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More Than Deep Feelings

Dallas Willard argues that we really can know Christ.
Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge
our rating
3 Stars - Good
Book Title
Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge
Author
Dallas Willard
Publisher
HarperOne
Release Date
May 26, 2009
Pages
256
Price
$17.98

Imagine that after a routine checkup, your doctor says, "My hunch is that you have cancer and must undergo extensive surgery." Would you feel confident going under the knife based on a hunch? Would your confidence grow if the doctor said he had a "strong feeling" or "believed" you had cancer? Obviously not. When the bodily stakes are high, we want to be guided by knowledge—not belief, opinion, or conjecture. Only knowledge gives the doctor's counsel authority.

Why, then, in matters of the soul are we content to be guided by a faith consisting of deep feelings or inner experiences? Why should we be surprised when nonbelievers politely decline to change their lives because we have pious opinions and strong sentiments?

Sadly, says Dallas Willard, those outside the church (and many within it) have ceased to see the Christian religion as a source of knowledge, as a system of claims that successfully tracks the truth and by which we can be guided confidently. So too, says Willard, has the longstanding tradition of objectively true moral knowledge given way to talk about one's feelings and preferences. Willard's Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge (HarperOne) calls on Christians to recover their faith—and the moral claims that accompany it—as a body of knowledge that can withstand appropriate testing and be proclaimed with confidence.

At the heart of our faith is a belief in a personal God, perfect in wisdom, power, and goodness, the Creator and Sustainer of the heavens and earth. How do we know (as opposed to merely believe or opine) that such a being exists? In answer, Willard offers the standard first-cause argument.

The universe couldn't have popped into existence from absolutely nothing, nor could it be the cause of itself. So, there must be a non-physical cause. And whatever caused the universe to exist must have had great power, intelligence, and will. The mind, will, and power to initiate activity without oneself having been caused—to be an unmoved mover—is precisely the trait we ascribe to the God of theism. Willard follows the cosmological argument with a teleological (design) argument to explain how the universe came to enjoy its remarkable order.

Willard thinks the causal argument provides a firm basis for knowing that God exists, which no one can gainsay without losing oneself in "a maze of empty logical possibilities and imaginings." And he claims the design argument has no "remotely plausible" alternatives. Yet many thoughtful Christians, not to mention nonbelievers, find these arguments less than sufficient to say we know that God exists. Willard mentions but does not discuss that there are alternatives. For example, philosopher Robin Collins cogently argues that our universe is but one of perhaps an infinite number of universes. Whether his or other alternative theories are right is not the point. But we can hardly say that there are no "remotely plausible" alternatives.


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Comments

Displaying 1–3 of 21 comments

Jim

June 18, 2009  8:58pm

Just a bunch of Pentecostal nonsense. The Holy Spirit may convict us of sin, but He doesn't tell us whether to have Corn Flakes or Raisin Bran for breakfast or to marry Sue or Mary. You people make God into your Magic 8 ball!

David L

June 13, 2009  10:08pm

I know Jesus better everyday through the grace of God. It is sad that so often we talk about Christianity as a personal relationship without recognizing it is both personal and corporate, when I see what Christ is doing in my daughter I get to know Christ better. Being daily conformed to Him, receiving him in the Eucharist, and seeing what He has done with sinners over two thousand years is very heartening. It is an awesome thing to know that Christ is in our midst even if our fallen nature, the Liar, and society would have us believe otherwise. Christ is with us! Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!

A Disciple

June 12, 2009  12:49am

To know Jesus Christ firsthand and personally, all one needs to do is to look into the overwhelming evidence of absolute power present in the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, "according to the Scriptures". AMEN!

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