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You can find previous episodes of “The Stone Chapel Podcast” at Lanier Theological Library.
“The Stone Chapel Podcast” is part of the ChurchLeaders Podcast Network.
This episode 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-Reception 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
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
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
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.
