Sanctus Forum

How did people depicted in the Bible, who had no Bible, know and relate to God? Dallas Willard's answer centers around experience and in this episode Michael Stewart Robb discusses how Dallas Willard characterizes these peoples' experience of God in some ways which are very different than we may have normally thought. It all comes together with the concept of heaven. BE INFORMED and PRAY for us be...

The challenge of Jesus' spirituality is coming to believe one thing, namely "our universe is a perfectly safe place to be."⁠ That may be a bit of an overstatement and you wouldn't want to build a whole systematic theology on it but you'd have most of Jesus' spirituality under your belt if you managed to believe it. Meaning, if you managed to internalize it. Michael Stewart Robb discusses this phra...

It is psychologically impossible to believe a blur. But that is where modernity including postmodernity has left us with respect to God. Dallas Willard, a philosopher in his day job, saw that in the churches he entered. Thus it will be hard to believe in a God of joy, if we barely know what God is. BE INFORMED and PRAY for us better by signing up for the Sanctus newsletter: https://sanctus.institu...

Joy should characterize the life of Jesus's students. It doesn't so often because we don't know God like Jesus does. And here to help us learn theology from Jesus is Dallas Willard. Michael Stewart Robb discusses the third chapter of Willard's The Divine Conspiracy. BE INFORMED and PRAY for us better by signing up for the Sanctus newsletter: https://sanctus.institute

Michael Stewart Robb is thinking about joy today. How did Jesus have it? Supposedly it was a part of his belief system. That this was a world where one could be joyous because joy is the only reasonable response. ⁠It's not about being happy. You can be happy one hour and sad the next. Happy is a feeling it is best not to worry about it. But joy should be pursued if you don't have it like Jesus.⁠ A...

How many people in our churches could give a Sunday school answer to the question, what is the kingdom of God? In this episode Michael Stewart Robb talks about why Dallas Willard thinks this is a worrying question and what its cause is. The gospel of Jesus, discipleship to him and the fulfilled life all depend on the kingdom of God making sense to people. BE INFORMED and PRAY for us better by sign...

What is it about church that keeps it from producing the kinds of people that the Old and New Testaments talk about?⁠ Dallas Willard grabs a saying from management experts, "Your system is perfectly designed to yield the result you are getting" and applies it to church. In this episode, Michael Stewart Robb shares Willard's diagnosis and he explains why Willard thinks that the solution must be nat...

Any interested in bringing the spiritual and the secular together must first be able to say what exactly the spiritual is. This is the task that Dallas Willard wants to help us with in The Divine Conspiracy's chapter three. But that's where James Catford and Michael Stewart Robb pick up the conversation and start looking around modern society for the spiritual. We talk about her majesty the queen,...

For all of its talk of spirituality and spiritual formation, western churches aren't known for their interest in Jesus as someone whose thoughts matter. The boom in spiritual formation has us discovering new spiritual disciplines, seeking new experiences rather than puzzling over the Sermon on the Mount. By and large our churches are not known as places where Jesus's teaching is studied and brough...

"There is very little that is new" says Dallas Willard at the beginning of The Divine Conspiracy. Roy Searle, a founder and former leader of the Celtic-influenced Northumbria Community and a mentor for pioneering British churches, and Michael Stewart Robb explore whether that's true. We set the Celtic Christian view of the world up against Dallas's own view of "Our God-Bathed World" and look for w...

Spiritual formation is hardly a cure-all. ⁠There is in many churches a gap between what people believe and the abundance and obedience that ought to come with trusting Christ. What's the disconnect about? How can we find the personal integrity and whole life discipleship which seems appropriate to Jesus's spirituality? Some say the missing link is spiritual formation. But it could be much deeper t...

Does it make any sense to follow Jesus but without the classical understandings of a transcendent God and prayer? Some think it does or at least have resigned themselves to the idea. What they believe we should hold on to is Jesus's notion of love. But what is love, if you've given up the metaphysics of Jesus's spirituality? Dallas Willard thinks this "love" can't rise above support for the reigni...

Is love all you need? For some people, explains Dallas Willard, there is nothing more important about Jesus than that he "identifies with and loves oppressed people and those who are different." What these people say with all seriousness is "Get with the program! God is found in our attempts to accept all people, especially those who are having a hard time. Get rid of the oppressive and exclusive...

Possibly one of the most confusing translations in the Bible is what's translated as "heaven." And one of the most helpful aspects of Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy is his explanation that heaven is simply where we live. That means that all the wonderful things that reside in heaven, God himself included, are incredibly near. This comes very close to being the gospel, very close indeed. It...

Dallas Willard taught at a university where the gospel on the left had a foothold. He has a lot to say about how the Christian left (in America) became what it is. And "become" is the word that stands out the most in this little history. BE INFORMED and PRAY for us better by signing up for the Sanctus newsletter: https://sanctus.institute

Most of us have as adults picked up a view of God. Even if we don't believe in God, we have a view of the God we don't believe in. Dallas Willard sets out to unsettle our view of God by insisting that he's about as joyous as anyone can be. In this episode Michael Stewart Robb sits down with Dallas's friend Trevor Hudson, a teacher and author who didn't react benignly to this section of The Divine...

Do you think that following Jesus should make a difference in the real world? That's what churches on the theological left think as well and in this episode Michael Stewart Robb adds to Dallas Willard's very short history of the gospel on the left. Basically there are two major groups and if you live in Europe you'll be able to find both. BE INFORMED and PRAY for us better by signing up for the Sa...

Dallas Willard's own view of salvation can sometimes get lost in his criticism of the gospel on the right. But a lot of it can be discerned in his phenomenological exegesis of Abraham who is not only the paradigm for faith but also for salvation. BE INFORMED and PRAY for us better by signing up for the Sanctus newsletter: https://sanctus.institute

Despite what it seems there is a great deal of unity among the theological right, often called evangelicals, Dallas Willard, in this section, wants to call the right's view of salvation into question. Merit, forgiveness, heaven are important issues but are they THE ISSUE? Michael Stewart breaks it down from Ohio, the land of lawn mowers. BE INFORMED and PRAY for us better by signing up for the San...

After his critiques of the reigning gospels of left and right, Dallas Willard attempts to put things back together, to put faith back together with life. Jos Douma, a seasoned pastor from the Netherlands, has been ministering along very similar lines as Dallas. Michael Stewart Robb and Jos discuss the role of preaching in finding Christlikeness, as well as the role of silence and meditation. BE IN...

Does anyone still hear a gospel of heaven still being preached in churches on the right? Dallas Willard still did in his day but by the time The Divine Conspiracy came out, many "evangelical" churches were shifting to another way of presenting faith in Jesus. This makes this particular section of Dallas's book a little dated. What do churches now preach? Is it another gospel of sin management? BE...

There was a day when pastors and the people listening to them dove deep into the details of salvation. Possibly we've lost that today but we've also lost the ability to understand why "those who profess Christian commitment consistently show little or no behavioral and psychological difference from those who do not." Dalles uses the early 90's "lordship salvation debate" featuring John MacArthur a...

Michael Stewart Robb has been learning more about the iconic American preacher of the 20th century, Billy Graham, and how he gathered together, around the globe, people with common theological interests. But then there is Dallas with his criticism of a sin management gospel centered around believing a theory of the atonement and going to heaven when you die. Isn't that what Billy Graham preached?...

Left. Liberal. What do these words mean? What do they mean in the church? Why does Dallas Willard call the gospel of the left a gospel of sin management? This time Michael Stewart Robb is joined by Mary Poplin, Professor of Education at Claremont in California and author of Finding Calcutta and Is Reality Secular? They won't answer all these questions but they will have a good conversation about e...

In American history the Fundamentalist/Modernist controversy of the earth 20th century explains a lot. In this episode on Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy Michael Stewart Robb talks about how the right and the left of today's church share many common characteristics. They both, as Willard says, teach a gospel of sin management. But they also share in a typically American way of seeking good...