---

Michael V. Di Fuccia: Your book, The Kingdom Among Us: the Gospel According to Dallas Willard, is over 500 pages long and delves deep into the intellectual development and main themes of Willard’s life work. You’ve searched just about every resource in your research. It is very clear you’ve done your homework here and put a lot of time into this. So, I have to ask, what was it about Dallas Willard that compelled you to devote so much time and careful attention to his body of work? 

 

Michael Stewart Robb: The truth is that I found Dallas increasingly fascinating as I continued to study him. I still find him increasingly fascinating. Other intellectuals or church figures didn’t have that effect on me. There are, no doubt, many reasons for that. One is certainly the sense of mystery that surrounds him because he spoke a lot, knew a lot but didn’t publish a lot. So I feel like a detective solving a crime. Another reason is that of so many contemporary intellectuals and church figures Dallas still seems to me to have his head screwed on straight, especially with regard to the actual situation in the church and in society and what needs to be said about it. That’s Dallas’s prophetic gift. Dallas isn’t the best trained or most careful theologian we’ve seen in 2,000 years of theology but he is one of the most perceptive.   

 

MVD: Thanks Mike. I’m curious, can you say more about how Willard served as a sort of prophetic guide (“his head screwed on straight”) for you in the midst of what you call, “the actual situation in the church and in society.” What was (or is) the “situation” and how did Willard speak to it? 

 

MSR: I don’t think Willard only served as a prophetic guide for me; I think that was his vocation in the church. The “actual situation” has changed over the decades that Dallas was an active minister. I’ve been working on a Willard documentary/podcast that tells this story (though we’re still looking for key donors and a viable distribution strategy) so let me give you a glimpse of that. 

Back in the 60’s, post-war America, still enjoying its post-war prosperity, didn’t have a clear national purpose other than consumerism. This is also the decade of counterculture (Bob Dylan, hippies and such) which was one response to the dominant consumerist, purpose-less culture. The church was another but it was still organized by what worked in the 19th and 20th century – which meant the parish model and revivalism. The church before the 1960’s was like the supermarket. It didn’t have to worry about whether anybody would come; it just had to make sure to be present wherever people were. And revivals were the main method for spiritual growth and for pushing nominal Christians (basically most Americans) into active faith. But it was in the 60’s when the church went from being the cultural authority in America to its current sidelined position. Dallas lived on both sides of that. In the 50’s and early 60’s, when he was training for the ministry, he was training for the most respectable job in the country! That’s why the guidance he received to go into the university instead of the church didn’t make sense to him at first.  

So you have this bright young man, 29 years old and devoted to Christ. You have L.A., possibly the model city for America’s anti-intellectualist, consumerist inspirations, known for car culture, a burgeoning style of music, counterculture and other culture wars and of course Hollywood. So Dallas moves to L.A., of all places, to try and make a difference in church and society. How? By thinking and by helping others think.  

So that’s a glimpse of Dallas as a prophetic guide – as somebody who has the foresight and courage to do things that don’t yet make sense to others. This is a young man who still hasn’t discovered spiritual disciplines or discipleship really. But I wonder, have we yet discovered his emphasis on thinking? 

 

MVD: When you put it that way, one sees just how unique and, dare I say, counter-Christian- cultural was Willard’s path. Fascinating.  

 

MVD: Speaking of Willard’s emphasis on thinking, this book is a bit of heavy lifting for the average reader. If you were to distill one gift it offers to the academy, what might that be? And what gift might it offer the church? 

 

MSR: A friend recently helped me discern its gift to the academy and that’s the book’s street-level view of Jesus, its unpacking of the gospel from the testimony (i.e. perspective) of its first responders. The Bible does not only have an orthodox story to tell about Jesus but also, for some reason, a sub-orthodox one. Though patristic and medieval commentators may disagree, the first responders to Jesus’ life and message did not have the Nicaean creed in mind when they went to sleep the first night after leaving their nets to follow him. Dallas is a rare Bible teacher who takes that seriously and makes sense of it in theologically rich, philosophically sophisticated ways.  

For the churches, the gift is similar. It is important to remember that your pastor or priest is not an “average reader” and this book was written for him or her. (Give it to them for Christmas! Grant them the time to read it!) Getting books into the hands of a pastor is an excellent way to offer something to the church. And it is a privilege for me now to hear reports (send more!) of how pastors have spent a few months or more reading my book, when they could be doing so many other things, and of how they finish and say, “That was worth it.” I know it’s not my writing per se that they are responding to so much as Dallas’s theology as a whole, which I’ve hung up like laundry to dry in the sun. So that’s the gift, the gift of getting to know Dallas as a theologian, not just as a spiritual disciplines guru. 

 

MVD: I, too, have come to appreciate Willard’s “theology of the first responders.” As you say, we often read later doctrinal developments into the bible or in other cases we try to understand the culture or history of the bible or the author’s intentions in writing. I find that Willard is offering a nuanced form of what Anthony Thiselton called “reception history,” which tries to get behind the reception of the biblical text, to the reception of the first responders. It’s fascinating. It is almost as if Willard is using the Scriptures to get behind them, to something deeper. 

Regarding the gift to the church, I wondered if you might provide an anecdote that best describes its impact upon pastors? Or perhaps another way of putting it is, is there a specific theme or concept that has most captured pastors’ attention? 

 

MSR: One pastor spoke about how it helped him capture the brilliance of Jesus. It’s Willard’s idea not mine, the idea that Jesus has no trouble standing out there “flatfooted” in the midst of the greatest minds of our race and holding his own. Remember the story of young Jesus in the temple who could stand with the leading minds of his people for three days. Dallas helps us believe that that’s what Jesus can do in any gathering of honestly-inquiring minds. So this pastor, I assume, has more confidence to be Jesus’s “teaching assistant” and look at what he says as serious stuff and not to think that Jesus would be, at best, only an opening act to Noah Harari or Jordan Peterson or Barack Obama or whoever is considered the “wise man” or “wise woman” today.  

 

MVD: I do sense that Willard, both as a thinker/writer and perhaps even more as person, gave people great courage and confidence in the reality of God. So, it’s not surprising to me that your book has indirectly rekindled that kind of confidence in your readers. 

 

MVD: Now that you’ve written the book, if there was one question you could ask Willard, what would it be? 

 

MSR: I think that one question changes by the month. Currently I want to know the story of his work in metaphysics as a twentysomething academic and minister. What questions concerned him? Who was teaching him? Whom was he reading? How did those questions relate to the issues which concern the church? Philosophical questions were never very far from church, the Bible or everyday life for Willard, though possibly only he understood the connection. It astonishes me sometimes how independently he worked, how we almost never find around him a circle of like-minded thinkers, exploring similar topics. 

The one question I wish somebody had asked him before he died is, how have you changed your mind over the years? To give him a weekend to ponder that and to write out an answer for us. I think that would have been very illuminating.  

 

MVD: Mike, there is so much to ponder here! Not having the answer to these sorts of questions drives academics a bit mad and adds to the Willard mystique you mention above. I know you note a few subtle changes in Willard (e.g. regarding his Augustinianism), but is there a substantial progression/change in Willard’s thought that you perceive but due to lack of resources aren’t entirely able to work out?  

 

MSR: Indeed, there are a few. One of the clearest is his psychology. He writes Renovation of the Heart as if he’s known that psychology all his life but there are distinct stages to his growing understanding of the human person as a soul, a spirit, etc. There’s a little anecdote of Dallas as a grad student, getting challenged by an older pastor to give up his bipartite view of the person (body and soul) and to embrace Paul’s tripartite view (body, soul and spirit), citing 1 Thessalonians 5:23.  

Or again, we have reports from Dallas himself that he was teaching about the kingdom of God in Intervarsity groups and in some Congregationalist churches in Wisconsin in the mid-60’s. But we haven’t found any evidence of what he was teaching exactly. But I know enough to know that he was still a long way away from The Divine Conspiracy.  

My guess is that we’d find the most progression in his theology rather than in the philosophy. That’s a result of his being an autodidact in theology (which is a good thing) and of not teaching at a university with a statement of faith (which might have been God’s providence) but also a result of looking around and not finding a theological home which suited him (which is a point I make in the The Kingdom among Us). So he’s compelled to sort of figure things out on his own over time. Not without the whole theological tradition around him but also not treating any one theologian or tradition as a script. 

I shouldn’t say this but he’s a bit like Elvis in that way. He’s grabbed a little bit of everything that came before and made something new, something, if it continues, we might have to name one day like we named rock and roll. I’ll stop now with that metaphor but I will say I’m opposed to using the word “Willardian” and talking about movements and such. Leave those kinds of descriptions to the historians after we’re all gone. 

 

MVD: Thanks Mike, I find it rare when any thinker can continue to draw on a range of figures to shape their views. This also entails that one’s thinking on a subject evolves. Willard’s willingness to not attach himself to one wagon is what makes him quite remarkable and mysterious. I recall a well-respected theologian giving this sort of advice to younger theologians. He said, don’t become a “Thomist”! What he was saying is read Aquinas, but don’t base your entire world upon him. In the same way, you resist “Willardian” because it’s not good to put all our eggs in one basket, nor should we try to reduce Willard to something we can seize upon, as even he evolved. As you note, this was certainly not the way he went about things.  

 

MVD: Thus far we’ve focused on Willard’s thought. I wonder, from a personal/spiritual perspective, what difference has Willard made in your life? 

 

MSR: Let me name the very first difference he made. When I was 19 and read Dallas for the first time, he taught me about the power of habit in life. Change comes through habit, not exclusively but routinely. And in my young adult years that was a teaching that I could run with and really count on. And I experimented with habits a lot because I wanted real change, which seemed to be the point of following Jesus now, rather than any of the alternatives. And since Dallas taught me that while I was still relatively young, it’s made an enormous difference personally and spiritually. It’s hard to imagine how my life would have gone if I hadn’t learned that first lesson from Dallas. 

 

MVD: After all the work you’ve done on Willard’s theology and philosophy, do you find it ironic that the biggest difference you note regards his teaching on habit/the disciplines? Maybe I am jumping the gun, as I imagine for you there is a deep connection between the life of the mind and of habit. Can you comment on this connection? 

 

MSR: Again, that’s the first difference that Willard made in my life, chronologically speaking. There have been more. Maybe more profound. 

 In part by accident and in part by design, I became a vocational thinker – I don’t even teach at a school like Dallas. It’s weird. But we need some thinkers around as Plato and Aristotle knew. And my being a good thinker or my being a good writer (which in the ancient world falls under Rhetoric) are a matter of habit. Of training. Of a long obedience in the same direction. I don’t think it is a path for everyone. But it was my path. And that’s the connection for me between the life of the mind and of habit. Whatever your vocation, even if you’re a full-time mom (which I know more about than most might realize), you’ve got to look at it like an Olympic athlete.  

Dallas was still alive as I was young and training and even before I started working on him formally, he was certainly a role model. I remember listening to him say things like “Work at what you’re writing on. When you think it’s good, it probably isn’t.” Or speaking of the lifestyle of the academic wanting to do research: “Go into a room by yourself, shut the door and lock it.” And my favorite: “Do good work and don’t worry about promotion.” I took those to heart. There are other things about Willard’s work that I don’t admire, things for which he is not a good role model. 

 

MVD: We often don’t think of our work as a kind of discipline or habit that we should do well, and rarely do we think of it as a kind of spiritual habit. Your reflections here are reminiscent of others who I interact with who’ve worked with and who knew Willard well. All of you convey that Willard seemed to have a deep sense that any good habit and/or the perfection of one’s craft, whatever it was, was worth doing in service to God and others. Thanks Mike!