Saturday afternoon, two nicely-dressed young men visited my house. When I came out the door, I noticed their shiny pins which read "Elder" (these guys were younger than me!). Only one did any talking; the other just nodded and smiled.They asked me if I went to church and which church that was. They informed me that they were out telling people about the Bible and their church. To this I responded that I believed that Jesus was God and that he died to save me from my sin. They smiled and said, "We have similar beliefs." I asked them directly, "Do you believe that Jesus is God?" to which they said, "Well, he is the Son of God." After pressing them for an answer, they admitted that they deny the deity of Jesus Christ. I said, "So then you are outside the boundaries of orthodox Christianity." I don't think that was the way they hoped the conversation would go, but the young fellow gamely replied that Jesus' church had become apostate around the third century and they were the remnant.
I asked them what they thought of Jesus' claims to be God, such as he makes in John 8:58. They were ready: "Jesus was claiming to be Yahweh of the Old Testament--- not to be confused with Elohim." To this, I asked them what then of the great Shemach? "Hear, O Israel, Yahweh our Elohim is one" (Deut 6:4). A little put out, he began to tell me that there was no article "in the original Greek" (I think he might have mixed up one of his standard answers there). Finally, he told me that verse meant that Jesus and God the Father were "one in purpose."
I attempted to argue theologically: if Jesus were not both God and man, he could not be our Savior. He must be man to die in my place. He must be God to die for another's sin, else he would have to die for his own. The young elder seemed unbothered by this.
Finally, I brought up John 1:1, "the Word was God." My interlocutor attempted to tell me that since the Greek article does not precede the word for God that it should be translated "the Word was a God." I cut him off and said that I had studied quite a bit of Greek and that argument held no grammatical weight at all. The Greek article does not function the way the English article does. The reason there is an article in front of logos and not in front of theos in John 1:1 is to mark which of these nominatives is the subject of the sentence, leaving the other as the predicate nominative. From his response, I gathered that he had never encountered anyone who actually knew Greek!
From there, he launched into a discussion about authority: he believed the Bible, further revelation from one of God's prophets, and what "God had showed him." I tried to establish the fact that God's revelation cannot contradict itself because of God's truth. The earnest young man affirmed this fact, and said, "The Book of Mormon does not contradict the Bible." (I knew this to be false, but didn't say anything because I really didn't have any hard evidence to back up my claim.) I really wanted to probe his authority structure. Ultimately, it was the subjective argument that he was relying on: "God showed me this was true." Whether or not it was in line with God's Word was irrelevant.
As they left, I reminded them once again that if Jesus is not God, we no longer have a Savior. His response was, "You are free to worship as you choose." As I thought about that, I wondered why they had bothered to ring my doorbell!
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