I’ve not taken longer to read a book. For nine months I slogged through the first third, three different times. Dallas is notorious for his first-thirds, writing like an aimless, rambling philosopher as he sets up his points. It’s more fair, though, to think of him as a genius composer: All his seemingly scattered observations climax in unison — a wisdom symphony of discipleship instruction, Gospel interpretation, Christ thought. One would be surprised to find the book was written in the 1990s; Dallas outlines eerily prophetic foresight of where the church would go. He read the symptoms, knew the disease. It’d do us good to listen also to where he thinks the church should and could go. If you want to understand the nuances in the teachings of Christ, you’ll have to wrestle for them, whether through readings of scripture or Willard’s book — may you be blessed in your limp.

This book. This could for sure be a “daily devotional” like My Upmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers as every page in this book is absolute heat. I would often reread each page as it was so richly dense and I didn’t want to miss out on any of his great one-liners. If you haven’t read Dallas Willard, I would recommend reading him just for his one-liners. He is your favorite pastor’s favorite theologian for a good reason. The man was marked by so much humility, wisdom and grace.

I will say that reading many of his books in the same year can be a lot to take in. I read his book Life Without Lack this year for the second time and it was easy and digestible (mostly because it was a collection of his writings that his daughter put together) but reading Hearing God, Allure of Gentleness, Renovation of the heart and then Divine Conspiracy in the same year on top of that was a whole lot to take in. It might be better to treat Dallas Willard’s more heavy & acclaimed books like a fine dining experience that you would go to once a year, with the intent to savor and enjoy every bite. But alas, quarantine gave me plenty of time to read his books and I have grown a lot in my faith in Christ as a result.

All that being said, read this book and all his others as well. Dallas Willard goes OFF like your favorite Kanye song.

A soft three stars. I recommend this as a sweet dessert after you have eaten the meat and veggies of other commentaries on the Sermon on the Mount.

This is another one of those books where I am not the intended audience, so I have a hard time rating it. My dad said this book challenged him more than any other book he had ever read and, being a good sport, I decided to read it and discuss it with him. This does not mean I have much to contribute to the conversation, but at least I participated.

Some good stuff: I really love the section on the Lord's Prayer. I think this is the most important part as far as exegetical prowess and spiritual insight. Also, Willard is a beautiful writer. The writing is lyrical, clear, and intelligent. Not easy to find in a nonfiction tome like this one.

Some of my issues with the text arise from Willard's mysterious inconsistencies, and apparent cluelessness, which I will explain below. Firstly, Willard definitely comes across as the disillusioned grandpa, moaning about "kids these days" and "this generation." But he is incapable of being self-reflective on this. Even while he unravels Messianic wordgames, he bemoans children who sing "I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Weiner," grieving a generation who would ACTUALLY wish to be a hot dog, rather than a child. At the same time, he is capable of completely unpacking the "pigs before swine" metaphor into an intricate, multi-layered meaning. Mr. Willard...the Oscar Meyer song is not meant literally. I don't know why I have to explain that. For a man who has made his living extricating the deeper meaning of language, I don't know why this particular jingle stumped him and was interpreted in the most literal way possible.

The second issue comes with the biggest and arguably most important section in the book: that on discipleship. The plea for discipleship that Willard offers does not offend me on an intellectual level, because if you are already a Christian and accept the premise of his writing about discipleship, there's nothing wrong with it. But the more it went on, and the more I heard him explaining how no one practices discipleship in this way, with this level of dedication, I kept thinking "But I did. I was steeped in this kind of theology. This WAS taught, contrary to what he's saying. And people did it, hard core. Why does he keep claiming that his call is to something utterly unpracticed within the Christian community?" And finally, chapters later, I think I may have deciphered it. Willard, an older white man, probably did NOT receive the sort of training in discipleship, nor dedication to spiritual practice, that I did. When I think back on those years of thrice-a-week churchgoing, I have vivid images of women killing themselves to be the best Christian they could. Poring over scripture. Praying, meditating, reading. Going to studies, prayer meetings, revivals. It was their life. This is precisely the kind of dedication to discipleship that Willard is describing, and says doesn't exist. Maybe men in the church are NOT taught this, taught to be aloof and intellectual rather than spiritual. But women are most DEFINITELY adhering to the sort of obsessive discipleship he's describing. I know. I was one. My mom and most of my female relatives still are. And perhaps this is at the heart of why my dad was so challenged by this book. His gender context obscured the kind of experiences that are really being had by the majority of church-goers. So I find Willard, in the end, a bit out of touch and probably without the counsel of too many female colleagues.

I have never seen such glowing reviews on the back of a book as with The Divine Conspiracy.

J. P. Moreland even went as far as saying it was a work that “deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Augustine’s Confessions”.

Christianity Today writes that the book causes Willard to join “the line of Thomas à Kempis, Luther . . . [and] Wesley.”

Maybe I am the problem here - which would be no surprise - but I just don’t see it. Willard is full of wisdom at times, for sure, but perhaps the high praise left me expecting too much.

I’m feeling a growing sense of general discomfort in criticizing the work of faithful believers, so perhaps I’ll simply just say it wasn’t for me.

Wow. I am blown away. I hope I am changed. I am NOT one for 600-page books -- this was worth every word. I will buy a copy and read it again, in hopes it may sink in...

Masterful. One of the greatest and most meaningful books I have ever read. This will be the first read of many. Thank you, Dallas Willard.

Reading the Divine Conspiracy was like drinking through a firehose that sprayed a new, different and somehow more refreshing water. It presents theology, humanity, the world, eternity and everything in between with a new and more cohesive air than any book of theology I’ve read before (which granted is somewhat limited). I know that book is good when something or things presented in it fundamentally changes the way I saw or understood something before and with The Divine Conspiracy I had a moment like this in nearly every chapter.

Brilliant. Dalas Willard is probably the most insightful protestant author I have ever read, and certainly the wisest to come out of his particular tradition.

Willard is not trying to discover anything new, but rearticulate ancient Christian truths to an age that had lost them. He does this well, and perhaps his greatest value is the language that he uses. He neatly defines and redefines words so that we see the gospel again, free from the sentiment and tired phrases that have lost all meaning.

The book works in three basic sections. In the first, he sets out the current cultural situation, both in the religious and secular world. This section has aged well, but I feel that it has likely gotten worse than it was in the late 90s when Willard wrote this book.

The second, and largest, section is a detailed reading of the sermon on the mount. Willard's primary goal is to stop us thinking that the Sermon on the Mount is a new set of laws for us to follow. He succeeds in this, and I am sure to return to this part of the book again.

The last section is a guide to a "curriculum for Christlikeness." This reads as an abbreviated version of his book "Renovation of the Heart." Its all good stuff. He caps off his discussion with a brief look at ehat life beyond death will look like, and its a beautiful conception of it.

I have two objections to this book, and they are comparatively minor. First, Willard takes a rather free hand in translating the Greek. I don't know greek, so I cannot check his work, but his rendering of a few of the beatitudes struck me as strange. But I will give him the benifit of the doubt.

Second, Willard has a habit of citing the "great Christian thinkers" of the past, rattling off Saints Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinus, alongside John Calvin, Martin Luther, Deitrich Bonhoffer, C.S. Lewis and George Macdonald. I do not think I will need to point out the problem with this. While all these men had a great deal in common, and I do not question their devotion to God, their fundemental theology is radically different. That being said, I think Willard manages to create a vision they would all loosely agree on, and his point is not to synthesize them, but to draw out the points where they agree. In this, he does well, but the less well read Christian might be lead to believe all those people taught the same thing, and they would be sorely dissapointed.

I highly reccommend this book, especially for those protestants who are becoming burned out by a dumbed down, consumer Christianity. I plan to this book again soon.

This is one of the most influential books about Christian spirituality for me. I read it the first time over a decade ago and it blew me away. I decided to read it again and, after doing so, it is still as good for me as when I first read it.

It would be hard for me to summarize this and do it justice. The phrase "eternal life" in the Bible does not mean what Christians have made it mean over the past 2000 years. We've reduced "eternal life" to something that we only experience after we physically die. But for Jesus, "eternal life" means an eternal kind of life that is available to us now (because "the kingdom of the heavens is available to us" right here, right now). Because of our misunderstanding of what "eternal life" means, Christianity (at least in America) has become a consumer experience. We want to go to heaven when we die, so we say some words (e.g. confess our faith in Jesus) whether we truly believe those words or not; we do some religious things (e.g. baptism, going to church frequently, etc.); and the reward for that is we receive a "get out of hell free" card that guarantees our salvation. The result of this consumer mindset has been that the American church by and large doesn't experience this "eternal kind of life" that Jesus wants us to experience now. Instead, conservative churches tend to focus on "sin management" and liberal churches tend to focus on being catalysts for social justice. But very few churches actually attempt to follow what Jesus actually taught. Very few churches actually attempt to make disciples of Jesus (or "apprentices of Jesus").

The bulk of this book is a detailed look at what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 - 7), which is the core what He taught everywhere He went. This sermon is not a new set of rules to follow but rather a set of illustrations of the type of person that can experience this "eternal kind of life" now. Jesus' apprentices will be the type of people that will naturally choose reconciliation over anger and contempt. They will naturally speak in an honest way that does not try to mislead or manipulate. They will naturally turn the other cheek rather than seeking revenge. They will naturally love even their enemies. To be an apprentice of Jesus is to take Jesus' teachings seriously and to allow Him to change your internal nature (or character). "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit" (Matthew 12:33) To be an apprentice of Jesus, you must "learn from Jesus how to lead your life as Jesus himself would lead your life if he were you". Then you will have built your life on a firm foundation and will begin to experience the eternal kind of life that Jesus himself demonstrated right now.

The remainder of the book discusses what it means to be a disciple (or apprentice) of Jesus and how the church itself should be a catalyst for discipleship. The author proposes a "curriculum for Christlikeness" and discusses how spiritual growth works in practical terms. Finally, he discusses the hope that motivates an apprentice of Jesus. Traditional Christianity has often described "heaven" as a place that is separated from our current physical world with nothing much to do (e.g. floating around on clouds playing harps). But the Bible gives us glimpses of the future that is very different from that. God's plan is to restore all things (including the earth we live on). Scripture talks about us reigning with Christ in the universe that God created. We will be given responsibilities and things to do which we cannot even imagine. But our ability to be able to do those things in the future depends in part on the nature or character that we have developed in our current life as follower of Jesus.

This is a thick book written by a philosophy professor who is also a Christian. So it can take a while to read. I found I needed to read it slowly, i.e. reading a few pages and then spending some time thinking about what I had just read. For me, I found this book to be worth the investment that it takes to read and digest it. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to be a follower of Jesus. If you're not sure you're ready for that but are curious about what it means, I'd recommend this book to you as well.

In The Divine Conspiracy, philosopher Dallas Willard paints a compelling picture of the Christian Life by investigating what God is doing in the world, and how humans can experience it.

Willard begins by laying out some of the problems he sees in our world, and in Christianity, today. These include the erosion of "truth" and abosolutes in our culture, and the loss of the depth of the meaning of the gospel message. He then sets out to reconstruct a clear picture of what it means to be a Christian, and what that type of Christ-life should look like. To do this, he gives us a prolonged reflection on the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' in-depth discussion of what life in his Kingdom is like. Instead of letting the Sermon be a pie-in-the-sky ideal, Willard fleshes out the deep logic behind it, and makes it something that we live. The insight of these reflections alone, and the recovery of the power of Jesus' teaching make this book worth reading. But Willard doesn't stop there.

One of the basic insights that undergird Willard's discussion is that if Jesus was who he said he was, and who we say we believe he is, then he was and is brilliant. We should listen closely to what he says, and learn to follow it. This insight takes him through a careful reading of the Sermon on the Mount, and also leads him into an investigation of Christian discipleship. More than just being a Christian who "grows," discipleship is acknowledging Jesus as brilliant, and then resolving to really become his students. We seek to learn from Jesus about the true nature of reality and of our own existence, and then resolve to actually obey, to actually live as if these things were true. Disciples delve into the deep reality of God, and constantly strive to keep him before their minds. This results in a true knowledge of God that effects our entire lives. And it brings us deeper into the eternal life that we have been given, kingdom-life. And all throughout the book, Willard stresses that "eternal life" isn't merely a life that never ends, "fire insurance" against future judgment, but is instead true, abundant life in God's kingdom that starts here and now.

He concludes the book by discussing the "Restoration of All Things," the final coming of the kingdom in its fullness. Truly appreciating the end means acknowledging the present in its truest reality and purpose. And Willard helps us to see that as we understand God's plans and intentions, we appreciate him more and understand our own lives more fully within God's plan.

The Divine Conspiracy is one of the best books I've ever read, and one I highly recommend. When I finished reading it, I just put my bookmark back in the front and started over. There are so many deep and profound insights into what it means to live a life devoted to God. Eternal life is here already, and Willard has helped me to see and appreciate it, and helped me to pull so many threads of Christian thought together into a coherent and compelling vision of life in God, kingdom-life, a life as a devoted disciple of Jesus Christ.

Is the quote “Sometimes important things can be presented in literature or art that cannot be effectively conveyed in any other way” too long for a thigh tat? Asking for a friend.