Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge [Hardcover]

Dallas Willard (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 26, 2009

At a time when popular atheism books are talking about the irrationality of believing in God, Willard makes a rigorous intellectual case for why it makes sense to believe in God and in Jesus, the Son.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In prose that is both decisive and austere, Willard (The Spirit of the Disciplines) throws down the gauntlet to those in both the secular and religious realms who claim it is impossible to know Christian truths. A professor at the University of Southern California's School of Philosophy, Willard attempts to demonstrate how knowledge and faith can support each other. Arguing that the standard of knowledge is truth and proper evidence, the writer leads readers through his proofs for the existence of God, the resurrection of Jesus, God's ongoing intervention in the world and the then logical possibility of a vital spiritual practice centered on interactive life with Christ. Christian discipleship, as the author sees it, includes such crucial elements as humility, intent to be inwardly transformed, the practice of the presence of Christ and obedience. As Willard admits in his introduction, the book is a mental workout—even the questions at the end of the chapters are challenging. Woven through with the ideas of classical and contemporary philosophers, theologians and sociologists, this volume will engage readers who are willing to follow Willard on his self-assured way, and trust him as a guide. (July)
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Review

“Dallas Willard focuses like a laser beam on the issue of moral knowledge as a legitimate source for understanding reality and applying it to daily life. It is a must read.” (Richard Foster)

“A spiritual defense of the proposition that faith and reason are not contradictory.” (Peter L. Berger, Director, Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs, Boston University)

“This is clear, lucid thinking about what matters most, as is desperately needed today. Only Dallas Willard could have written this, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t need to read it.” (John Ortberg, Pastor, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church and author of Faith & Doubt)

“In prose that is both decisive and austere...this volume will engage readers who are willing to follow Willard on his self-assured way, and trust him as a guide.” (Publishers Weekly)

“Willard is always fascinating reading. [In Knowing Christ Today] he cares not only about God’s people being rooted in solid theology and thought, but also in Christ’s apprentices actually living out the life of the Spirit.” (Baptist Standard)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne; 1 edition (May 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060882441
• ISBN-13: 978-0060882440
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #50,065 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dallas Willard is a Professor in the School of Philosophy at the University of Southern California.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

102 of 106 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars KNOWING Christ Today May 26, 2009

By Brandon Vogt

Format:Hardcover

As I sat in my classroom at Florida State University during the Fall of 2007, beginning my first New Testament class, I was very confused. I signed up thinking that the class would delve even deeper into the words that had recently begun to transform my life, bringing me even closer to this Jesus I had just encountered. However, I very quickly felt disillusioned; the teacher of the class was speaking about Jesus in very different words than my pastor used. Her words about Christianity sounded very detached, spoken as an outsider looking in.

For some reason, most professors and leaders of academic circles seem to treat Christianity as a quaint system of myths and beliefs that should not be taken seriously by true thinkers. They believe that science and modern thought have shown Christianity to be irrelevant and untrue.

In his newly released book, "Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge", Dallas Willard exposes these views as utterly false. He brings light to the truths and knowledge of Jesus and reveals them as imminently knowable.

Simply stated, Dallas is one of my favorite authors. Months before this book was released, I knew I would immediately devour it. Thankfully, the publisher--HarperOne--sent me an advanced copy to review.

The book, though only 256 pages, is extremely thick with content and is a very intense read. Dallas begins by fairly warning that, "...this is not a devotional book and that it will require considerable mental effort to understand."

He starts his discussion by stating some truths about the role knowledge plays in today's Christianity. He explains how our culture tends to treat religious beliefs as something other than--and often less than--firm knowledge.... He notes this as a serious explanation for the divide between what Christians profess and how they act. At their core, few people have true knowledge of what they profess to believe on Sundays, and this "blind-faith" is eventually evident in the actions of their lives. Bluntly, since few Christians truly believe what Jesus said and did to be true, their lives understandably show little difference from those of unbelievers.

In a wonderfully accurate articulation of my experience in college, Dallas explains that, "So much effort has been invested by modern and contemporary thinkers in a secular interpretation of religion that religion can now be studied with no reference to God at all.... It is now simply assumed that every field of knowledge or practice is perfectly complete without any reference to God as real and relevant, and all the more so without any knowledge of God and his activities."

Dallas emphatically states that despite popular modern opinion, "There is a body of uniquely Christian knowledge, available to all who would appropriately seek it, whether Christians or not." True knowledge of God's existence, the story of the Gospel, and the working of Jesus today is available for those who honestly seek it.

Using his brilliant logic and understanding, Dallas then walks through the reasons why Christianity isn't generally recognized as the source of true reality and knowledge in the world today. He states, "If it were seriously imagined that the teachings of Christianity or other religions constituted a vital and irreplaceable knowledge of reality, there would be no more talk of the separation of church and state than there is of the separation of chemistry or economics and state." He points out that the battle pitting science against religion is in fact a false conflict. Science answers certain questions, while religious knowledge taps into deeper truths that are beyond even science. Dallas points out that, "The best physical, chemical, and other scientific knowledge will not tell us what to do and who to be". To answer the big questions of life, a deeper knowledge is needed--and thankfully is available.

Dallas then walks through classical proofs for God's existence, from the logic of Thomas Aquinas to the mysteries of today's sciences. He follows this by delving into how the knowledge offered by Jesus affects every field of life today.

It is roughly at this point in the book where I began to be slightly overwhelmed. Dallas, as a Philosophy professor at the University of Southern California, tends to drift towards the philosophical view of things instead of the practical. But, right in line with his greatness as a writer, he began his next chapter on how the true knowledge of God, as revealed through Jesus, affects the spiritual life. It is here that Dallas recalls the wisdom of his other books dealing with the spiritual disciplines. He explains that gaining true knowledge of reality--which in turn includes God and his kingdom--naturally leads to the living of a life in line with the character of Jesus.

The final chapter in the book is the one I believe to be the best and most empowering. Titled, "Pastors as Teachers of the Nations", Dallas challenges all of those who teach, lead, or pastor others to reclaim their historical role as the teachers of knowledge. What was once provided by the teachers of faith has now been monopolized by secular teachers and professors who offer a secularized take on reality and truth.

Dallas also calls us all to embrace our role as witnesses of faith. He adds that, "...witnesses are, first of all, those who know something. They don't just believe something. If you get on the "witness stand" to tell people what you believe or feel strongly about, it will be of no use....The witness knows something and makes that knowledge available to others."

As a cure to much insubstantial preaching today, Dallas encourages that, "... pastors must present the fundamental points of basic Christianity as knowledge, and as knowledge that is testable and available to anyone who truly wants to know...Pastors now are mistakenly seen, and perhaps even see themselves, as teaching what Christians are supposed to believe, not what is known and what can be known through fair inquiry."

To finish the entire discussion, Dallas closes with a sternly. He pronounces that, "Whatever your situation, there is nothing more important on earth than to dwell in the knowledge of Christ and to bring that knowledge to others."

I ended the book convinced of the necessity of knowledge. I realized that it is time for the professed disciples of Jesus to dismiss his reputation among intellectuals as, "an airhead who stands haplessly before people with PhDs." And I finished energized with a passion to seek truth, knowledge, and reality, wherever they are to be found.

This is probably the best book I have read in the past year, and I cannot recommend any better author or book for those who seek to use their whole mind in the pursuit of truth. Read more ›

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Dallas Willard on Knowledge May 29, 2009

By Lemaro Thompson

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

If you are wondering if this book is worth the $16 or if the book is only worth a quick read from the library, the answer is: it is worth every penny !! Buy many copies! Buy some for friends, family, and especially your beloved university professors! This book is a God-send.

Exactly what is the book about and does Dallas disappoint?
If you have read any of Willard's previous books, you will know that mediocrity just does not seem to be a possibility for him - neither does unoriginality! Okay, the book is simply about addressing the state of "spiritual knowledge" in today's world. Know that may sound vague, so let me quote a blurb from the book and then expound:

"Serious and thoughtful Christians today find themselves in a quandary...In the context of modern life and thought, they are urged to treat their central beliefs as something other than knowledge --something, in fact, far short of knowledge. Those beliefs are to be relegated to the categories of sincere opinion, emotion, blind commitment, or behavior traditional for their social group. And yet they cannot escape the awareness that those beliefs do most certainly come into conflict with what is regarded as knowledge in educational and professional circles of public life. This conflict has profound effects on how they hold and practice religious beliefs and how they present them to others."

This book basically points out that the information/truths that Christianity provides is knowledge. No less than the information/truths that other fields from science and mathematics present is knowledge.... This claim is significant, as if Christianity's claims about reality : human nature, creation, salvation, Jesus, forgiveness, love, etc is knowledge and not merely "a belief" it will dramatically change everything.

How so?
Suppose I told you that i BELIEVED that 113458 was going to be the winning lottery ticket number

Suppose I told you that i had KNOWLEDGE that 113458 was going to be the winning lottery ticket number

You would laugh at the former statement, but you inquire further at the latter (how do you know? what is your source? or even "I always knew those machines were rigged! Who is your inside source?" or even better why would you they tell you?) - Knowledge means something "stronger," "more secure" than mere belief, something grounded in reality and knowable to those who would seek it!

It operates the same way in our lives. If the bible presents knowledge instead of of just statements to be believed. It will make all the difference in our decision making, proclamation, commitment, and obedience.

In addition to showing that what the Bible offers is knowledge, Willard also touches on topics such as: Evidences for the existence of God such as the cosmological argument, design argument, and poses interesting questions about evolution. He also talks about miracles and interacts with the thorny issue of pluralism. The main issue of the book is about "spiritual knowledge" so these other issues at best get one chapter each (the cosmological and design argument are combined in one chapter). So it is not exhaustive on the evidences issues (see J.P.Moreland's Scaling the Secular City or William Craig's Reasonable Faith), but provides much food for thought and discussion.

Mentioning discussion, another beautiful fact about this book is that after each chapter it has discussion questions! I mean good discussion questions, for example:

1. What is changed, what is lost, when a belief someone has is rejected from the domain of knowledge; that is, when it is discovered that they do not know it?

2. Would biological evolution, it it were true, affect the argument for a personal creator? How would it do so? (It would be one more case of intricate order, and it would have to be accounted for.)

3. "I have in my office a copy for which there is no original" can this be? .

These are some questions (they are divorced from the actual chapters they came after ward so its clarity might at best might be hazy.) There are about 10 or so questions per chapter.

I personally don't find the book difficult to read or understand. But the nature of this book is different from his other books in that his previous books Divine Conspiracy, Renovation of the Heart, The Spirit of the Disciplines, Hearing God, The Great Omission required biblical knowledge as a essential aid to understanding what Willard was saying and the majority of his readers already had the background knowledge from sunday school, etc. With this book, biblical knowledge will help you, but you having other external knowledge about the "new atheists," "hume", "epistemology," "Barth," "Kierkegaard" etc would make the ride less bumpy in terms of maybe not having to fetch a dictionary or re-read a sentence twice to grasp it meaning. But i deem the book to be highly readable and a timely addition!

The chapter headings for this book is as follows:

1. Can faith ever be knowledge?
2. Exactly how we perish for the lack of knowledge
3. How moral knowledge disappeared
4. Can we know that God exists? (on the way back to Christ)
5. The miraculous, and Christ's presence in our world
6. Knowledge of Christ in the spiritual life
7. Knowledge of Christ and Christian pluralism
8. Pastors as teachers of the nations

Total pgs : 245

Once again I highly recommend the book! As John Ortberg's recommendation at the back of the book said: "Only Dallas Willard could have written this, but I don't know anyone who doesn't need to read it."
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For another book on this topic from a legal perspective see:

The Inseparability of Law and Morality: The Constitution, Natural Law, and the Rule of Law by Dr. Ellis Washington Read more ›

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Groundbreaking May 26, 2009

By Peter L. Edman

Format:Hardcover

An impressively argued reclamation of the Christian faith as a reliable and trustable source of publicly accessible knowledge. Jesus, Willard reminds us, was actually intelligent and offers us testable knowledge about the way the world really is--real knowledge on par with what we learn from science and philosophy.

His treatment of knowledge versus belief explains why Christian discipleship often fails and why seeing belief as mere personal preference is futile.

The writing is generally accessible, though parts must be read slowly as the concepts are complicated.

Includes a fascinating treatment of Christian pluralism grounded in knowledge. The final chapter will give pastors and other "public" Christians much encouragement in expanding their vision of the responsibilities of their calling.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Helpful and encouraging May 28, 2009

By John Loppnow

Format:Hardcover

I'm listening to the book on audio as well as following it up with reading the hardback edition.

Very encouraging and helpful. Helps me to see and understand what knowledge actual is and how it affects my life - including spiritual, emotional, relational, etc.

After reading the book anyone will feel grounded in their beliefs. It is dense, but worth the effort.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars You Can Know August 31, 2009

By Mondok

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Knowing Christ Today
Author: Dallas Willard
New York, HarperCollins, 2009
Number of pages: 212

The universe hangs on the Word of God but knowledge of God is not treated as a credible by contemporary scholars and educators. What can actually be known about God is not even given passing consideration but off-handedly and unfairly relegated to education ghettos by those responsible for educating about what is real and knowable.

"In practical terms, reality is what you rely on... Mistakes about reality lead to brutal encounters with it. Illusion, a mistake about what is real, is what will let you down, what you cannot count on. Knowledge of reality tends toward successful and confident interactions with reality," writes author Dallas Willard. "The double minded person is someone with a reality problem."

Christian Spiritual truths are a body of knowledge and should be treated as such. They are not a hunch. They are not strong feelings. Christian Spiritual truths are reality and can be known and taught as verifiable reality.

"[Atheists] literally do not know what they are talking about when it comes to knowing Christ as a life that some people actually live. They have not taken the trouble to understand even what they could know as 'outsiders' by sympathetically studying the lives of the great 'insiders,'" says Willard.

"'Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks the door will be opened' (Matt. 7:7-8).... If, after some serious effort, you find that this is 'not working' for you, stand back and reflect on what part of what you are seeking is not really wanted or what part of you does not want God's way."

Willard challenges those with the most serious responsibility of teaching about God and reality. "Pastor - spokespeople for Christ - must first of all have knowledge of the truth and reality they communicate to others. They must do whatever is necessary to gain that knowledge. It is not enough that they be trained to function well within a certain brand of Christianity - to be successful in that context. Their field is real life under God."

Willard's argument is strong. At first, as Willard lays his foundation, I had to read and re-read. I wasn't sure where he was going. He uses terms like "pluralism." This is taboo in the conservative circles of Christianity I learned doctrine in. But guys with a bare-bones education like mine need to hang in there and try to grasp what Willard is saying; it's important to get it. Christian pluralism is: "...a pluralism based on the generosity and justice of the God revealed in Christ," he writes. It doesn't mean that everyone agrees with everyone else's religion. That's ideologically and psychologically impossible. It's also important to say that it isn't unloving or arrogant to disagree with someone that is genuinely wrong. In fact, it is often important for someone who is right to disagree with someone who is wrong and then -lovingly- help him or her correct the error. It would be immoral, in most cases, not to.

Christian pluralism is accepting those we disagree with as neighbors and living them as ourselves.

This is not light reading. But it is excellent reading. For me, it was reading over my head, but it's worth the effort. This is how you grow. Read more ›