Dallas Willard
Dallas Willard
Dallas Albert Willardwas an American philosopher also known for his writings on Christian spiritual formation. Much of his work in philosophy was related to phenomenology, particularly the work of Edmund Husserl, many of whose writings he translated into English for the first time. He was longtime Professor of Philosophy at The University of Southern California, teaching at the school from 1965 until his death in 2013 and serving as the department chair from 1982 to 1985...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth4 September 1935
CountryUnited States of America
Individually the disciple and friend of Jesus who has learned to work shoulder to shoulder with his or her Lord stands in this world as a point of contact between heaven and earth, a kind of Jacob’s ladder by which the angels of God may ascend from and descend into human life. Thus the disciple stands as an envoy or a receiver by which the kingdom of God is conveyed into every quarter of human affairs.
And God has set up prayer in such a way that, if you want to explain it away, you can. That's the human mind. God set it up like that for a reason, which is this: God ordained that people should be governed in the end by what they want.
Spiritual transformation into Christ-likeness in not going to happen unless we act... What transforms us is the will to obey Jesus Christ.
What is truly profound is thought to be stupid and trivial, or worse, boring, while what is actually stupid and trivial is thought to be profound. That is what it means to fly upside down.
In one way or another, it is a common mistake to think transformation is all in the will. And it isn't! It's in the mind - how we think, what occupies our minds, and so forth. It's in our feelings. It's in our body.
When the will is enslaved to a desire, it will in turn enslave the mind.
If you don't have a teacher you can't have a disciple.
What you present as the gospel will determine what you present as discipleship. If you present as the gospel what is essentially a theory of the atonement, and you say, If you accept this theory of the atonement, your sins are forgiven, and when you die you will be received into heaven, there is no basis for discipleship.
We renovate the heart by, of course, changing it, but we can't do that, really, without changing the other essential parts of the human personality.
You can live opposite of what you profess, but you cannot live opposite of what you believe.
There is absolutely nothing in what Jesus himself or his early followers taught that suggests you can decide just to enjoy forgiveness at Jesus' expense and have nothing more to do with him.
We know we can't be spiritually transformed by just focusing on the will.
The core of the person is what he or she loves, and that is bound up with what they worship - that insight recalibrates the radar for cultural analysis. The rituals and practices that form our loves spill out well beyond the sanctuary. Many secular liturgies are trying to get us to love some other kingdom and some other gods.
Grace is not just about forgiveness but about life.