Dallas Willard - The Divine Conspiracy

The kingdom of the heavens is similar to a bit of yeast which a woman took and hid in half a bushel of dough. After a while all the dough was pervaded by it.

J ESUS OF N AZARETH

You must have often wondered why the enemy [God] does not make more use of his power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree he chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the irresistible and the indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of his scheme forbids him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as his felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For his ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. Sooner or later he withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legsto carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. He cannot tempt to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away his hand. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our enemys will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

U NCLE S CREWTAPE
C. S. L EWIS , T HE S CREWTAPE L ETTERS

Entering the Eternal Kind of Life Now

Gospels of Sin Management

What Jesus Knew: Our God-Bathed World

Who is Really Well Off?The Beatitudes

The Rightness of the Kingdom Heart: Beyond the Goodness of Scribes and Pharisees

Investing in the Heavens: Escaping the Deceptions of Reputation and Wealth

The Community of Prayerful Love

On Being a Disciple, or Student, of Jesus

A Curriculum for Christlikeness

The Restoration of all Things

T he Divine Conspiracy is the book I have been searching for all my life. Like Michelangelos Sistine ceiling, it is a masterpiece and a wonder. And like those famous frescoes, it presents God as real and present and ever reaching out to all humanity. I am struck by many things in The Divine Conspiracy . Let me mention a few.

First, I am struck by the comprehensive nature of this book. It gives me a Weltanschauung , a worldview. It provides me with the conceptual philosophy for understanding the meaning and purpose of human existence. It shows me how to make sense out of the whole of the biblical record. It helps me see that the teachings of Jesus are intelligent and vital and intently practical.

The breadth of the issues covered is astonishing: from the souls redemption and justification to discipleship and our growth in grace to death and the state of our existence in heaven. The middle chapters rightly give concentrated attention to Jesus teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, but Willard does even this in such a way that he actually teaches us the whole Bibleindeed, the whole of our life before God.

Then, too, his analysis of the contemporary scene is quite remarkable and comprehensive. Incisively, he uncovers the pretense of the various theories, facts, and techniques of contemporary secular materialism, showing that they have not the least logical bearing upon the ultimate issues of existence and life. Nor does the contemporary religious scene escape his incisive eye. In perhaps the most telling phrase of the book, he reveals the various theologies of sin management that plague churches today, both conservative and liberal. This is a book that opens me to the big picture.

Second, I am struck by the accessibility of this book. Im fully aware that the issues discussed here are of immense importance, yet it is all so understandable, so readable, so applicable. Perhaps I feared that a world-class philosopher would be unable to speak to my condition, but in this I was wrong. Again and again I found myself mirrored in Dr. Willards insights into human nature.

In addition, everything Willard deals with is so intently practical. Never allowing issues to stay theoretical, he constantly weaves them into the warp and woof of daily experience. His stories charm. His examples teach. Most of all, he deals with such huge human issues in such wise and sane ways.

This is never more true than in chapter 9: A Curriculum for Christlikeness. It contains a wealth of practical guidance into precisely how we come to love, honor, and consistently obey God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

Third, I am struck by the depth of this book. Willard is a master at capturing the central insight of Jesus teachings. Perhaps this is because he takes Jesus seriously as an intelligent, fully competent Teacher. He writes, Jesus is not just nice, he is brilliant.

Here I must comment on the depth of teaching on what we have come to call the Sermon on the Mount. Most writers turn these penetrating words of Jesus into a new set of soul-crushing laws. Others, feeling the teaching is impossible to obey, try to relegate it to another time, another place, another dispensation. Those who reject these two options usually think of it simply as a loose collection of nice sayings thrown together by unknown editorsinteresting to read in a poetic sort of way, but having nothing essential to do with how we live today. What, I wondered, would Willard bring to the table?

A soul-satisfying banquet, that is what. No one I have read so effectively penetrates to the heart of Jesus teaching. Willards discussion of the Beatitudes, for instance, is simply stunning, upsetting many of our common notions of this famous passage. The entire book is well worth that discussion alone. But he gives us more, much morea feast for the mind and the heart.

Which leads me to my fourth, and final, observation. I am struck by the warmth of this book. Rarely have I found an author with so penetrating an intellect combined with so generous a spirit. Clearly he has descended with the mind into the heart and from this place he touches us, both mind and heart.

Dallas Willard speaks words of grace and mercy to us all, and especially to those who have been crushed by the world in which we live: The flunk-outs and drop-outs and burned-outs. The broke and the broken. The drug heads and the divorced. The HIV positive and the herpes-ridden. The brain-damaged and the incurably ill. The barren and the pregnant too many times or at the wrong time. The overemployed, the underemployed, the unemployed. The unemployable. The swindled, the shoved-aside, the replaced. The lonely, the incompetent, the stupid. In this, and so many other ways, I find this book speaks with compassion to where we all live and move and have our being.

I would place The Divine Conspiracy in rare company indeed: alongside the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and John Wesley, John Calvin and Martin Luther, Teresa of Avila and Hildegard of Bingen, and perhaps even Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo. If the parousia tarries, this is a book for the next millennium.

R ICHARD J. F OSTER

M y hope is to gain a fresh hearing for Jesus, especially among those who believe they already understand him. In his case, quite frankly, presumed familiarity has led to unfamiliarity, unfamiliarity has led to contempt, and contempt has led to profound ignorance.