Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge

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 numberSuppose I told you that i had KNOWLEDGE that 113458 was going to be the winning lottery ticket numberYou 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 knowledge3. How moral knowledge disappeared4. Can we know that God exists? (on the way back to Christ)5. The miraculous, and Christ's presence in our world6. Knowledge of Christ in the spiritual life7. Knowledge of Christ and Christian pluralism8. Pastors as teachers of the nationsTotal pgs : 245Once 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."-----------------------------------------------------------------------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

Knowing Christ TodayAuthor: Dallas WillardNew York, HarperCollins, 2009Number of pages: 212The 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.

A brilliantly argued book - leading us from philosophical concepts to how we can personally know Jesus in our every-day lives.

Good stuff

Great book, needs to be read carefully but well worth the effort.

What a writer and saint

Dallas Willard has summarized efficiently and effectively perhaps the biggest challenge in the Western culture today, the disappearance of moral and spiritual knowledge. He rationally defends the claim that Christianity's uniqueness is it is a knowledge based tradition; it offers real knowledge of God, not just in a descriptive propositional manner, but by direct perception and daily experience of God as well. He addresses the problem of religious pluralism and explains why it is a logically coherent concept in what he categorized as the "strong" version of pluralism. He also defends why Christianity's claim of knowledge does not threaten true tolerance and respect; Christianity claims to offer not just true knowledge that puffs up, but true agape love as well that seeks to understand opposing worldviews in humility and openness.