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Title: The Divine Conspiracy : Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God by Dallas Willard ISBN: 0-06-069333-9 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 15 April, 1998 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.69 (85 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: quite good
Comment: Why does it take the most brilliant theologians to point out the simplest truths?
Willard's main point is that if we really believe Jesus is God, why don't we believe he's smart enough to teach us a thing or two? He encourages us to enlist in an advanced course on Life and the Living Of It taught by the Son of God himself.
How simple is that?
The middle of the book is an excellent exposition of the Sermon on the Mount (here called the Discourse on the Hill) with that goal in mind. Some of it I don't buy, but most of it is truly profound, well thought-out and presented.
The end of this book is a treatise on discipleship. It divides the gospel -- and in such, the ends of discipleship, into two parts: 1. Believe that God is good, loving, and not messing up your life, and 2. Give up your old habits and learn some new ones. Basically, though he never says so, an exposition of "Repent and believe, for the Kingdom of God is near."
Who should read this book?
1. Those tired of religious fluff and warmed over sermons put in writing and published. (Willard is so much meatier. The bibliography alone is a treasure chest.)
2. Those who are studying, have studied, or want to study the Sermon on the Mount. I was leading a summer study on that passage as I was reading this, and it was immensely helpful.
3. Those who are thinking about discipling others in one form or another, but aren't sure how to go about it. The last third, while not terribly practical, lays down excellent guidelines for discipleship that will give you direction and purpose.
One more note: Willard seems to translate the Bible himself for use in his scriptural examples. The results are fantastic, strong and direct quotes. I know nothing about greek or translation, so I can't comment on their reliability, but they certainly make me wish Mr. Willard would take on a full translation. It would be fantastic.
Rating: 4
Summary: Jesus: Not Just Nice--Brilliant
Comment: Paul wrote to the church at Colossae that "in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." The greatest virtue of Dallas Willard's the Divine Conspiracy is that it compels us to come to terms with the implications of that sweeping declaration.
It is sometimes worth reading an entire book to find one life-changing paragraph, or even one life-changing sentence. Many books do not have one. The Divine Conspiracy does, in Chapter Three: "Jesus is not just nice; he is brilliant."
For the most part, Dr. Willard does a solid job in working out the implications of that radical declaration. He focuses his attention on Jesus's Sermon on the Mount. Almost all of the chapters contain good expositions of Jesus's teachings in that sermon. And, as a good disciple of Jesus, Dr. Willard illustrates his points nicely with some memorable stories. The story with which he opens the book--the airplane pilot who flies upside-down without knowing it--is a memorable parable of our times.
It is a good indication of this book's overall quality that, in such a lengthy work on the Sermon on the Mount, I can think of only two places where Dr. Willard makes potentially dangerous errors in interpreting Jesus's teachings. Here they are:
First, Dr. Willard's view of the Beatitudes--that the Beatitudes do not say anything about the kind of people we should be, and are simply a declaration of the kinds of people who can begin living in the Kingdom of God--doesn't fit the text. (I do, however, agree with Dr. Willard that an overly simplistic "Be like that" view of the Beatitudes is incorrect and spiritually hazardous.)
Second, when I read Dr. Willard's take on Jesus's teaching on divorce, I got the impression that he was trying to be more brilliant than Jesus. According to Dr. Willard, Jesus prohibited divorce "as divorce was then practiced." But that qualification can't really stand up in view of Matthew 19. There, we see that Jesus rooted his teaching on divorce in the nature of humankind ("God made them male and female") and the nature of the first marriage ("the two became one flesh"). He did not plant his teaching on divorce in the shifting sand of cultural norms. Thus, Dr. Willard's statement that Jesus opposed divorce "as divorce was then practiced" contains a qualification that is simply too big. In an era in which divorce was generally disfavored, this error might not prove too dangerous, but in a divorce-happy culture like ours it could provide a convenient rationalization for people who just don't want to hang in there.
The Divine Conspiracy also contains a few unfortunate remarks on theological matters. For example, in Dr. Willard's discussion of whether God changes his mind, he presents two alternatives as to the kind of God in whom one can believe: (1) believe in a God who can change his mind, or (2) believe in an "unblinking cosmic stare." That is exactly the kind of false dilemma I'm used to seeing from authors who deny God's foreknowledge: you can either believe in a loving, interactive, personal God, or you can believe in a bullying, neurotic micromanager. It is unfortunate that Dr. Willard would perpetuate this kind of false dilemma. It is equally unfortunate that, in a mostly perceptive chapter on "the gospels of sin management," Dr. Willard takes a few between-the-lines shots at the doctrine of the imputation of Christ's righteousness. We always need trenchant critiques of cheap grace--that is, grace without discipleship--and Dr. Willard provides one here. But in the process he also chips away at the priceless truth that God clothes those who believe in Christ with Christ's righteousness.
I do not want to overplay these reservations, however; they are peripheral to the overall message of this book. There is much, much more gold than dross in the Divine Conspiracy. Dr. Willard's high view of Jesus's intelligence, which he discusses in detail in Chapter Three, the book's best chapter, is especially refreshing. We should all have such conscious respect for the mind of our brilliant Christ. And because the Divine Conspiracy extols Jesus's intelligence so persuasively, I cannot help but think that the overall effect of reading the book should be exactly what its author intended: that people today will give Jesus a fresh hearing and become his students "in the master class of life."
Rating: 4
Summary: A Powerful Book on Spiritual Formation
Comment: This is, without doubt, one of the most powerful books on Spiritual Formation that has ever been written. Dallas Willard tackles issues of discipleship and discipline in a fresh and invigorating way. Willard is rightly convinced that "the practical irrelevance of actual obedience to Christ" has weakened the effectiveness of Christianity in today's culture. "Discipleship or apprenticeship to Jesus is, in our day, no longer thought of as in any way essential to faith in him," Willard says. "It is regarded as a costly option, a spiritual luxury, or possibly even an evasion." This concern led Willard to write the third book in his trilogy on the spiritual life (along with In Search of Guidance and The Spirit of the Disciplines) which "presents discipleship to Jesus as the very heart of the gospel."
Willard's path is a well-traveled one, though he views some of the familiar sights a bit differently than most of us are accustomed to. The Kingdom of the Heavens is seen primarily as the realm of God's rule (kingdom) which is as near to us as the atmosphere around us (the heavens). A new thought for me, and one I'm still mulling over. Eternal Life is mainly a quality of life - an eternal kind of life. Willard's reading of the Sermon on the Mount is certainly unique. Frankly, his understanding of the Beattitudes is one of the more novel and unbelievable parts of the book. But his analysis of Matthew chapters 6 and 7 is very helpful.
The heart of the book, found in chapters eight and nine, tackles what it means to be a student, or disciple, of Jesus, along with developing a curriculum for Christlikeness. Those two chapters alone are worth their weight in gold. I found them immensely helpful. Willard stresses the necessity of intention in our pursuit of the disciple's life and the importance of changing beliefs in order to shape behavior. Regarding a curriculum for Christlikeness, Willard helpfully shows that the objective is NOT "external conformity to the wording of Jesus' teachings about actions in specific contexts" or "profession of perfectly correct doctrine." Not that these things are unimportant - but they are not the goal. The goal is not faithfulness to activities in church or special religious experiences, either. The goal, very simply, is coming to "dearly love and constantly delight in" the Father and removing the "automatic responses againt the kingdom of God" so that we are free from the dominion and enslavement of "old habitual patterns of thought, feeling, and action." The goal is to develop automatic, reflex responses to life that mirror those of Christ. Willard's exposition of this is very good and will be eye-opening for many young disciples.
The strategies which help us develop this Christlike character are the spiritual disciplines. The disciplines, which Willard groups into two catagories (disciplines of abstinence and disciplines of engagement) are designed to help us enthrall the mind with God and aquire new habits of goodness, as we interact with both the work of the Holy Spirit and the testings and trials of life in our pursuit of Christlikeness. Willard fleshes this out briefly with a discussion about the disciplines of solitude, silence, study, and worship. The final chapter is a glorious discussion on the Restoration of All Things, as Willard describes where this whole Christian thing is headed.
Now, my brief caveats. I do have a couple of qualms about this book, but I tack them on the end and really do not want to overplay them, because they are really peripheral to Willard's message. My concerns are these: 1) In the helpful chapter "Gospels of Sin Management," I think Willard overreacts to Evangelicals (the Right, as he calls us) in his discussion of the atonement and "Lordship Salvation." In particular, the criticisms of John MacArthur seem completely unwarranted to me. I wondered if Willard had really read or heard anything by MacArthur apart from this one issue. 2) In chapter four on the Beattitudes, Willard is just out to lunch. I think he totally missed it on this point. 3) Willard's discussion (very brief) on the relationship of God's sovereignty and human responsibility reflects a very Arminian perspective. "God has paid an awful price to arrange for human determination," says Willard. Other statements hint at a sympathetic view of Open Theism. Disappointing. In Willard's zeal to preserve the truth that prayer does change things, he has gone to the unhelpful and unbiblical extreme of elevating human autonomy too high. 4) In the midst of a very good discussion on the "elephant in the church" which everyone tries to ignore (namely, the lack of discipleship) Willard strongly states that he does not believe that only true disciples make it to heaven after death. In light of the overall message of Willard's book, it is hard to see how he can say this. It certainly doesn't comply with Jesus own words in John 8. So, those four things give me a little pause concerning this book. But not much. Just enough to make it a four star instead of a five star recommendation. The material I balk at could be contained in less than thirty pages of the book (out of 400!). So, I still say "read it." Just be careful on the finer points of Willard's theology.
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Title: Dallas Willard's Study Guide to The Divine Conspiracy by Jan Johnson, Keith Matthews ISBN: 0060641002 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 10 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ by Dallas Willard ISBN: 1576832961 Publisher: Navpress Pub. Date: April, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.99 |
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Title: The Spirit of the Disciplines - Reissue : Understanding How God Changes Lives by Dallas Willard ISBN: 0060694424 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 01 February, 1991 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship With God by Dallas Willard ISBN: 0830822267 Publisher: Intervarsity Press Pub. Date: November, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, 25th Anniversary Edition by Richard J. Foster ISBN: 0060628391 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 19 October, 1988 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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