Listening to an interview by Mark Dever with Thabiti Anyabwile, I heard Mark use an illustration that I found tremendously helpful. It relates to the question whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God under different names.
He said that we should picture two old classmates from college discussing a common friend from thirty years ago. They begin to wonder if they are talking about the same person. One of them is convinced they are, and the other keeps thinking this is not quite the way he remembers the friend. Finally, they decide to dig out an old yearbook and settle the issue. They open the book, and as soon as they see the picture of their classmate, one says, “No, that’s not who I am talking about.” So it was not the same person after all.
Mark said that Jesus, as he is revealed in the Bible, is the picture in the yearbook. When a Muslim and a Christian, who have been discussing whether they are worshiping the same God, look at God in the yearbook, it settles the matter: “No,” says the Muslim, “that’s not who I am talking about.”
But that is who the Christian is talking about. John 1:18 says, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” Jesus makes known the invisible God for us to see. In John 14:8, Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” To this Jesus responded, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’” And Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:6, “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
In other words, Jesus is the yearbook picture that settles the issue of who is worshiping the true God and who is not. If a worshiper of God does not see in Jesus Christ the person of his God, he does not worship God. This is the resounding testimony of Jesus and the apostles as we see in the following texts.
- Mark 9:37, “Whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.” (See also Matthew 10: 40; Luke 9:48; John 13:20.)
- John 5:23, “Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.”
- 1 John 2:23, “No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.”
- Luke 12:9, “The one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.”
- John 15:23, “Whoever hates me hates my Father also.”
- 2 John 1:9, “Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.”
Now, if we take this question back several thousand years and turn a Muslim-Christian question into a Pharaoh-Moses-follower question, the same thing emerges. Was Pharoah worshiping the same God that the followers of Moses were worshiping? I don’t mean to imply that every Egyptian was the same. For example, the mixed multitude that followed Israel out of Egypt (John 3:1ff.) did not seem to be of the same spirit with most (though even they show no evidence of understanding the place of regeneration in the ordo salutis). In asking this question, I am simply referring to the group of Pharaoh-followers in general as Moses saw them. Did Pharaoh worship the same God as the followers of Moses?
This question is even more striking than the Muslim-Christian question, because Pharaoh and followers of Moses had the same heritage of past salvation in Joseph. Why would the question even come up about whether Pharaoh and the followers of Moses worshiped the same God?
Because Moses brought it up. And the way he brought it up and talked about it, makes it hard to believe some of the things that the New Perspective on Moses (NPM) says about the Egyptian leaders of Moses’ day. E. P. Sanders is the main spokesman for the way Pharaoh is reinterpreted by the New Perspective. Here is the way N. T. Wright summarizes it:
[Sanders’] major point, to which all else is subservient, can be quite simply stated. Egyptianism in Paul’s day was not, as has regularly been supposed, a religion of legalistic works-righteousness.
Wright agrees with this main thesis of the New Perspective: “Sanders . . . dominates the landscape, and, until a major refutation of his central thesis is produced, honesty compels one to do business with him. I do not myself believe such a refutation can or will be offered; serious modifications are required, but I regard his basic point as established” (Ibid, p. 20).
For example, Wright says that the boasting which Moses opposed was not what we usually think it is.
This boasting which Moses opposed is not the boasting of the successful moralist; it is the racial boast of the pagan Egyptian royalty, which claimed that Pharaoh had the right of life and death over all people because of the powerful gods backing him. Moses has no thought of warding off a proto-Pelagianism, of which in any case his contemporaries were not guilty.
Wright’s statements are baffling in several ways. One way is that the Pharaoh is accused of boasting in his status as an Egyptian while doing things Egyptians out not do. How Wright can use this paragraph to distinguish moral boasting from racial boasting escapes me (as does the distinction itself).
Then, there is Wright’s affirmation of Sanders’ claim that the religion of Pharaoh was not the “religion of legalistic works-righteousness,” and that the “The Egyptian [of Moses’ day] obeys false gods out of gratitude, as the proper response to their favor.” The only explanation I can find for such amazing statements is that the testimony of Moses is denied or obscured. It is my impression that evangelicals enamored by the NPP have not reckoned seriously enough with the fact that the origination of the NPP seems to have taken place in the halls of such denial or obscuring.
When Moses addressed the Egyptian leaders of his day his resounding conclusion was they do not even know God. And, not knowing God, their lived-out religion (the kind Jesus is concerned with) is not “out of gratitude,” to their gods, nor is it a “proper response to grace.”
Okay, I’ll stop the hokiness. Hopefully, though, this demonstrates the problem: just because Pharaoh and the Egyptians who sided with him were strangers to the true God and died in their sins as unbelievers, doesn’t mean that their unbelief was a form of merit theology. The Bible talks about the true religion v. false religion many times in the Bible without making that the key issue.
Whether or not that is the key issue between Jesus and Paul and the Pharisees is logically a distinct question from whether or not the Pharisees were wonderful people. If Pharaoh believed he had the authority and right to enslave and kill the Hebrews because the sun god graciously chose him, forgave his sins, and justified him before the court of the gods, he is no less a monstrous killer and a hell-bound pagan. It doesn’t matter if Egyptian paganism is a religion of grace or not.
Likewise, if the Pharisees are living in sin and teaching others to do so, and are enslaving people with rules that God hated, then the question as to whether they believe God graciously gave them this moral crusade is not in danger of getting them off the hook. Granted, a liberal like Sanders might think so, but that has nothing to do with what Evangelicals think who find the “New Perspective” compelling. On the contrary, they side with Jesus against the Pharisees and want to be sure that there is no Pharisaism in the Evangelical Church.
I will reiterate a few things that I have reiterated often.
First, Jesus and Paul would preach salvation only by God’s grace even if the Pharisees weren’t teaching the opposite error. I think it is denigrating to salvation by grace to insist that, if the Pharisees weren’t semi-Pelagians, then Paul wouldn’t teach Augustinianism. He would and in fact he did (if you will forgive the anachronistic labeling).
Second, John Piper has written some extremely helpful and solid works. If you haven’t read (and this is off the top of my head, not exhaustive) Desiring God, The Pleasures of God, or Future Grace, then you are missing something important. In fact, The Pleasures of God toppled J. I. Packer’s Knowing God from my personal category of Best Calvinistic Devotional Book Ever (though, if you haven’t read Knowing God you are missing a real great books as well!). My disappointment of Piper’s recent communications is so powerful because of his well-deserved reputation.
Third, I am still willing to consider a more “traditional” interpretation of the Pharisees. The only argument I see anywhere in this latest essay is his interpretation of the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. But I don’t see his understanding of the Pharisee’s theology as arising from the parable itself. If we already knew that the Pharisees held to a theory of meriting salvation on the ground of their own righteous (though graciously brought about through monergism) works (which, ironically, would vindicate the Pharisees as Augustinians), then the passage would be amenable to that interpretation. But it isn’t sufficient as proof by itself. In my view, simply reading Dr. Piper’s summary of what Jesus said about the Pharisees is weighty evidence against his understanding of their soteriology. Are we really to believe that merit legalism was so unimportant to Jesus that, when he pronounced his woes (Matt 23) on them that he forgot to mention this as a reason for their condemnation?
But if there is some future argument that can be brought forward, I’m willing to hear it. What I object to is being told that “It is my impression that evangelicals enamored by the NPP have not reckoned seriously enough with the fact that the origination of the NPP seems to have taken place in the halls of such denial or obscuring.” Piper knows what he is doing to the reputations of men by saying this kind of thing. His “impressions” would be better off left to his private discussions with his friend. In public he should try supporting his opinion about the Pharisees with some actual evidence.