Dallas Willard has such a beautiful mind! I can‘t help but want to use his excellent teaching of knowledge towards spiritual growth. Thank you Biola Uni for your post. 💜
I said, " God if you are who my mom says you are", and my mom always would point with her finger to a scripture to try to help me and I was a young girl, " I want to know you too." And instantly he made himself known to me.
"Faith" has too often today degenerated into a way of dismissing the whole of Christian thought. "There is a huge hunger and vacuum in the lives of people"...We can move away from a non-cognitive notion of spirituality that too often sadly pervades dominant contemporary understandings of "religion". Movement toward a cognitive notion of spirituality is not new in the history of the Christian church, Augustine...Aquinas....Pascal... Wesley.....Pursuit of truth, knowledge, open method....allows us to find common ground...There is No reason to fake it....If you're not working on the basis of common ground, what are you doing?...If you don't want to have knowledge you don't have to have it...Your personal choice....Isn't there knowledge about the process of spiritual formation?"... We can put our faith and growing knowledge together .... Is Apologetics" best understood in terms of a defending project?... Or is it a helping ministry to someone who is asking? Our choices need not be confined to either-or alternatives. Let's give place to the second question in considering the appropriate and arguably necessary scope of Christian apologetics.
My opinion is as Dallas taught. We are to be learners, disciples. The late Dr. Scott was of a similar mind. An old teaching I caught, he was expounding on how doctrines such as Calvinism or Arminianism don’t save. Christism is what he was concerned about. Are we more like Jesus this year than last? Disciple first and apologist second.
In our times, the most important *initial* knowledge is that evolution has very poor, and often dishonest, footing. That many brilliant people think it impossible. That many evolutionary biologists in foundations have abandoned neo-darwinism and are scrambling for naturalistic explanations via “extended synthesis” models.
I have read the whole Bible, I have also read the history of it's creation and the gnostic texts. I broke free from the death cult and moved to Buddhist philosophy. Matthew 16:28 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." There are no 2000+ year old people meaning the "Jesus" character lied meaning he sinned negating the whole scapegoat religion. Having to die to be immortal is actually an oxymoron, because being immortal means your physical body doesn't die, and everyone dies. I am sorry you suffer from delusions due to fear and cultural engineering but ritual cannibalism (communion) is a disgusting pagan tradition. There are sources found on scrolled in jars in the 1940s that actually state that "Jesus" was a full fledged human and the god of the OT was an evil Demiurge, a false God, a god of war and hate, not the loving dirty the "Jesus" character came up with 600 years after Siddhartha (Buddha) did his teachings of love, compassion, and mindfulness. The reason why the planet is so messed up now is because of the delusion of Divine Right to dominate nature instead of working with it like the native Americans and other tribal peoples did long before your man made religion raped our planet for resources in the name of "god" and capitalism.
