The title is actually an inside joke regarding micro-reformed polemics in Texas in the nineties, and is only indirectly related to medieval textbook theology.

I’m not ready to comment on this yet, but Doug has asked a question so I should say something.

So, here is everything in Dr. Piper’s column that I think is excellent if abstracted from the other stuff:

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 two thousand years and turn a Muslim-Christian question into a Pharisee-Jesus-follower question, the same thing emerges. Were the Pharisees worshiping the same God that the followers of Jesus were worshiping? I don’t mean to imply that every Pharisee was the same. For example, Nicodemus (John 3:1ff.) did not seem to be of the same spirit with most (though even he found the new birth incomprehensible at first). In asking this question, I am simply referring to the group of Pharisees in general as Jesus saw them. Did these Pharisees worship the same God as the followers of Jesus?

This question is even more striking than the Muslim-Christian question, because Pharisees and followers of Jesus had the same Holy Book, the Tanach—the Old Testament. That means that they used the same name for God and told the same stories about God and followed the same rituals in relating to God. Why would the question even come up about whether the Pharisees and the followers of Jesus worshiped the same God?

Because Jesus brought it up.

Thus far, this is a message I would be proud to preach word for word. My only quibbles would be that I haven’t yet listened to the interview by Mark Dever and thus can’t express an opinion about it–though what Dr. Piper expresses from it is something, again, with which I emphatically agree. Also, I don’t think Nicodemus’ shortcoming–though real–can be summed up as a misunderstanding or ignorance of a point on the ordo salutis. (Portraying Jesus as a roving systematic theologian trying to teach the proper ordo strikes me as about as believable as the liberal/mainline apostate portrayal of Jesus as a great moral teacher.)

But I’m not done quoting everything great and accurate in Dr. Piper’s presentation. I would gladly proclaim every word of the following without any quibbles at all:

When Jesus addressed the Jewish leaders of his day (Pharisees, lawyers, elders, Sadducees, chief priests), 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,” nor is it a “proper response to grace.”

When Jesus asked the Jewish leaders, “If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?” his answer was, “Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God” (John 8:47). This is the claim of Jesus to be the yearbook picture of God. “I am from God and I am speaking the words of God. You are not seeing or hearing God, therefore you are not of God.”

That is, they do not have God as their Father, but rather the devil. Jesus said, “If God were your Father, you would love me . . . . You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires” (John 8:42-44).

And here’s more:

• They accused Jesus of being demonic (Matthew 12:24).
• They do not know how to understand the law (Matthew 12:2-7).
• They sought to destroy Jesus (Matthew 12:14).
• They are “an evil and adulterous generation” (16:4).
• They break the commandments with their traditions (Matthew 15:6).
• They worship vainly and their heart is far from God (Matthew 15:8-9).
• They are not planted by the Father (Matthew 15:12).
• Their teaching is leaven to be avoided (Matthew 16:12).
• They do not bear the fruit of the kingdom and will lose it (Matthew 21:43-45).
• They are children of hell (Matthew 23:15, 33).
• They neglect the weightier matters of the law (Matthew 23:23).
• They are full of greed and self-indulgence (Matthew 23:25, 27).
• Outwardly they appear righteous, but are lawless within (Matthew 23:28).
• They were lovers of money (Luke 16:14).

The upshot of this is that we should always reach for the yearbook of the New Testament Gospels to see the picture of Jesus. He will make clear whether Muslims and Christians are worshiping the same God, and whether Pharisees and followers of Jesus are worshiping the same God.

So, this is all great. And frankly, leaving N. T. Wright aside, one could find ample evidence for this position in Sander’s own seminal book. Granted, Sanders goes in a different direction with his evidence, one that lines up with his own commitments. But that is one of the many tragedies found here. Instead of using Sander’s own scholarship to have a genuine apologetic argument, we get a load of nonsense.