Reading Blog: Knowing Christ Today, Chapter 6

(This is part 7 in my series on Dallas Willard’s latest book, Knowing Christ Today. Previous Entries: Intro | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5)

Knowledge of Christ in the Spiritual Life

Those who really do know Christ in the Modern world do so by seeking and entering the Kingdom of God. Everything else we have discussed here is meant to lead up to that.

Hence, in Chapter 6 it is Dallas Willard’s desire, above all else, to convince us that Christ is a living person, contemporary with each of us, and available to each of us in an interactive relationship amid the daily activities of one’s life. This is what it means to know Christ: to potentially have a real and dynamic sense of personal connection and communication with Him at any and every moment.

The reason so many people don’t have this knowledge – this actual connection – with Christ is because, fundamentally, they don’t believe it is possible. The cultural climate of Modernity and it’s Enlightenment prejudices have convinced many people that true, reliable knowledge of God (much less Christ) is not really possible.

But much of Christ’s work on earth was to inaugurate the present availability of this real spiritual interaction with God and His Kingdom. This is critically important because knowledge about a thing/person is not knowledge of a thing/person. One of the very important thing Jesus does in the gospels is demonstrate that fact, and immerse (or baptize) his disciples into that God-bathed reality. This kind of first-hand interaction with Gos is our source of knowledge of God by Christ and through the Holy Spirit.

In this Chapter Willard spends some time interacting with ways in which Christ can be said to have been demonstrably “present” in Modern society. There is a nice discussion of how Christ breaks through all barriers, including those of science, religion, and culture, and some interesting engagement with modern writers who have come to independent conclusions regarding the uniqueness of Christ.

There is also some brief interaction with Willard’s understanding of the role of the classic spiritual discipline for learning to come into regular contact with Christ. If you’re familiar with Willard’s writing at all, there’s nothing new here. If you’re not, you would be well served to read The Divine Conspiracy and The Spirit of the Disciplines.

Willard also spends some time addressing what some have called the “new atheism.” This is a helpful portion of the book, mostly because Willard affirms that Christians have much to learn from the arguments of atheists. The fact that Christ breaks through as a person in the persons and structures of our society doesn’t mean that those who proclaim him are correct in their beliefs, ideas, and assumptions. Willard does not see them as a threat, mostly because these people “do not long for there to be a biblical type of God or to be a part of His life.” Hence, they are predisposed to miss God (there will be no “seeking and entering”) and there is no sincere engagement with those who practice genuine spiritual lives.

(Two asides: 1. I don’t agree with Willard on this last point. Some of the atheists I’ve encountered are atheists, in my estimation, precisely because they do long for what God supposedly stands for – such as righteousness, peace, and justice – but they cannot reliably find that God in the world around them, and 2) It occurred to me that there are many self-proclaimed Christians who, apparently, “do not long for there to be a biblical type of God” either. Indeed, a few go to great lengths to explain away that God and replace him with a God more suitable to their liking. Some, in their own way, have even embraced the term “atheist” or stated flatly that they’d prefer atheism to the God of the Bible.)

Unlike most contemporary Christian authors (conservative or liberal) Willard makes a rather interesting and unique claim: Christians must demonstrate a verifiable form of spiritual knowledge. I think this assertion is one of the boldest claims of the book, and in this chapter he states that those who genuinely come to know Christ will:

• Discover remarkable changes in their beliefs, fundamental attitudes, and emotional conditions. For most, if not all, this will come as a surprise, one which they will most likely readily “confess” or “own up to” (One gets the sense Willard has been reading Roland Allen).
• Receive communications from God. Willard is careful to state that most will come from the Bible, and that all such communications from God will be in harmony with scripture, but he is clear that God will speak in a multitude of ways, persons, and circumstances that will – and this is key – “be testable against the realities of life and the insights of others.” Willard is trying to subvert an understanding of faith that necessarily pits it against other forms of knowledge, including science, traditions, classical wisdom, and common sense. He really does think that many people’s faith has been debilitated because their understanding of faith contradicts everything they know to be true about life.
• Discover the reality of the “light burden” and the “easy yoke.” This is closely related to the second point above. What Willard is getting at here is that Christians who know Christ will discover that their burdens are being significantly lightened by some other agent, assisting them and carrying them along. Christ is “acting with them.”

Questions

1. What do you think of Willard’s characterization of knowledge of Christ as being personal and intimate?
2. What do you think of his assertion that our knowledge of Christ must be “verifiable?”
3. What are your thoughts on the idea of “communication” from God outside scripture as a normative form of life?

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