Did the Early Church Invent Jesus’ Divinity After the Fact?

Over at BibleGateway is a interview I did with Emily Varner about Bart Ehrman, Jesus’ divinity, and the New Testament.

Here’s a teaser:

EV: How would you respond if someone said, “Doesn’t this discussion just boil down to faith (‘just trust the church teaching’) or respect for the Bible (‘the Bible says it, that settles it’)”?

MB: Well, yes, in one sense, you either believe the church’s testimony or you don’t. The important question is, however, what does the church’s testimony about Jesus found in Scripture actually say? Ehrman and friends think that it does not give a clear or consistent presentation of his divine nature, but ebbs and flows over different ways of identifying him as divine in vague or incomplete senses, and the NT language about Jesus has been largely misread or misunderstood. Okay, maybe some good points are scored by Ehrman here and there, but for the most part, we are not convinced by the evidence or the reasons that Ehrman provides for thinking that Jesus was “divine” in the senses that Ehrman maps onto the various books of the New Testament.