Is the author of John confused about Jesus and God? Does he think that two different beings - the Father, and the man Jesus - are numerically the same as the one true God? Some people think so; putting it gently, they talk of the "tensions" (=apparent contradictions) in the book. But is this author that confused?

Again, some think that John makes Jesus qualitatively equal to God, that is, divine in the same sense that the one God is divine. But John firmly distinguishes between Jesus and his (and our) God, and wasn't this author, and all the early Jewish Christians, monotheistic, believing in the uniqueness of YHWH, as emphatically claimed in Isaiah and Deuteronomy?

How does Dr. Ehrman read the gospel according to John in his How Jesus Became God? And what about Dr. Ehrman's claim that the authors of Matthew, Mark, and Luke considered Jesus to be a lesser god, a lower level divinity, while John has a notably "higher" christology? We discuss these questions and the topic of monotheism in this episode.

You can also listen to this episode on youtube. And here is Part 1 of the interview.