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
The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul.
The real issue relating to exclusiveness is whether or not the Christian actually has a relationship with God, a presence of God, which non-Christians do not have. Apart from Christian spiritual formation as described here, I believe there is little value in claiming exclusiveness for the Christian way.
The basic question 'will I obey Christ 's teaching?' is rarely taken as a serious issue. For example, to take one of Jesus' commands, that is relevant to contemporary life, I don't know of any church that actually teaches a church how to bless people who curse them, yet this is a clear command.
When we receive God's gift of life by relying on Christ, we find that God comes to act with us as we rely on him in our actions.
When Jesus directs us to pray, "Thy kingdom come," he does not mean we should pray for it to come into existence.
What we can do with these means (our own unassisted strength) is still very small compared to what we could do in acting in union with God himself, who created and ultimately controls all other forces.
Those who have been touched by forgiveness and new life and have thus entered into God's rule become, like Jesus, bearers of that rule.
We have churches full of people who profess all kinds of stuff that they don't believe. They think that by professing it they're doing something good. Really, they're just deluding themselves.
God inducts us into the eternal kind of life that flows through himself. He does this first by bringing that life to bear upon our needs, and then by diffusing it throughout our deeds - deeds done with expectation that he and his Father will act with and in our actions.
In accord with his original intent, the heavenly Father has in fact prepared an individualized kingdom for every person, from the outset of creation.
Other kingdoms are still present on earth along with the kingdom of the heavens. That is the human condition.
The union Christ had with the Father was the greatest that we can conceive of in this life-if indeed we can conceive of it.
Generally speaking we don't want to hear from the soul. We want it to just do its job. Unfortunately, in a broken world, it also is broken, and we're going to hear from it because many of the ordinary miseries and extraordinary glories of human life are expressions of the state of the soul.
Paul followed Jesus by living as He lived. And how did he do that? Through activities and ways of living that would train his whole personality to depend upon the risen Christ as Christ trained Himself to depend upon the Father.