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Dallas Willard's Vision for Discipleship: Kingdom Apprenticeship | Keas Keasler

• Upper House • Episode 180

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Dallas Willard believed that the aim of God in human history is the formation of a community of loving persons — people apprenticed to Jesus, shaped by his character, and prepared to co-reign with him in eternity. In this episode of The UpWords Podcast, host Dan Hummel sits down with Keas Keasler, author of the first comprehensive academic study of Willard’s theology. Together they trace Willard’s life from Depression-era Missouri to the halls of USC, unpack the philosophical roots of his spiritual formation theology, and ask why his vision for discipleship feels especially urgent in the church today.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

  • Why Keas Keasler spent seven years researching Dallas Willard — and what he discovered that surprised him
  • The key biographical facts of Willard’s life: a broken childhood, a pivotal choice between philosophy and seminary, and 47 years at USC
  • How Willard’s friendship with Richard Foster and a small Quaker church in Southern California helped birth the modern spiritual formation movement
  • Why Willard chose phenomenology — the study of consciousness — and how it shaped his theology of transformation
  • What it means that Willard was a committed metaphysical and epistemic realist — and why that grounds everything he taught
  • Willard’s vision of humans as co-rulers with God: what it means, what the parable of the pounds has to do with it, and why formation is training for that calling
  • The famous Willard line: “Grace is not opposed to effort, but to earning” — and the sophisticated theology behind it
  • The Golden Triangle of spiritual formation: the Holy Spirit, the spiritual disciplines, and the ordinary decisions of daily life
  • The “sanctification gap” that Richard Lovelace identified in the 1970s — and why it has only widened since
  • Why there is a crisis of character in the church today, and what Willard’s vision offers as a remedy

GUEST BIO

Keas Keasler (PhD, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) is Associate Professor of Spiritual Theology at Friends University, where he also serves as Program Director of the MA in Christian Spiritual Formation and Leadership. He is a Research Affiliate of the Martin Institute for Christianity and Culture and the Dallas Willard Research Center at Westmont College. An ordained Baptist minister, Keasler has traveled to over forty countries and preached on six continents.

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This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

Introduction: Becoming an Apprentice of Jesus

SPEAKER_00

So, what does it look like for our character to resemble his? And we know God's character in its most explicit form through the person of Jesus. I mean, that's what God looks like in human form. God's heart in human form, we might even say. Jesus is the selfie of God. And so when Jesus invites us to follow him to become his apprentices, it's not merely to learn to be able to do what he did, it's to become the type of person in which those actions flow out of naturally. It starts from the inside to have our character shaped to be like that of Christ.

Guest Introduction: Keas Keasler and Kingdom Apprenticeship

SPEAKER_02

Welcome to the Upwards Podcast, where we explore the intersection of Christian faith in the Academy, the church, and the marketplace. In today's episode, host Dan Hummel sits down with Kees Keisler, author of Kingdom Apprenticeship, Dallas Willard's Formational Theology and Missional Vision. Together, they explore the life, thought, and enduring influence of Dallas Willard, a philosopher, pastor, and spiritual guide whose work continues to shape how Christians understand discipleship and transformation. From Willard's roots in philosophy to his deep concern for spiritual formation in everyday life, this conversation unpacks what it really means to become an apprentice of Jesus and why that vision feels especially urgent today. Let's get into the conversation.

Upper House and the Annual Dallas Willard Lecture

How Keasler Became a Dallas Willard Scholar

SPEAKER_01

Well, it's good to be here again for an episode of the Upwards Podcast. I'm here with Keith Keesler, and he's the author of Kingdom Apprenticeship: Dallas Willard's Formational Theology and Missional Vision, recently out with Intervarsity Press. Keith, it's good to be with you today. Dan, great to be with you. Looking forward to this combo. So I really enjoyed uh reading this book in the last few weeks. I'm someone who has been a sort of amateur fan of Dallas Willard for a long time. I've I remember reading um his books as a much younger uh person in college and really finding what felt like a kindred spirit in terms of he's a philosopher, as we'll get into. Um I majored in philosophy um as an undergrad, so I've I found sort of an interest there. And then just the way he approached some of these core concepts of what it meant to be, what it means to be uh a follower of Jesus, I just felt really resonated with me and and sort of the tradition I grew up in. It was sort of the the uh the oasis uh that I needed uh at the time and have continued to enjoy since then. So I'm really looking forward to getting into this conversation. Here at uh at Upper House, we have an annual Dallas Willard lecture that um we see as a way of raising the profile of someone who got their PhD at UW Madison all the way back in the 60s. And for us, that lecture is really modeling or bringing people who model Willard's ability to bridge the academic disciplines with the needs of the church. Uh we we see that as an ideal scenario, at least for some academics uh who feel called to that. So one of the purposes here of this conversation is to get into your book, which is one of these really fascinating, just sort of deep dive into what Willard actually thought, how his thinking changed a bit over the decades that he was active, and what the core of his message was. But it's also here to introduce who Dallas Willard was for those who are unfamiliar in our community. So before getting into you talking a bit about Dallas's um biography, I did just want to ask here at the front end, what got you interested in researching, really spending, it seems like many, many years, I think you say seven years in the acknowledgments on this project of researching in-depth Dallas Willard's thoughts, sort of what brought you into being uh a Dallas Willard scholar?

First Encounter: Richard Foster and the Gateway to Willard

Reading Spirit of the Disciplines in College

A Desert Day, Hearing God, and a Life-Changing Read

SPEAKER_00

The origins are when I was a church planner and a pastor in Miami, Florida. Well, no, it goes back even further than that. I mean, I was first handed a book of Willard's when I was a student at Baylor. And it was, you know, my my gateway drug to Dallas was Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline, which just sort of lit me up. And Richard has this brief little note that he learned so much from the philosopher, Dr. Dallas Willard, who was a personal friend of his. So the next time I was at the bookstore, looked for one of uh Dallas' books and found Spirit of the Disciplines and tried to read that. I say try, I don't really recall that much, but I pulled it off my shelf maybe a year, year and a half ago, my original copy. This is like circa 2002 or something, and I can see how far I made it because I was using a pink highlighter, which I haven't used in ages. I don't use, I protect my books better now, but I was using a highlighter back in the day. And I read the first couple chapters, and then I see that I skipped towards the end to this chapter that was focused on the spiritual disciplines, and that's probably all I could handle at the time. And just remember, oh, that was some great commentary on the spiritual life. Uh, it wasn't until I was pastoring in Miami that I went on a desert day. I still do this, it's really important. I got one planned for this Friday, just a full day outside of my zip code to pray, press into God, to um to journal. And I will sometimes bring with me, along with scripture, uh, some book to help facilitate my friendship with God. And a friend had suggested Hearing God by Willard, which was his first book. It was retitled. His first book is In Search of Guidance. So that's the actual text it was. But I had the later edition, Hearing God, and it just um rocked my world. Uh in particular, I mean, I can remember chapters four and five, where Dallas goes in on the still small voice, also how God communicates to us through other human voices. It's this really um sophisticated rendering, put in layman terms, of how um we can receive God's voice and grow in friendship with him. And so that just kind of sent me on a new journey in the pastorate of reading, I mean, I was reading all of Dallas's major works and finding it extremely helpful as I was trying to lead people and form them in Christ-likeness and also help them sort of join in God's work in the world. Renovation of the heart was really helpful in just um folks that I was walking with that were seeking to be transformed in certain areas. And he was just kind of highlighting and pinpointing the hurdles that get in the way of that and how they might be overcome by God's grace through the Spirit. I also came across at that time this little note that Dallas had said that uh every church has to ask itself two questions. Number one, what's our plan for making disciples? Number two, how's that going? And for that community in Miami, that those two questions just served as like sort of a a base for us. We were just continually coming back to that. And we found that for many churches, those questions weren't even on the radar. And so Dallas was just really helpful. And I also was reading a lot of folks. I mean, I was reading folks from spiritual formation uh movement. I was reading folks involved in like the missional, kind of missional Christianity, that whole um body of literature. And I did have this intuitive sense that Dallas somehow bridged the gap between those, between the mystics and the missionaries. That's what sort of the the catalyst of doing the deep dive into his work was that little pebble in my shoe of why does there seem to be such a gulf between sort of the contemplative movement, contemplative writers over here, and the missional movement and writers over here?

Pastoring in Miami and Willard's Two Questions for Every Church

SPEAKER_01

So I could untangle that more, or we can just I want to get into uh some of that uh in terms of the legacy that Willard has, maybe for today in the American Church. But before that, give us just a brief sense of of the basic facts of Willard's life. Where did he grow up? Who was he, and and um what are the main sort of high points of his biography beyond the books that he wrote that you've been referencing?

Bridging the Mystics and the Missionaries

Dallas Willard's Biography: Born 1935 in Missouri

A Broken Childhood and Being Raised by His Brother

Bible School, Baylor, and the Road to UW–Madison

Why Willard Chose Philosophy Over Seminary

SPEAKER_00

Well, received his PhD there, University of Wisconsin. Is there I mean, is there anything else you need to know? Isn't that just kind of all that matters? All right, so he grew up in uh Missouri, uh, 1935. He was born. So kind of the height of the Great Depression. He had a very broken childhood uh of his mom passing away when he was young. Um, I think he was age two or four when that happened, and at the funeral actually tried to climb into the casket to be with his mother. He didn't understand really what was going on. Dad remarried, and that did not go real well. His stepmom uh thought he was too noisy, which is really interesting. For those who know Dallas, it's about the last way that you would describe him. And one has to wonder if that did inform him, uh, you know, form kind of his psyche and how he thought of himself. And so he's really raised by his brother, who was, I mean, in his late teen years when he took in Dallas. That's a just a really important part of his story. His brother had recently married, and so you've got these young 20-somethings raising Dallas. And uh he goes off to a Bible school. It's kind of unaccredited, but has a wonderful experience there, is doing some pastoral work. I mean, I'll I'll kind of skip all of the nitty-gritty details. Ends up at Baylor, is doing another undergrad degree, this time an accredited school, winds up at the University of Wisconsin there to study philosophy. And he first, you know, what led him, here he is pastoring. So he becomes ordained right as he's graduating with his first undergrad degree. He's pastoring and he realized that he that he was inadequate to really lead people through the depths of spiritual life and connection with God and experiencing genuine transformation. He he called himself later. He said, I realized that I was a hazard in a public hazard in the pulpit, and that he needed to know more about God and the human soul if he was actually going to be able to help people. Now, this is where it gets a little interesting. Folks would expect him to go get more theological education. He had done a lot of that in his undergrad work, uh, maybe go off to seminary at this point, but he had also started reading philosophy. He'd been reading Plato, he had been reading others, and he decided that it was that field that was asking the deepest questions of um human existence, of human life. And uh that's what he chose. So that's that's really like a key part of his story is that decision to go study philosophy and did not even know if he would, you know, finish a doctoral degree. He just felt like he needed to be in the classroom and needed someone to lead him through to instruct him what he should be reading to lead some of those discussions, but he does very well.

SPEAKER_01

Aaron Ross Powell He also continues to pastor, um, at least for part of the time while he's in in uh Wisconsin. So there's uh Arena Congregational Church, Arena Wisconsin's something miles out of Madison. Um anyway, so he he he continues to be, you could say, bivocational even while he's a grad student at UW.

Bivocational: Pastoring in Arena, WI as a PhD Student

The Crossroads: Church or University?

Why Willard Took the Job at USC

Philosopher by Day, Preacher by Night

Overview of Willard's Major Books (1984–2009)

SPEAKER_00

Aaron Powell When he graduates, that becomes a really important sort of crossroads in his story because he's invited to start teaching in the Department of Philosophy there while he's pastoring. And it's at that time that that he's asking God, um, which should I go to? You know, which career path should I pursue? And he senses that God says to him that if you stay in the church, the universities will be closed to you. But if you go to the university, the churches will remain open to you. And so he chooses to become a university professor so he can stay involved and relevant in both spaces. Ultimately moves to Southern California to there were a couple of schools he was looking at, but University of Southern Cal gave him a lighter teaching load so that he might have more time to research and to and to write and to think. And so that's why he takes the gig at USC, ends up teaching there for 47 years. When he gets to Southern Cal, he's sort of those initial years establishing himself within the university, getting his young family, you know, his wife and his young kids sort of established there in the community. But fairly quickly he starts being invited into other spaces to speak and to teach, to um to preach, to uh lead Bible studies. He's a part of a small Quaker church. And uh they get a new pastor by the name of Dick Foster. That was Richard, used to go by Dick and change that at some point, and they became very close friends. Yeah, some really special things happen in that congregation. Dallas gives a Sunday school series on um the spiritual disciplines, which is sort of the impetus behind Foster's book, Celebration of Discipline, which is released in 1978. He never really set out to write these theology books. They all came at the the urging of others. You know, I describe him as he's you know moonlighting as a preacher and and author of these spiritual books and during the day teaching these courses, philosophy courses at USC. So Philosopher by Day, Preacher by Night. It just sort of grows his influence and his people are learning his work. So first book comes out in '84. That's the uh in search of guidance. Second book is 1988, Spirit of the Disciplines. And then Divine Conspiracy comes out in 98. I mean, that was the the the big one. Spirit of the disciplines kind of put him on the map, but Divine Conspiracy is kind of seen as his the culmination of his life work. He had been teaching that material dating back to the 60s. We have recordings of him working through that material. It comes with Renovation of the Heart is 2000, I think it's 2004. 2002 or 2004, and then uh Knowing Christ Today. Okay, there we go. 2002, and then Knowing Christ Today is um 2008. So those are kind of the five theology books. He wrote his major philosophical book was also published the same year as his first theology book. So Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge. So it's in 1984. And I believe that was published. Well, it's Ohio Press, is it University of Ohio Press. Yeah, I do I do have uh one from your university. That's because I have his a printed version of his dissertation. Oh, sure. So Wisconsin. Yeah. He kept writing tons and tons of articles, uh, was working on a couple of big philosophical monographs, um, one that still remains unfinished, and one that a group of his PhD students completed after his death, which is the disappearance of moral knowledge.

SPEAKER_01

Just to round it out the end of his life, so he is increasingly in demand throughout the 2000s, could probably fill up every weekend with speaking engagements if he wanted to. It sounds like he maybe did that, seemed pretty active. Yeah. And then uh so he passes away in 2013, and that was pretty quick. You can tell the story, but passed away from cancer. How how does sort of the end of his how does he end his life?

Willard's Death in 2013 and His Legacy

SPEAKER_00

Uh he had had a diagnosis and they had been battling with that, and and it looked like he was recovering and he was doing okay. And then it sort of came back and it was quite rapidly took him down. I was supposed to hear him speak at a gathering in April of 2013, Missio Alliance, its first annual gathering, and he was scheduled to speak there. And we got word, I mean, just a week before the gathering that he was not going to be able to make it, that he was not doing well. That was in April, and then uh passed away, I believe it was in June. It's either May or June. So yeah, that's how it ended, and it was very hard for the family and very hard for close friends. They didn't feel like they were able to really prepare for that and did not see that end coming so quickly. He had been involved in Renovare, so Renovare was started in 1988, um, right here in Wichita at the at the university that I teach at, University of Friends. So he was very involved in Renovare, which gave him a national platform along with with uh Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith and a handful of others. And he was really seen as the granddaddy of this spiritual formation movement. Obviously, spiritual formation is nothing new. It's been around ever since humans have been around, but the spiritual formation movement refers to the emphasis and uh sort of uh reception of spiritual formation themes in the Protestant Church, North America over the last 50 years, and he just was a key player in that, was doing his philosophical work, but really emerged, really became known for his work in spiritual formation.

The State of Willard Scholarship Today

SPEAKER_01

So when when he when he passes away, he leaves you can tell me uh what what's missing from this, but leaves a number of students who really care about his work, who, as you mentioned, complete some of the unfinished work. And then it seems like in the last so that you know that's 13 years ago that that happened, there's turned you know, there's become sort of a at least a small conversation in the wider academic world of sort of like Willard studies, or going back and um, you know, interpreting Willard for today, um, or just trying to understand better what the whole scope of his thinking was. And you know, there's a couple books that you know probably make it into there. There's a biography that was written a few years ago called Becoming Dallas Willard that was at least revelatory to me. I didn't know a lot of the story until uh reading that book. Um there's a couple scholars, including yourself, who have spent a lot of time in Willard's published writings, but then also this huge collection of um audio visual material that's at Westmont College in California. There's the Martin Institute there that uh is sort of carrying on a lot of the academic legacy uh of Willard. What else would you add to that as sort of like what's the state of how at least scholars and pastors who care about these types of conversations are remembering and still studying Willard's work?

The Martin Institute, Westmont College, and 13,000 Books

The New Wave: Michael Stewart Robb and the Audio Archive

Conversatio.org and 1,300+ Recordings

Thinking Like an Intellectual Historian

SPEAKER_00

Well, it's a it's a great little summary of it. Yeah, I would say there's kind of two tracks right now. The one that's been prominent is Dallas, known as the disciplines guy. A lot of the interest in spiritual formation, which I think there's a number of reasons for that, which we could get into, but there's just a lot of interest in the world of spiritual formation going on right now. And so pastors, especially, thought leaders, are interested in Dallas' work from that angle. But as you mentioned, there's been a separate track. There's kind of a new track emerging that has been, I would say, for the last shortly after his death. There was a dissertation written by Gary Black Jr. He did his dissertation on uh Willard, which was published a little bit after, maybe a couple years after his uh his death. The Martin Institute was established, which also houses all of Dallas Willard's unpublished papers and notes and all sorts of things. His book collection. I mean, my goodness, he had 13,000 books. So they had to figure out which of those are gonna keep. That's almost like a separate library within their library, right? Um, they have his uh beekeeping suit there. They've got all sorts of little, like really, really interesting things. You've got to make it out there. It's a wonderful all these boxes and boxes of these papers. And I mean, Omboy was just writing all the time and yellow pads, and uh, I had to I had to get his daughter and son, Becky and John, to help me decipher some of his handwriting, especially as he got older. He was just whipping it around. Looks like a medical doctor, not a Doctor of philosophy. They're all there at Westmont. And so then you have this theologian Michael Stuart Robb, who decides to do his dissertation. He's studying at the University of Aberdeen, does his dissertation on Dallas, and that kind of is the new wave of Willard's scholarship because he makes a very compelling case for including all of these recorded talks, sermons. So the last time I checked were about 1,300 assets, at least 1,300 hours of Dallas, these Sunday school teachings, sermons, seminars, folks recording his philosophy lectures. And as part of the Martin Institute, which I I see the Martin Institute, which is at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California, they sort of have have emerged as the academic anchor of the spiritual formation movement. They have the Dallas Willard Scholars, which you're you're a part of now. Welcome to the circle, Dan. And uh you you referred to yourself as an immature before. You're you're stepping up to the plate now, man. You're gonna you're gonna be um you know adding to this group. I'm looking forward to that. They have one of their projects at the Martin Institute was to collect all of these recordings and uh to make them available online, conversatio.org. I mean, it has just it's over a thousand recordings that are on there. And so Michael Stewart Robb, that is included in his research and and it and it just opens up everything. Dallas is not merely the the disciplines guy anymore. He is touching on nearly every theological subject in these talks. And I mean, he was brilliant. He has a lot to add, and it is, I think, all sort of interconnected, even though he never lays it out in a systematic manner. That's what some of us are trying to do. So Rob did uh his dissertation, and that was followed by his book, The Kingdom Among Us. And now I've contributed my book, also using, along with all of his writings in theology, you know, I'm reading all of his major philosophical works, and I'm listening to, you know, hundreds and hundreds of these recordings and getting all sorts of, I mean, for instance, uh, a lot of folks think that Dallas's view of the church, his ecclesiology is sort of underdeveloped or weak. And if I'm being soul necked with you, Dan, when I went into my research project, I sort of shared that view that this was an area he didn't give much thought to. And through my research, came to see he actually has a robust ecclesiology. It is sort of in the background. It's kind of uh in the shadows in a way, but it's there, it's present in his writings, but it really comes to the front, to the limelight in some of these talks that he gave, where he lays it out. I think he was informed, for instance, by Bonhoeffer's view of the church and Bonhoeffer's dissertation in particular, uh, which is very difficult to read. Dallas was sort of um translating that, bringing it down to a street level as much as he could. Dallas just Dallas, you know, was trying to translate his own sophisticated thought for the rest of us mere mortals. So so yeah, that's a bit of what's going on in the there's uh a dissertation, another dissertation that's just been written by a young theologian, Osbert Wee. It's from a reformed perspective. So, you know, I think it's pretty exciting some of the uh some of the momentum that's that's going on here. And yeah, just to circle back, so Gary Moon wrote that biography on Dallas becoming Dallas Wood, which is fantastic as well. It's a brilliant sort of introduction to Dallas's story and to his thought. It's not just a mere storytelling. It is he's getting into Dallas's thought as well and breaking that down.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, there's definitely an intellectual biography component to that, that book that makes it more than merely a retelling of his life.

SPEAKER_02

If you're enjoying this episode, we invite you to explore more at slbf.org slash studio, where you'll find podcasts, lectures, and events designed to help you engage the big questions of life with depth and clarity. And if this conversation is meaningful to you, consider sharing it with a friend or leaving a review. Now let's get back to the conversation with Kees Keisler.

Willard and Phenomenology: The Study of Consciousness

SPEAKER_01

I'm trained as an intellectual historian, so one of the things that intellectual historians tend to do when we come to a thinker is you of course you first engage with their main works, uh, the things that they really spend a lot of time crafting and are have have been discussed a lot. But of but you really want to quickly move beyond that to the other types of ways you can get at their thought. And for many theologians or philosophers or just thinkers of the past, that was often through letters. Um they would write hundreds, if not thousands, of letters, and many of the letters actually exposited their thinking in ways that was that were in some some ways more accessible than in their published work. I think Dallas is a a product of the late 20th century, and so it it maybe I'd I'm sure he wrote a bunch of letters as well, but it seems like it's these recorded talks that um are that component. Or you think of like John Wesley, uh a lot of his thinking was through sermons, and we have a lot of those sermons, the transcripts. But boy, wouldn't it be interesting if we had the recordings of those sermons, even though the technology wasn't around. With Dallas World, we do have that. And so to me, it seems just like a very logical extension of the conversation to bring in whatever you can, really, where he's on record sort of talking about how he's thinking about things. And then the the main task of integrating that into what is already known through the major published works. So that that seems like it's just a ripe field for interesting insights, even differences in interpretation can emerge if multiple people are looking at it, and you get to have like a real conversation uh about it, uh, as long as there's enough scholars like you and like Rob and others that are willing to really spend that time get getting to know all that material.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And in the book, I so I sort of categorize the different sources of Willard's thought, how it can be known. And I'm just such a visual learner, so I'm also like a visual teacher. And I break it down, compare it in terms of the earth kind of layers, these four layers, the the inner core being his philosophical work. Then the outer core, which is, you know, in terms of earth structure, is in liquid form. So that's what I compare all these recordings to. And they're sort of in liquid form as well, and they're massive. It's a huge source of his materials. And then you have this Pentology, the five books as are referred to, and kind of his related articles. He has some really, really sharp articles in theology, like an essay he wrote for the Oxford Handbook on um evangelical theology. It's on discipleship, it's fantastic. And there's different articles, so those would be clumped in together. And then you have the crust, which is sort of this the outer layer, a lot of his there's there's books still being published of his talks that are just being transcribed. And you know, some of his essays and other more popular writings would fit in there. So I think that's helpful for kind of understanding how how these different layers or source materials interact and how they ought to be um prioritized.

Edmund Husserl and Willard's Philosophical Core

SPEAKER_01

Okay, so you're mentioning of the phil the philosophical being the core uh of his thinking. We can't do justice to the complexity of all of his philosophical thought. Um, but we've mentioned a few of his influences, people like Richard Foster, who were both influenced by and influenced Dallas's understanding of spiritual formation, of Christianity. I think for a lot of people, a more of a darker black box is Willard's the significance of him being a philosopher, and particularly a philosopher who was very into phenomenology, um, which is a sort of school of thought that most of us are not familiar with. So if you're introducing that part of Willard to a novice, someone who just doesn't know that terrain very well, what what's your answer to sort of why is it important that Dallas was a phenomenological philosopher, a philosopher of phenomenology? How does that connect with the more familiar writings that Willard has on spiritual formation?

Why Willard Didn't Footnote His Theology Books

"To the Things Themselves": Phenomenology's Rallying Cry

SPEAKER_00

So phenomenology being the study of the acts of consciousness, so situated broadly within the field of epistemology. So he's very, very informed, very shaped by Edmund Husserl, who is seen as the father of phenomenology. I mean, his dissertation focuses on Husserl, his 1984 monograph and philosophy is on Husserl. He writes introductions to Husserl's work in academic books and translates some of his early philosophical works, which is seen as a big in sort of the study of phenomenology is seen as a big contribution to that field. There's all sorts of ways that this spills out and informs. I mean, he he lets some comments fly here and there in interviews and such, where he just says that that the connection between phenomenology and his thinking and spiritual formation is seamless. He's just leaving some breadcrumbs for the rest of us to try and make these connections because he never spells it out. I mean, it's one of the reasons that he does not, in his writings in um spirituality, religion, theology, he doesn't footnote a lot, which is really interesting, which he's kind of gotten some pushback from exegetes and professional theologians for not showing his homework. And that's because he wasn't writing these books for them. I mean, the practical nature of his approach to his theology, he very much viewed himself as a minister of the gospel. And that's why he was speaking every weekend. This was sort of the something that he and his wife sort of butt heads on a bit, is he really struggled with saying no because he felt called first and foremost, even before being a professor, he felt called to be a minister of the gospel. Now, he being a professor was an expression of that, but so was going and teaching in the basement of a church on a weekend, uh, going through the book of Acts. He felt that as a minister of the gospel, that that ministry had to be embodied. And so he just was relentless. It didn't matter about the size of the group or this and that. He just felt that if he was asked that that he had to share gospel, he had to, he had to minister to these people. Now, in his philosophical writings, he's footnoting left and right. He's showing all of his sources, he's showing all of his homework, but he's writing these books for people in the pews, not for theologians in the towers. And also a bit of that is his commitment to phenomenology, which says to the things themselves. That's like the rowing cry of phenomenology. Whereas if you read someone like uh Thomas Aquinas or even Calvin, they are constantly, when they make a point, they want to cite the authorities. So Aquinas is always talking about the church fathers or the philosopher, you know, that's uh Aristotle for him. And you get the same thing in Calvin, is when he's arguing, he's wanting just to cite all the authorities. Dallas is much more interested in talking about the thing itself and reasoning around that and giving the rationale. Also, I mean, phenomenology is the acts of consciousness, of how thoughts are formed and what that means for the rest of one's life. You can see this being translated into his thinking on spiritual formation, that he is actually wants to know how this actually happens. What are the dynamics involved in this? Not to just get lost in abstraction of this doctrine and that, you know, playing these uh these abstract puzzles in the sky. He wants to know how this gets meted out, what's involved, how does real transformation happen? Why do we not see more of it? And so I think that seamless integration between his phenomenological thinking and his formational theology, that it's present for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Willard's Philosophical Realism: God's Kingdom Is Truly Real

SPEAKER_01

There's a term that comes close behind phenomenology that seems to me at least to be part of what Willard was concerned about too, which was this idea of realism, of philosophical realism. You know, the way I would say that is Willard was trained and grew up in a time where I think what he saw as one of the threats to to truth with a capital T was like a relativism or a sense of, or or maybe an idealism. These would be other isms that propose that there's something there's something that makes it very hard for humans to understand what is real in the world. And I think he wanted to move as quickly as he could toward affirming there's real things in the world and we can grasp them through the method of phenomenology and and we can have you know trust in the Bible and other things. Uh in a way where he saw like there's a there needs to be a philosophical grounding to that. That is uh realism being that there are real things in the world that we can grasp as humans with our five senses. Am I right on that? Is that sort of another aspect of what you're right on it?

SPEAKER_00

So you not to get too nerdy here, but realism, you know, there there's metaphysical realism, so metaphysics dealing with ontology, what what is real, what exists, and then there's epistemic realism, which would be epistemology, how do we know what we know? And Dallas was a committed, resolute realist in both senses. And how these go together, how they hold hands with his theology is to echo a bit of what you were saying. Things are real in the world. We're not living in a matrix kind of uh figment of our imagination here. Uh, these things are real, and the realest real, like ultimate reality, the core of it, is God and his kingdom. And then the epistemic realism says that not only are those things real, but we can know them. We can go to them in thought and mind. And if we do, if we actually interact with those realities, they will change us, they will transform us.

The Eight Principles of Willard's Formational Theology

SPEAKER_01

Okay, we we um do not have time to unpack all of this the components of Willard's thought. So I'm gonna ask you one question. It's a huge question. So um maybe you know, try to find the the core of it uh to answer. But um, a lot of your book is unpacking the very intricate and nuanced and informed way that Willard understood spiritual formation to happen in a person's life, and then what what the implications of that were for one's own life and one's communal life and the life of the world. So, in the most distilled sense, what did Willard think was the value of spiritual formation? Or what did he hope, or what did he understand the Bible to be teaching about what following Jesus would turn us into?

Created to Co-Reign with God: Beginning with Eschatology

The Parable of the Pounds and Our Eternal Vocation

"Jesus Is the Selfie of God"

Apprenticeship as Character Formation from the Inside Out

A Radically Realist Christology

Grace Is Not Opposed to Effort, But to Earning

The Golden Triangle: Spirit, Disciplines, and Daily Life

SPEAKER_00

Well, let me see how I want to eat this elephant. Just one bite at a time, right? So I begin, I give these eight sort of I go through, I I devote a chapter to each, these different principles of his formational theology. It's the DNA of his thinking on spiritual formation, so to speak. And I begin with um his eschatology or his teleology, you know, since your background's in philosophy, is beginning with the end in mind, is uh Dallas wants to say God created us, we see in Genesis, created us to co-create with him, and that we are invited into this story to be co-creators, to steward and care for creation. And another way of phrasing or framing co-creating is co-reigning. So we are meant to reign with God, to rule over, lovingly rule over creation. And because of that, God gives us each, I mean, this is his emphasis on the human spirit. So one of the unique things of his anthropology is that he refers, he thinks that spirit, will, heart, he uses all these sort of interchangeably to refer to the same dimension of the human person. And they, it's kind of like a diamond. They each have like a little side, but they're one reality, um, these different facets, these different uh sides. And so the human spirit is the will, it's it's volition. It is our God gives humans a bit of say-so in the world and self-determination. We we have a some ability for that. There's other forces that determine us and that are at work in us, but that's what's unique about uh human beings. And Dallas is going to say that the imago day is creative will in the human person. And we are meant to submit, align that will, you know, our say-so with God's say-so. That's how we um align our kingdom with God's kingdom. That's what that co-reigning and co-ruling looks like. It's done in friendship with God. So you have to start there because that gives the big picture of what spiritual formation aims at, is that it's about developing the sort of character that can handle such power. It's a leadership. So it's a power that God wants to give us to lead with him. You just work backwards. If this is what we're going to be doing, not only in this life to some extent, but in the life to come. You know, he's going to look at the parable of the pounds of the master who gives these servants these different pounds and goes off and comes back. And what did you do with it? Oh, well, man, I multiplied it. You know, you gave me this many, I multiplied it to this. And, you know, you have this one servant says, Well, you know, I just, I didn't know what to do with it. So I just stuck it in the ground, just dug a hole and stuck it in the ground. So with those servants who made good on what was given to them, the master says, now let me appoint you over five, ten cities. He doesn't say, Let me give you more pounds. He says, I'm gonna put you over. You're now gonna be governing and leading these cities. And Dallas wants to point to that and say, maybe that wasn't a uh pedagogical slip on Jesus' part. Maybe it was insight into the future that is to come for God's people that we're gonna be ruling over cities and perhaps whole galaxies with God. Yeah, it makes my brain hurt when I try to think to the full extent of that. But his view of spiritual formation is all wrapped up in that. So, what does it look like for our character to resemble his? And we know God's character in its most explicit form through the person of Jesus. I mean, that's what God looks like in human form, God's heart in human form, we might even say. Jesus is the selfie of God. And so when Jesus invites us to follow him to become his apprentices, it's not merely to learn to be able to do what he did, it's to become the type of person in which those actions flow out of naturally. Uh it starts from the inside to have our character shaped to be like that of Christ. First and foremost, that happens through real-time interaction with Christ. Dallas has, I call it a radically realist Christology. That is part of his theory of spiritual formation. It's gonna happen through interacting with Christ, Christ teaching us how to live deeply in God's kingdom, how to become a citizen of that kingdom through and through. It's gonna happen through this interchange of the spirit in our life, uh, along with our own effort. So Dallas says. This famous line that grace is not opposed to effort, but to earning. I think this is one of the most valuable aspects of Dao's theology is this sophisticated interchange between God's spirit and the human spirit, um, how this gets meted out. Very helpful, I think, for pastors and leaders today that want to walk with people and see sanctification actually happen. How am I doing with eating the elephant? Dallas gives very practical pieces, a couple of heuristics tools for this, but that's really kind of getting into the weeds. You know, Vim, uh vision, intention, means, and then he has this triangle. So I focus on those. Dallas focused on them. I mean, he lays he lays out Vim and renovation of the heart, he lays out the triangle and divine conspiracy, but he was teaching these things repeatedly. You listen to his sermons late 90s onward. I mean, every it just appears so much, because he just was trying to give people really practical, some kind of heuristic, just a mental model of understanding how this dynamic in the spiritual life happens. He said that he came up with the golden triangle, which you have centered in the middle is the mind of Christ, that that's what we are to be clothed in Christ-likeness, that that's the goal. On top, he has the Holy Spirit sort of pervading the entire thing. Uh, on one side, he has disciplines for the spiritual life. And on the other side, he has ordinary events of life, daily decisions. You know, we might call them the everyday problems. He once said that he came up with this triangle to show that it's not just all about the spiritual disciplines. That other aspect of daily decisions that goes so far in shaping our character. Character is habituated will. So it's this interchange of these dynamics in both of those corners of the triangle. We're learning how to submit to the spirit in our lives. What else would I add to it?

Why Spiritual Formation Is Growing in the Church Today

SPEAKER_01

I think that's a great overview. It gives it also gives a great um teaser for all of the in-depth conversations on a lot of these areas of theology that um you cover in the book. As you were talking, I was just thinking how I mean you highlighted it, how so much of this is at that perennial question in the Christian faith around God's agency and our agency and where does one end and the other begin. And it seems clear that there's a role for both, but there's a hundred different answers on exactly what the balance is there. For any listeners who are interested in that perennial question that has both driven a lot of creativity and a lot of division in Christian history, Dallas is a really interesting thinking partner on that, and one that's of a more recent vintage, and so just is naturally asking the question in a way that is more familiar maybe to people today than previous generations uh have asked the question. But yeah, that there's there's so much more we could go into. I think we want to land on a question that you brought up uh much earlier in the conversation about why is spiritual formation, particularly the type that Dallas was so important in shaping the movement of, why is that seeming to resonate with Christians today? It might not be all Christians, um, it might be part of the stories. It's a certain part of the church that is particularly uh needing or interested in this type of teaching. But um I as you were you know referencing part you know some of the key words in the Willard uh mode of thinking, character, the disciplines, co-ruling, being an apprentice of Jesus. I mean, these are very uh speaking as a millennial, very appealing to at least some segment of millennial Christians, and I'm I'm sure younger as well. Why do you think this is a this spiritual formation movement that Willard has been a part of is sort of on the up or seems to be growing? I mean, I you don't want to be too confident in any of this, but there is an audience for this. There seems to be a desire to think more about this, to read more about this, to talk more about this. Yeah, why do you think that is?

Richard Lovelace and the Sanctification Gap

The Crisis of Character in the Church

SPEAKER_00

Richard Lovelace, the reformed historian, in the 70s pinned this little article, and then it became a chapter in a later book, but little article titled The Sanctification Gap. And uh he's not only diagnosing what could be perceived, I mean, he was very sort of prophetic for what was to come as well, but what could be perceived at the time of this gap in what many Christians profess and um what is manifest in their lives, that they have not grown, that that uh they have not experienced serious sanctification in their lives. He roots it in a lot of uh evangelical theology that had come a bit earlier, and that, you know, the uh chickens had come home to roost, so to speak, now. But he would he was naming that, and I said it was prophetic. I mean, it really, it only grew, that gap only widened in the decades that came. So that's one is that just an awareness of uh we have all of these, all of this right thinking and all of this emphasis on doctrines, and uh and yet there's an absence of genuine fruit in the everyday Christians' lives. Another major factor is just a yearning for a deeper life, and lots of Christians not finding that on offer in the churches that they grew up in or in the Christianity that they've been exposed to. Uh for me in particular, when I was a college student, when I read Richard Foster's uh works, it was introducing me to these different practices, different than like the standard Bible study and prayer and church going and tithing that you would hear in many Protestant and evangelical churches. These things were historical, these practices that Foster was bringing up to the surface, and allowed for just so much of a deeper connection with God. You know, we all have different spiritual personalities. God has connected us, created us to connect with him in different ways, having a big toolbox of different practices based on one spiritual personality. I think that is one reason. There's that yearning. And I would say of late, what we've seen in the last 10, 15 years, it is that sanctification gap, but I think it's being felt most acutely in terms of leadership. So I think there is a crisis of character that we're undergoing in the church today and in broader society. I mean, David Brooks wrote an article a couple of years ago published in The Atlantic, titled How America Became Mean, where he's looking at just what's going on in our political discourse. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, both in terms of society at large and of what's going on in the church, where it seems like every month a new leader, pastor, spokesperson in the church or in the faith, a scandal comes out. And if that's happening on this big sort of national headlines level, I mean, think about all the cases that are off the radar that aren't getting the attention. What are the factors of this crisis of character? I think that that speaks to some of the interest yearning for genuine spiritual transformation. And uh I have a lot of hope that Dallas and others can point us the way and uh really aid us in the work that is before us.

SPEAKER_01

There's so much more we could talk about, but we're gonna leave it there. Hopefully uh listeners understand part of the reason why we'd want to elevate someone like Dallas Willard here in Madison again to just uh recall not only his what he what he was teaching, but his example of someone who bridged the academic and church world so so well for so many years. Uh again, the book is Kingdom Apprenticeship, Dallas Willard's Formational Theology and Missional Vision. Keith, it's been a pleasure uh talking to you. Thanks for writing the book. Thanks for this conversation, Dan. Enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_02

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Upwards Podcast. Today's conversation with Keith Keesler invited us into the rich and challenging vision of Dallas Willard. A vision where spiritual formation is not optional, but essential to becoming the kind of people who can live, lead, and love well in God's kingdom. To hear more conversations like this, subscribe to the Upwards Podcast in your favorite podcast app or visit slbf.org slash studio. Until next time, keep looking upward and living with purpose. Go in peace.