October 24, 2008 - 7:30 PM
Calvary Christian Reformed Church (5300 France Ave S, Edina, 55410). Free and open to the public.
For at least a century or more, evangelical Christians have accepted the secular judgment that religion is not only private, but that it is also little more than blind irrationality. Under this arrangement, universities have assumed leadership as the guardians of what counts as true knowledge. With a profound sense of urgency, Dr. Willard, author of The Divine Conspiracy and Renovation of the Heart, offers a bracing and bold challenge to Christians to recover the centrality of knowledge as not only an essential for Christian witness in the broader world, but also for the very essence of Christian living.
5 comments:
Were you able to attend this Dallas Willard lecture? I was frankly very disappointed, because his view of Christian knowledge was just as dogmatic as the "secular" philosophies of knowledge he was attacking. I put 'secular' in quotes because just because knowledge is conveyed without Christian labels doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't carry the spirit of Jesus. By dividing a university and the "church" as secular and sacred, respectively, is the very problem itself that leads to some "secular" professors/philosophies remaining adamantly dogmatic (i.e. strict empiricists). I wish the "church" would do a little listening sometimes and hear the spirit of Jesus implicitly expressed in some "foreign" philosophies.
Unfortunately I did not get to attend. Life and ministry sometime conspire against me doing things I might otherwise like to do. But that is the story of all of our lives I suppose!
And I would agree that through general revelation that we as the church do not hold all truth, but we do hold the most important Truth!
my church, also calvary CRC but here in Holland mi, is quoting more and more of dallas, and compolo, and bell, and Claiborne. More so than the Word of God. It is troubling me, and many times I feel it is only me that it bothers..so I question myself and my discernent. We even give much money to Pete Scazerro in Queens NY...and his ministry of contempletive prayer and daily offices. I am concerned. Sorry...maybe the wrong place for this...I love my church, and my friends in it. But this trend is rockin' my boat.
Adam,
Of the people you listed, I am pretty comfortable with Dallas Williard and Pete Scazerro in that they seem to "get it" and are working to apply traditional things within orthodoxy. Bell seems somewhere in the middle, most of the times he gets it, but I've heard and read things that I certainly have concern from him. Compolo worries me, and you can search my blog for those thoughts, and Claiborne while interesting, also concerns me, though I am least familiar with him/his teachings.
Thanks for the reply. I try to stick with the 'all TRUTH is God's Truth" idea. But I have a hard time picking and choosing this content or that content with some of these men. I am equally concrned with the inclusion of so much mystiscism and spiritual formation focus as well as the inbalance of teaching references of certain (or any) men .vs teaching references from the Bible. I suppose the lines are blurred a little. I alos do not want to be "that guy" that sits in the back and moans and picks the Sunday apart. But God deserves my attention...and my discernment. It is a tough, fine, moving line...
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