E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten
Willard Living in Christ's Presence
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8308-9625-7
Verlag: IVP Formatio
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Final Words on Heaven and the Kingdom of God
E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten
ISBN: 978-0-8308-9625-7
Verlag: IVP Formatio
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Dallas Willard is professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California. He is the author of such books as The Divine Conspiracy, Renovation of the Heart and Hearing God.
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Conversation
Dallas Willard and John Ortberg
John: We have talked many times about the idea of pastors being teachers of the nations and how important that is. But when we read other folks, people who are not Christians—Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett or whoever—a vast majority of us know that we could not out-argue them and that we are not smarter than they are. How do we present with confidence this knowledge when we are aware that we may not be able to out-argue their position?
Dallas: One of the things that is helpful in that situation is to begin to recognize the agenda that they are working on, and it will not take you very long until you realize that a major part of their agenda is to shut you up. So they know how to work symbolisms that are provided by the institutions of knowledge in our culture that have defined the knowledge of Christ out of the domain of knowledge officially. But many times one who is not a scholar in that particular area simply has to know the history well enough to recognize that the position they are arguing is not one represented by humanity’s thoughts through the ages. Only recently in this respect have we become accustomed to thinking that faith is one thing and knowledge is another.
We have people who live just around the corner from Richard Dawkins who can put him in a corner and shut him up. So it becomes a kind of contest that we have to be very careful about or we will come to despise him. The thing that he needs most to hear is the effect of love and the life of truth in human beings and then to look at what he purports to know and realize how little it has to say about what really matters for most human beings. It is the inadequacy of what is presented by knowledge in the secular world to deal with the life of the people who occupy the secular world that is the revelation of the limitations that this viewpoint, which sets the knowledge of Christ aside and says it is not knowledge, is revealed.
Now, that is something that the community has to be working on. You are right in the midst of the community up there with Stanford University, and that’s an occasion where you can mix this thing up. I would hope that you would bring in some of the people who are unbelievers from Stanford, and let some others in the fellowship listen and talk, because it is only in conversation that the deficiencies are revealed. Now the conversation has been shut down, and what we need are people—writers and teachers and speakers and all kinds of people—who will simply stand up and initiate the conversation.
John: But what you are saying then is that the foundational issue isn’t so much proofs for the existence for God or that sort of thing; it’s the adequacy of what’s being said as a foundation for life.
Dallas: That’s the crucial issue, because when you’ve had your say one way or the other about proofs for the existence of God, which I think are extremely important, they are undermined by cheap and illogical criticisms in the minds of the students, many of whom are Christians. Then they go out and very often wind up going to seminary and having a ministry based on what, their tradition? What takes over when knowledge disappears is tradition. Jesus talked about that over and over in Matthew 15. You put the traditions of men in place of the commandments of God. Well, if the commandments of God don’t constitute knowledge, why not put something else in their place? That’s how it goes in human life.
John: Some might say that the name of a chapter in your book “Pastors as Teachers of the Nations,” sounds presumptuous. When asked about that, your immediate response—you didn’t even wait a half a second—was, “That is exactly right. Jesus is the most presumptuous person that ever lived.” Say a word about what it means for all of us, if we are part of a church and trying to speak to our world today, that presumption is required.
Dallas: Well, this is an extremely important point. You know Jesus’ effect on people was different from that of the scribes and Pharisees. That was because he spoke as one having authority, and people noticed that. The scribes and the Pharisees had to go look up their footnotes or find out which rabbi said this about what. The people listening to it understood that those people didn’t know what they were talking about. The scribes and the Pharisees pull authority out of their connections and laid it on them, but Jesus talked about real life.
The amazing thing about Jesus—and I hope you might look carefully at the logic of his words—was how he was able to refer to reality and cause people to understand it in a different way. Usually it was in a way that got past the hardened traditions of those people who thought they were in charge of the religious life. The test of religious life is life, and that’s where Jesus lived it. And that’s why he refers to children and says that if you are going to enter the kingdom of God, you have to come like a little child.
Now, apart from Jesus, the next most presumptuous person in the world is a little child. They just go, you know. The main thing is, when you hear Jesus, do what he says. Don’t build a theory. Just do what he says, and reality will teach you, and that is where authority ultimately lies. So, the test for the secularist and the Christian spokesperson is the reality that they bring people in touch with.
In our recent past the single greatest illustration of this is C. S. Lewis. He never pulls authority on you. He just talks about things, and he helps you see things. Multitudes of people have simply put in practice what he says, and they have found it to be true. That is the ultimate appeal of the spokesperson for Christ.
John: A question related to that one has to do with knowledge and the nature of knowledge: How would you distinguish knowledge from certainty that you are right?
Dallas: You start out with this: everyone has been certain and wrong. Certainty is a psychological state that you can work up. You see a lot of this in religious groups. They are trying to work up certainty, but that is a terrible mistake. When you convey knowledge, you are giving people things they can test and find to be true in reality.
John: What do you mean when you say “work up certainty”? Do you mean try to push themselves to feel more certainty than they really do?
Dallas: Sure. Right. I mean, this is the cheerleader. You’re four hundred points behind, and there are three minutes left, so you’re still saying we’re going to win. If you look, you see they actually believe it. Certainty is something that is caught from the surroundings. That is true of belief, by the way. We pick up beliefs like a coat picks up lint. Little children pick up beliefs. They have to go through the process of refining that and turning that into knowledge. That should be the function of the fellowship of believers, to provide the context in which they can do that.
John: You talked about doctrine and how a lot of times we can replace being a disciple of Jesus with insisting that people have certain right doctrinal affirmations. But what is the proper role of doctrine for a disciple?
Dallas: Well, the proper role of doctrine is teaching openly with a view to people coming to understand things, not with a view to them winding up with the right views. That’s not for us to control. That’s for them and the Holy Spirit and reality to work out—having the right views. The problem is that doctrine is taught in a way that says you must believe this whether you believe it or not. That doesn’t work well. That’s why we see the steady exodus of young people from our churches. But Jesus wasn’t like that. He never does that sort of thing. Anyone who can find a better way than Jesus, he would be the first to tell you to take it.
John: Would you say that one more time, because I have not heard that in churches often?
Dallas: Jesus was a man of truth. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, not of correct doctrine. I am just saying that we need to tell our young people, “Follow Jesus, and if you can find a better way than him, he would be the first to tell you to take it.”
John: Isn’t that dangerous?
Dallas: It’s dangerous not to do that. What you wind up with is people who don’t believe what they say they believe. You wind up with people—as Isaiah and then Jesus picked up—whose tongues are close to Jesus, but their hearts are far away. See, your tongue follows correctness; your heart follows truth.
John: Could you say that again?
Dallas: What gets said is an exercise in social conformity. Now sometimes that is wonderful, if it turns out that it is right, but if you think you are right, just ask someone who disagrees with you.
John: The tongue follows correctness, but the heart follows truth.
Dallas: Right. Now, that is Jesus’ teaching, not mine. Check Matthew 15: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Matthew 15:8). Now, as spokespersons for Christ, we are going for the heart. We are going for Richard Dawkins’s heart. We are going for the heart of all these people, but one of the hardest things to overcome is that so many times people have not cared about that.
John: They just want to win the...
