes 

Dr. J.D. Atkins, J.D. good to see you. We’re glad that you’re here. You and your wife and son have been here to study and hopefully write some, think some, and read a bit. 

J.D. Atkins 

Thank you, David. It’s been a pleasure and really a privilege to be able to have access to the library and have the space to work. 

David Capes 

All right, for those who don’t know you, who is J.D. Atkins. Let’s start with that. 

J.D. Atkins 

I’m primarily a New Testament scholar, but I have a real interest in hermeneutics. I am married and I have two children, both teenage sons. One is in university and one’s in high school. We live near Amsterdam in the Netherlands, but I’m originally from the United States. 

David Capes 

Are you originally from Pennsylvania? 

J.D. Atkins 

Well, I did do my undergraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania, and then I did a Master of Divinity at Westminster Theological Seminary, which is also in Philly. I did a ThM at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I did that in New Testament, and then did my doctorate work at Marquette University. 

David Capes 

Oh, that’s a wonderful Catholic school. All right, we’re going to be looking today at your book called The Doubt of the Apostles and the Resurrection Faith of the Early Church. The subtitle is The Post Resurrection Appearance Stories of the Gospels in Ancient Reception and Modern Debate, published in the Wissenshaft zum Neuen Testament Series (J. C. B. Mohr, 2019). I say to all my students, that good books have big ideas. What’s the big idea of this book? 

J.D. Atkins Transcribed by https://otter.ai – 2 – 

I think the main idea of the book is that I’m trying to address what I see to be a common misreading of Luke and John’s resurrection narratives. 

David Capes 

Yes, Luke 24 and John 20. 

J.D. Atkins 

That’s right. And the common reading is that these narratives were designed as an apologetic for the physicality of the resurrection, primarily in response to some sort of early docetism. Docetism is a particular type of Christology. It’s a view of Jesus that sees him as not fully human, maybe even not human at all. There’s quite a variety in ancient Docetisms. There’s a lot of early heresies that were tied to groups that were called Docetists. And other groups that were called Gnostics. They had some common themes, which were that Jesus either was not fully human in his birth, meaning that he was just a spirit walking around as an illusion in a sense. Or some challenged docetism, more at the place of the crucifixion. The issue was: did Jesus really die on the cross? 

David Capes 

Did he really suffer? 

J.D. Atkins 

Did he really suffer? Some would say that Jesus didn’t really die on the cross. In fact, he switched places with someone else. That was one docetic view. Another docetic view was that Jesus, the man, died on the cross, but Christ was a separate person, a spirit that possessed Jesus and then left him before the cross so that Christ then doesn’t suffer. 

David Capes 

And so they often would say that the Christ Spirit comes on Him at His baptism. 

J.D. Atkins 

That’s right. That’s right. The same group was usually saying that this Christ Spirit comes on him at baptism and then leaves him just before or right at the crucifixion. 

David Capes 

“My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?” In one early account he said, “My power, my power, why have you left me?” 

J.D. Atkins 

Yes, there’s various different options. 

David Capes 

So Docetism is a type of Christology that is going to be rejected by the Church eventually as being heretical. 

J.D. Atkins Transcribed by https://otter.ai – 3 – 

Yes, that’s right. And there was another variety of Docetism where people would see the resurrection accounts of Jesus in a docetic manner. In other words, they would say that Jesus didn’t really appear in flesh and bone, as Luke would say, or that he didn’t really eat fish. Or he couldn’t really be touched, the way both Luke and John imply. They’re all interrelated. The Docetics were motivated in some ways, again, by their own worldview. Which was oftentimes influenced more by Greek philosophy, which viewed salvation as escape from the body. And they didn’t like the idea of returning to the body and resurrection as an idea of salvation, because the body is negative, evil, a place of corruption, weakness and pain. 

David Capes 

Right. And the whole idea of materiality, anything material was subject to decay. Every material thing decays. And that includes me, my physical body, at least. The idea is just to escape this body, because there’s a spiritual part of me that is not necessarily connected to the body. That’s very different than what we find in the New Testament. 

J.D. Atkins 

Exactly. The New Testament describes Jesus having flesh and bone in his resurrection. Paul, in Romans 8 says God will give life to your mortal bodies. When you get to Paul, and actually in the gospels as well, you get a sense that Jesus is more than physical. But he is physical. His risen body is physical. But it is more than physical. It can disappear and appear out of nowhere. It can also show up in a locked room. 

David Capes 

What I hear you saying is that the gospel writers really didn’t have apologetic interest, because they’re not really dealing with docetists at that time. 

J.D. Atkins 

Well, I would say they do have an apologetic interest. But I don’t think that Luke and John are primarily making an apologetic for the physicality of the resurrection against Docetists. What I argue in the book is that Luke and John’s apologetic, if they have one, is actually more of an apologetic regarding the fulfillment of prophecy. As opposed to the question of, was the resurrection real, the way you see the stories go. 

If you were going to argue against a Docetists, would you have Jesus disappear in the middle of nowhere after the Emmaus disciples break bread? Would you have him disappear? Would you have him as in John’s gospel, particularly in the Thomas narrative, even though there’s a concessive participle there. Even though the doors were locked, Jesus shows up. He stands amongst them. This is the kind of thing that we find in the early docetists. They make much of these types of things, because this, to them, shows that Jesus was not real. 

David Capes 

And by real you mean he was not physical but just a spirit or a phantom? 

J.D. Atkins Transcribed by https://otter.ai – 4 – 

Exactly, but what happens in much of the scholarship today on these narratives is they see certain parallels in the early church fathers who are fighting against Docetists. Ignatius of Antioch is a key character here, because Ignatius emphasizes the physicality of the resurrection of Jesus, being touched and eating fish. In fact, I would argue that Ignatius is actually based off of Luke’s account here. 

David Capes 

So Ignatius of Antioch, who’s in the early [second] century, has a copy of Luke, or he’s read Luke, or heard Luke read somewhere. 

J.D. Atkins 

Yes. And he’s using Luke’s account. But it’s interesting because he omits certain things when he argues against the docetists. He omits, for example, the fact that Jesus appears or disappears suddenly. He omits the fact that the apostles doubted. There are other phrases and such that the docetists would pick up on that he also omits. 

One of the things that I am trying to argue in my book, is that it’s not that Luke and John with Jesus saying, touch me and eating fish and, put your finger here. Put your hands here, Thomas. Those types of emphasis on the physicality. What I’m trying to say is that that is the tradition, and what we find in the second century is Docetists and early church fathers who are fighting against docetists really having an exegetical debate over how we should interpret those passages. So in that case, it’s not Luke and John that are writing in order to counter some early docetists, but rather the early docetists that are responding to and reinterpreting the traditional accounts in Luke and John. 

David Capes 

That’s a pretty important distinction there. 

J.D. Atkins 

Yes. Part of it is a matter of sequence. What I find in my book is that the early docetists, which would include some Gnostics, because some Gnostics were also Docetists as well. These are various types of early heresies. There’s so many of them, because Irenaeus will say that they’re so popular. They pop up like mushrooms all over a field. You know, there’s always a new docetic or gnostic sect. The point is that these early readers of Luke and John, they are assuming the text is authoritative to begin with. Well, what I found in my work was that nearly all of the early docetists or Gnostics, that deal with the resurrection of Jesus, they are, in fact, dependent on one of the gospel narratives. They accept the gospel narratives as authoritative for the most part. 

David Capes 

So these Docetists and these Gnostics are looking at these texts, they believe they are authoritative, but they’re interpreting them in a different way. 

J.D. Atkins 

That’s right, yes. To give you one example, there is what is often referred to as the Ophite account. It’s in Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1.30. Ophite is a later term for the name of that Transcribed by https://otter.ai – 5 – 

sect that Irenaeus is dealing with. But that account works right through Luke’s texts from the birth narrative to the resurrection. And it just reinterprets each section of the text. What it does is: it actually uses language to say that these are the eyewitness accounts of the apostles. It affirms that. This is a heretic, affirming that, taking it as an authoritative, eyewitness account of the apostles. They treat it like scripture, but they reinterpret it. One of the reasons why they have to reinterpret it is because it’s already set as authoritative. I coined a term in my book, which is basically a new verb, “docetize”, or a new noun, “docetization”. 

David Capes 

That’s what scholars do? They just make up words! 

J.D. Atkins 

It’s an analogy with allegorization. When they had a text and they didn’t want to read it literally, then oftentimes they would allegorize. The early Gnostics, they would regularly allegorize the Old Testament and the Gospels. But docetization is similar. It’s a way of taking a text but not taking it literally. But it’s not taking it figuratively either. It’s more saying, this seemed to be the case. We get the word docetism form the Greek word dokein. Which can be translated “seems” or “appears”. They would take the narrative and say it only seemed to be this way. 

I think the Ophite account says something like Jesus Christ only seemed to be in the flesh. Or you have Justin Martyr responding to another docetic text saying, he only seemed to eat fish. Some Marcionites will say the same type of thing, because it’s already an authoritative text. You can’t get around it unless you reinterpret it. It becomes a hermeneutical, exegetical battle in the second century over Luke and John. 

David Capes 

How we take these texts. Well, I’ve got to ask about the doubt of the apostles. Because that’s the title of your book, The Doubt of the Apostles. How does the doubt of the apostles function for the docetists, and how did it function in the New Testament? 

J.D. Atkins 

I use doubt as a broader theme. There’s a number of different words that are used in the resurrection narratives, and every single one of them has it right. You have Matthew often translated, “they worshiped, but some doubted” (Matt 28:16-20). Everyone knows the Thomas story. And then, of course, there are the various places where the apostles disbelieved. In Luke 24 Jesus will also say “how foolish and slow of heart to believe”. And even the longer ending of Mark will refer to Jesus rebuking the apostles for their hardness of heart in not believing. 

You’ve got this theme that’s throughout the resurrection narratives in the Gospels. The way modern scholars read that theme is they tend to see it as an apologetic device. So modern scholars say doubt is a good thing. It means that we’re not gullible. We’re not just believing anything. We demand evidence and proof before we believe. And so modern scholars say that’s what the gospel writers are doing. They’re including the doubt of the apostles in order to assure the reader that they doubted, and they still came to faith. You can trust them. Transcribed by https://otter.ai – 6 – 

Now, what I argue in my book is that while that makes sense to a modern reader, it didn’t make sense to ancient Jewish and Christian readers. In the ancient world, doubt is seen not as something that makes you wise so that you can get to certainty. Rather, doubt is seen as foolishness or as hard heartedness. We actually see this in the gospels themselves; Jesus will rebuke the Emmaus disciples for being foolish and slow of heart to believe. In the longer ending of Mark, he rebukes them for their hard heartedness. You can see it in James. The double minded man is unstable in his mind. And so, it’s actually a negative thing. 

What happens in the early church in the second century is you have two different trends of dealing with the doubt of the apostles. You have the Orthodox guys, the church fathers who are defending the faith. What they do, almost without fail, is delete the doubt. When they retell the story, they don’t even mention it. And then when you get a little bit later to folks like Origen, for example, or later with John Chrysostom, they’ll try to defend the apostles. Origen will try to explain, by saying this is why they doubted. And then John Chrysostom will say he was commenting on the “but some doubted” or “but they doubted”, depending on how you translate the verse in Matthew 28:17. And I’m paraphrasing, give the evangelists some credit. They were being honest and not hiding their faults. At one point, Augustine will even say “the disease that the lambs shudder at, the leading rams had”. It was shocking to them that the apostles would have this doubt, and disbelief. 

David Capes 

Because they’re understanding the term doubt, in a negative way. 

J.D. Atkins 

In a very negative sense, and that has a very negative connotation in the ancient world. 

David Capes 

Okay, talk about the Docetists. 

J.D. Atkins 

So the Docetists take advantage of the doubt. They would use it as an opportunity to say, you can’t really trust these disciples. You see the disciples. They saw this and they saw that, but they didn’t have the proper special revelation from Jesus at a later point that told them how to reinterpret these things. They would use the doubt as an opportunity to criticize the apostles and say that you can’t really trust these accounts, in a sense. You know, even though they were eyewitnesses. 

David Capes 

They really weren’t sure what they were saying. 

J.D. Atkins 

They really didn’t understand. They saw what they saw, but they didn’t really understand what they were seeing. What happens then is that the doubt of the apostles is actually something that satisfies what we would call “the criterion of embarrassment” in the historical Jesus studies. In the sense that the evangelists include it, despite the fact that it would cause problems. And it did cause problems. And so actually, much like today, we see that the women Transcribed by https://otter.ai – 7 – 

were the first to see the empty tomb and the first to see the risen Jesus, and we say, nobody would make that up in the ancient world. 

David Capes 

Because women we’re not considered trustworthy themselves. 

J.D. Atkins 

Yes. In the ancient world, because of the culture, their witness wasn’t considered as valid. And so, the evangelists certainly didn’t make that up in the similar way. What I argue at the end of my book, in the last chapter, is that the doubt of the apostles functions similarly. That’s also something that the evangelist would never have made up, because it would only lead to more problems. 

David Capes 

It’s a little bit embarrassing that the heroes of the story just don’t quite get it, or they’re not really sure. And you wouldn’t make up that kind of thing. It’s part of the authenticity, I think, of the story. 

J.D. Atkins 

Yes. And funny enough, aside from Thomas, none of the apostles are explicitly said to believe. Obviously, you can infer that they did believe. 

David Capes 

But other than Thomas, who said “My Lord and my God”. 

J.D. Atkins 

Yes! And his Christology is right. And when Jesus responds to him, there’s the question. Jesus responds and says, you believe because you have seen. Blessed are those, that believe, though they haven’t seen. So even Thomas’ belief, Jesus was a little bit critical of it. 

David Capes 

It’s a fascinating book. It’s entitled The Doubt of the Apostles and the Resurrection Faith of the Early Church. Subtitled The Post Resurrection Appearance Stories of The Gospels in Ancient Reception and Modern Debate. J.D. Atkins, thanks for being with us today on The Stone Chapel Podcast. 

J.D. Atkins 

Thank you for having me. 

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Here is a transcript of my conversation with Karl Johnson. You can hear the podcast here.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and space.

Carl Johnson  

This is Carl Johnson. I’m the Executive Director of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers.

David Capes  

Dr Carl Johnson, good to see you. Welcome to The Stone Chapel Podcast.

Carl Johnson  

Thank you. It’s great to be here with you, David.

David Capes  

We are here face to face, and that’s always better. I like it when that happens. We’re going to talk about Christian study centers here in just a few minutes. But before that, let’s talk about you. For those who don’t know you, who is Carl Johnson.

Carl Johnson  

Well, a brief way to put it is, I am an accidental Christian educator. I never, never imagined I would be doing what I’m doing now. I’m from the metro New York area. I went to Cornell University, and I had a career in outdoor adventure education. So, I was teaching rock-climbing, white-water paddling, back country travel, wilderness medicine, climbing big mountains internationally. And it was great. I mean, who doesn’t enjoy that sort of thing, right? But somewhere in my 30s, I was at the university, and I got to thinking, the university can hire somebody else to do what I’m doing here. I also have this itch to start a new kind of organization that bridges the gap between the church and the Academy and brings a Christian intellectual presence to the secular university. The university is not going to hire somebody else to do that. And so ,I need to do it.

David Capes  

So you were the guy. It sounds like you sensed a call.

Carl Johnson  

Yes. I sensed a call. Pulled together a group of pastors and professors. I said, here’s what’s burning in my heart. I don’t know if it’s a crazy idea or not. What do you all think? And they said, we think we should do it. This was back in the late 90s, early 2000s.

David Capes  

There are a lot of people today who are concerned about what’s happening in higher ed. And particularly if they send their sons or daughters off to places like Cornell, will they come back with any faith intact at all, or will it be dashed on the rocks.

Carl Johnson  

Yes, this is a question that people have been asking me for about 25 years or more. There’s not an easy answer to that. There are real challenges with secular universities. I think we want to steer a middle course between not underestimating these sorts of concerns, but also not overstating them. Probably the most important thing I can say, is that right now, I think it’s actually a better time to attend secular universities for Christian students than a generation ago.

David Capes  

Really now, why do you say that?

Carl Johnson  

There’s more vibrant Christian intellectual activity on many of our campuses and more resources. And I think part of the change is this. A few generations ago, the difference that it made being a Christian on a campus where there was a greater cultural consensus around certain sorts of issues, the difference wasn’t as stark. Then you get into the post 60s. That’s when those who were in graduate school in the 60s became professors say, in the 80s. That might have been a kind of peak secular moment around that time. 

But then in the 90s, Christians start finding their voice, their scholarly voice. And there’s a whole renaissance of Christian scholarship and philosophy and history that began trickling over to other disciplines. Christian professors start having fellowships and organizations where they’re convening association of Christian economists and so forth, where they become more comfortable speaking in a Christian voice. Now you go to some campuses, and you have not just the traditional campus fellowship ministries that have been there for a long time, but you also have on at least three dozen campuses now, these Christian study centers. Which typically have a building that provides a physical hub for the Christian community on campus. And you’ve got students involved in all those fellowships, coming and going, coming and going with the door swinging thousands of times a week. Some of them even have residential facilities. 

There’s this visible hub of Christian intellectual activity on these campuses. And there’s speaker series that are coming in monthly or more. Christian professors, some from Christian colleges, some from other secular universities, Veritas Forums and other events that are just giving students plenty of reason. A generation ago, students would go to campus and they have this crisis of faith. Oh, it looks like all the smart people here, all the professors and most of the other students are not believers. And it’s just not like that anymore. Now, there’s so much visible Christian intellectual activity on many campuses, though not on every campus. So, I say it’s actually a better time than it was a generation ago.

David Capes  

That’s great to hear. When you “heard” this call was the Christian Study Center movement up and running?

Carl Johnson  

Not really. When this idea started burning in my heart there were important intellectual questions that it’s hard to get an answer for either from the church or the university. Because pastors are very busy with other sorts of things or because the university is often just so secular and the faculty members, frankly, are so very specialized that they often are not very well equipped to deal with broad questions of meaning and purpose in the good life.  

But these things were burning in me and I started talking to people. Finally, somebody said, you should take a look at what’s happening in Charlottesville, Virginia, because there’s this thing there. It’s called the Center for Christian study. And so, I wrote a letter to the director, and he wrote back, sent me some of their materials, and I saw what they were doing with this public speaker series. I thought, wow, that’s incredibly exciting. I want to do something like that. 

And at the very same time, I drove from Ithaca down to New Haven for one of the very first Veritas Forum events. And I heard this whole lineup of speakers that included people like N. T. Wright, who at that time nobody had really heard of. He was a much younger guy at that time, as we all were, and so I got this vision of Christian scholarship. I pulled together these pastors and professors, and I said, hey, let’s do something. Let’s create a new organization and bring in visiting Christian scholars. 

But at that time, we’re talking late 90s, early 2000s there was really only one very well established Christian Study Center in Charlottesville. And then there were, a few other very fledgling centers. And so, I started one at Cornell. At that time, I would say, in the early 2000s there was one big center and a handful of others. And in 2007 I invited all the folks I knew doing similar work up to Ithaca for a long weekend. We put our heads together, and we’ve resolved to form what is now the consortium of Christian Study Centers. And in our first year, we had half a dozen member centers. 

2008 was when we incorporated. The first little get together that I referred to was in 2007 and in 2009 we’ve got a full-time director, Drew Trotter. Over the years, we’ve grown from that original half dozen member centers to now three dozen, and we’ve got another dozen that are in the startup phase. 

David Capes  

The goal is to be on secular university campuses, right?

Carl Johnson  

That’s the concept, yes.

David Capes  

How does your organization exist alongside of InterVarsity and maybe the Catholic Newman Centers and those kinds of things? 

Carl Johnson  

What we’re seeking for is a very collaborative relationship with the campus ministry ecosystem. And I’ll just use a concrete illustration of what that can look like in practice. When I was on the Cornell campus working in outdoor education back in the 90s, there were probably a dozen or more campus fellowship organizations, and they would occasionally bring in a visiting speaker, and I would sometimes go to hear the speakers. They would usually have 30 or 40 students in attendance, because it was just the students in that organization that would come to hear the speaker. I started networking with the campus minister saying, hey, let’s work together. If one of us is going to bring in a speaker, let’s all co-sponsor and make it a campus wide event. We started doing that, and the attendance increased tenfold. We started getting 300-400 people showing up at events. And it wasn’t really rocket-science. All these students were already there on campus. 

David Capes  

It was just a matter of using a university facility.

Carl Johnson  

Yes. We’re on campus for these events. Part of the origin of the center that I started was, in fact, collaboration. That’s part of the DNA of the organization. And now that most of our centers have buildings, we try to let our buildings be a resource that helps all those other organizations advance their mission and their ministry. We have libraries that are available for them to use, whether it’s for Bible study prep or something else. We have meeting space for them to use, which is increasingly important, because some organizations are actually getting kicked off campus, and it’s harder to have access to space on campus for certain ministers. Providing a space, you know, is a value. We like to say, we gather, we serve and we unify the campus ministry organizations on a weekly basis.

David Capes  

What would the ministry look like on a weekend when you don’t have a big speaker? Are students coming and going and are there other meetings going on? How does that work?

Carl Johnson  

Yes, t varies a little bit from one campus and one center to another. Many of our centers now have what we call fellows programs. These are cohorts of students that commit to meeting together over the course of usually a semester or a year to go through some sort of a great books type curriculum. They are reading certain books and articles together and discussing them. So it might be every Sunday evening or every Monday evening for a semester or for the year, and some of our centers are now sufficiently built out that they’ve developed that curriculum over not just two or three years, but even four years. 

It really ends up adding up to something like a Christian liberal arts education that’s getting layered on top of whatever their major is. And many, many, many students these days are in the STEM disciplines, right? And we’re at a lot of state universities. There are big engineering schools and whatnot. My own son is at Cornell, studying engineering, and he’s involved in the center there, and he’s getting a pretty good liberal arts education layered on top of his technical training. So, the Fellows program is a key aspect of what we do, because there’s sustained, ongoing, formative impact on the students. 

But then there are other sorts of discussion groups and movie nights that might be one off sorts of things we do, a lot of public reading of Scripture events on some campuses. My successor at the Cornell center does this thing every fall where he gets some food trucks and they read an entire Gospel, say the Gospel of Mark out loud, out on the patio. And they’ll have over 100 students come and just sit just in silence while they listen to the entire book of Mark being read out loud. 

David Capes  

It’s like the way Mark wrote it, not verse by verse, but the whole thing.

Carl Johnson  

Right, exactly! It’s almost like this ancient monastic practice that’s getting reincorporated into the modern secular universities, with food trucks.

David Capes  

I love it. That’s exciting. You’re heading off to Singapore. Is this becoming an international thing, or is it mainly North America? What’s the geographic?

Carl Johnson  

Yes, I am. It’s mainly North America. I get a fair number of calls and inquiries from folks in other countries, and there are a few fledgling Christian study centers in other countries that are modeled after what they see happening here in North America. There are challenges to getting these centers established in other countries. One aspect of that is financial, and then there’s also just networking kinds of challenges. But there’s a lot of interest out there. 

I’m going to spend an entire week in Singapore, and the purpose of the visit is three-fold. There’s a lot of Christian families in a place like Singapore who are sending their children to the United States for higher education. They’re asking the same kinds of questions that you were asking earlier. What happens if I send my kids to these institutions? What are the opportunities there? How concerned should I be? I’m going over to let them know what the landscape looks like here and what the opportunities are. 

But then the other part of it is to let them know more about this model and to let them figure out what if any implications it may have for their local context. For example, in Germany, there’s now several of these small Christian study centers. And one of the reasons is precisely that the theological seminaries are not flourishing. As they shrink and die, the Christians who are there are very concerned about what is the future of Christian education in our country? And where can we provide theological training for future pastors as well as lay persons? And so the question arises, well, where are the students? And in almost every country these days, the answer is, they’re at the state funded universities. That’s where the overwhelming number of students are, and so it makes sense for Christian organizations to essentially set up camp where the students already are and to provide some education and training opportunities right there.

David Capes  

So a freshman student arrives on campus in the fall. How does he find you?

Carl Johnson  

Well, these days, if they’re looking, it’s not hard. With all the online searches, an awful lot of the students will find these centers before they arrive.

David Capes  

So they already know it exists. 

Carl Johnson  

Exactly. It’s not that hard. Many of the centers also run a 24- or 48-hour pre-orientation retreat, so that students can actually arrive a day or two early. They might be in a group with anywhere from a couple dozen or even more than 100 other students that they can get to know so they have some semblance of Christian community with other students in their class before orientation kicks in. But we can also mix in some upper-classmen Christian students to provide them with a little bit of here’s how life works at this university. We bring in a couple of Christian faculty members to give some brief talks. Yes, there are Christians here on the faculty, even though we don’t always speak in a Christian voice. So you might not know that, but yes, we’re here. We bring in a few pastors to give some short talks, to let them know about their local churches, and extend an invitation to join them for Sunday worship. And so by the time orientation begins, the incoming students have met other fellow first year students, upper class Christian students, Christian faculty members and local pastors.

David Capes  

That’s a great strategy. This is bound to cost a lot of money. I’m thinking about the buildings right next to a place like University of Virginia or Cornell. How is all this funded?

Carl Johnson  

Mostly from alumni, parents secondly, and there’s occasionally, a few foundation grants that will help with a particular project, here and there. But it’s individual donors, mostly alumni and parents. And it’s not impossible to kick things off in a very bootstrapped kind of a way. That’s certainly the way I did things, back in the day. And we would just have faculty members and parents doing talks on faith and vocation, and I would interview them, and students would come out and listen. You do what you can with the resources that you have. 

But yes, it’s true, especially once you get into buildings, it requires a lot more resources, millions of dollars, to be sure. One of the reasons, among others, that I’m enthusiastic and even bullish on this movement is precisely because there’s a business model that works pretty well. One aspect of that is that, depending on the building you have, the buildings themselves can generate revenue. The ministry that I started, we purchased two large Greek houses that each have about 20 residents, so now we have 40 residents paying rent to the ministry. And we purchased the building outright with money that was donated. And we don’t pay tax, because we’re a non-profit organization, so we’re not paying property tax. 

So all of that revenue is funding ministry staff who are ministering to the student residents. You know, it’s what I tell the donors. It’s like a double return on investment. Because if you put all that money in an endowment account, you put a million dollars in an endowment account. You might get $80,000 a year, or something like that. Now we get that much money in rent for every million dollars of equity in the house, and that rent is going directly to support the staff who are serving the students who are living in the asset. It’s really a remarkable model. And then some of the centers have commercial real estate. In Florida, there’s this very, very well built out coffee house, Pascal’s Coffee House as part of the Center at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Up in Minnesota, Anselm house, they’ve purchased a building that has 70,000 square feet, and the majority of it is rented out to commercial organizations that are paying rent supporting the ministry. So there’s all kinds of opportunities here, I think, even on the building front, for the ministries to become sustainable as a byproduct of getting into real estate.

David Capes  

That’s an exciting kind of project that you’re helping to lead right now. You estimate that there are about three dozen centers. Do you see that growing?

Carl Johnson  

Absolutely. I get more inquiries all the time. In the month of December, I think I received about 10 inquiries through our website from people saying, I would like to start a study center on such and such a campus. I received another one yesterday. I mean, these things are coming in as fast, almost faster than we can respond to them. It’s really incredible. But there are very healthy startup efforts at UCLA, in particular right now. It’s one that I’m watching. We have inquiries from some other well-known universities, and then there are some other universities that are not as well known. But that’s one of the signs of the spread of the movement, is it’s not just the campuses with 1000s of students and big resources and big recognizable names. Sometimes I get inquiries from institutions, and I have to look them up to see where they are. I’m not familiar with them, but you know, the persons inquiring have been exposed to the movement at one of the larger campuses. 

David Capes  

I think parents who hear this, grandparents who hear this, might be encouraged and not so discouraged from sending their sons and daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, off to a well-known university because they know that they can find Christian community, Christian Fellowship, Christian teaching, and maybe even almost like a liberal arts degree in Christian theology there. This is a great movement’

Carl Johnson  

I’ll say, for the record, I want it to be known. I’m a huge fan of Christian colleges. My wife, Julie, and I have five children, we sent three of them to Christian colleges and two of them to secular universities. When people ask me, what’s the better route to go, my answer is, there is no one right answer. It depends on the child, their interests and the opportunities that are before them. 

We’ve had students come to some of the universities where we have centers, and they said, well, actually, my first choice was a Christian college, but I got so much more financial aid here that I didn’t really have a choice. I had to come here. But now that I’m here, I’m happy that I’m here, because I didn’t know there were all these opportunities for Christian learning here. But the bottom line, reality is that approximately 80% of students from Christian homes and families attend secular universities. That’s just the way the numbers work, and so I think it’s important in the broadest sense of church strategy. If we want to serve the next generation, we need to be thinking about, what are we doing for the Christian students at secular universities. And of course, it’s not just the Christian students. I mean, we’re doing a lot of public events as well.

David Capes  

Some non-Christian students become Christians. I’ve talked to so many people who became Christians in college.

Carl Johnson  

Absolutely, it’s a very incredible time.

David Capes  

And a lot of that has to do with movements like the Christian Studies Center Movement.

Carl Johnson  

Yes, absolutely.

David Capes  

Carl Johnson, thanks for being with us today on The Stone Chapel Podcast. 

Carl Johnson  

Thank you, David.

Description 

TSCP 284 Staying Christian in College with Carl Johnson

Many parents (and grandparents) are concerned to send their sons and daughters off to secular colleges because they may lose their faith.  But Carl Johnson, Executive Director of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers, thinks this is a good time to send them to them to certain elite universities.  Why?  Well keep listening and you’ll find out. 

The Stone Chapel Podcast is part of the Church Leaders Podcast Network. 

For more information about the Christian Study Centers see their website: https://cscmovement.org/

The Stone Chape Podcast is created and produced by the Lanier Theological Library and Learning Center in Houston, TX. 

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What Is the Gospel? with Jason Maston

To hear the podcast click here.

Internet debates sometimes make it into published, academic or popular books. On this episode, I talk with Jason Maston about a book he and Michael Bird edited: “Five Views on the Gospel” (Zondervan Academic, 2025). Every Christian who listens to this episode will find themselves represented in the discussion. And if you listen carefully, you may learn something new.

“The Stone Chapel Podcast” is part of the ChurchLeaders Podcast Network.

For a transcript of this episode put this URL in your browser: https://churchleaders.com/podcast-episode/stone-chapel-gospel-jason-maston
This podcast is about 22 minutes in length.

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Not Every Woman at the Party is a Concubine with Aubrey Buster

To hear the podcast click here.

Daniel 5:2, within the Aramaic portion of Daniel, has always been taken to refer to the king, his nobles, his wives, and his concubines, but a fresh look at the Aramaic and its context suggests that the last were female officials, not concubines. Dr. Aubrey Buster, who has been with us before, is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College. Her publications include Remembering the Story of Israel: Historical Summaries and Memory Formation in Second Temple Judaism. She and John Walton are co-authoring a major commentary on Daniel (NICOT). The first volume on Daniel 1-6 is due out soon.

The Exegetically Speaking podcast is about 10 minutes in length. It is a joint effort of Wheaton College and the Lanier Theological Library.

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The Riddles of Daniel with Aubrey Buster and John Walton

To hear the podcast (20 min, The Stone Chapel Podcast) click here.

Drs. Aubrey Buster and John Walton have been hard at work for seven years writing a commentary on the book of Daniel. They join David Capes on “The Stone Chapel Podcast” to talk about some of the key questions surrounding the book. Daniel is one of the most colorful books in the Old Testament. It is often misunderstood and misapplied. Buster and Walton will solve every riddle!


“The Stone Chapel Podcast” is part of the ChurchLeaders Podcast Network.
For a transcript of this episode click here: https://churchleaders.com/podcast-episode/stone-chapel-riddles-daniel-aubrey-buster-john-walton
This podcast is about 20 minutes in length.