Up there with Richard Foster’s “Celebration of Discipline” meaning that it is a book Christians should at least read once and return to it every so often to reflect on some of the chapters.

Really enjoyed it!

I really don’t know if I’ve ever been as enthralled with God as reading this book has made me feel. In the introduction of this book, Willard says his hope is to “gain a fresh hearing for Jesus,” going on to describe that, “He (Jesus) is not generally regarded as a real-life personality who deals with real-life issues but is thought to be concerned with some feathery realm other than the one we must deal with.”

I found Willard to be quite effective in that goal; truly, I have never experienced a more meaningful understanding of (or at least vision for) what it looks like to engage in the ordinary moments of my ordinary days in a distinctively Christ-centered way. Moreover, Willard portrays many aspects of the Christian life (praying, evangelism, the spiritual disciplines, etc.) in a way that made me feel genuinely excited to engage in them, rather than pursuing them primarily out of a sense of duty.

I could see how Willard’s writing style could be unappealing to some, in that it is very dense and could seem a little scattered. I think I enjoyed and appreciated it so much because He writes in a way where He connects almost every Biblical and theological insight to something that embeds that truth in the actual world we are living in. In the foreword, Richard Foster describes Willard as possessing “so penetrating an intellect combined with so generous a spirit.” I found that endorsement to be quite true, in that he is able to discern which moments call for referencing a scientific study vs. which passages are better enhanced with the words of a well-known poet or philosopher.

I loved this book and am so glad Dallas is in my life now <3

4.5 It took me a looooong time to finish this book, it’s so dense! It’s a book made for picking up, putting down, thinking about, and studying the passages of scripture mentioned in its pages. This book looks at a variety of Christian topics through the lens of the Sermon on the Mount, emphasizing heart transformation as key to participation in the Kingdom (as opposed to behavior modification). Willard can be a bit wordy, but I appreciate his emphasis on discipleship. He also makes it very clear that the gospel is about Jesus, and so as apprentices to Him we should be doing what He does (we do not earn salvation, but Jesus’ gift to us should impact everything we do).

Well worth a slow read. Many significant questions raised about the limitations of many present forms of discipleship. Written with great optimism regarding the possibility of real, tangible success in true discipleship to Jesus, and paints a compelling picture of what kind of person, and community, could be formed through such transformation.

At this point in my life, I don’t know if I would recommend a book on the Christian life more highly than this one. It only gets better a second time.

It is comprehensive, rigorous, and beautifully stunning in its vision of God and our lives with him now and forever.

Twenty-three years after its initial publication, I can see why The Divine Conspiracy made such a splash in American Evangelical Christianity. Dallas Willard serves up a challenge to the status quo of the time, drawing people back into the history of the church and a slightly different perspective on some key passages of Scripture. (The most time is spent on an interesting interpretation of the Beatitudes, which remains puzzling to me; it doesn’t seem that Willard’s approach has been taken up by translators and teachers in the years since. I’m left wondering what to think about all of it.) As N. T. Wright and others have taught often in the past couple of decades, so Willard also emphasizes that Jesus came to launch the Kingdom of the Heavens now, not merely a promise of paradise after we die. That must have been a little startling to an Evangelical Christian culture that had been very focused on the moment of conversion as the point at which someone’s post-death citizenship transferred from hell to heaven.

Woven into the big themes of what the point of all life is, Willard challenges readers to take seriously the spiritual disciplines, really welcoming Jesus into their midst as a fellow traveler and guide. The book confronts a number of dominant areas of culture and lifestyle that are counter to what Jesus taught in the Gospels.

I like all of this, and there were too many good points in the book even to highlight just a few. It’s a weighty volume, and our Bible study group has spent some months working through it together. However, the book’s age is showing. The American culture that Willard wrote to in 1997 is now quite different. In the case of American church culture, much of the change in fact has a lot to do with Willard’s influence, and The Divine Conspiracy specifically. It’s great to see those changes, but it means large sections of this book now feel like something from a very different time.

In addition, Willard’s prose often seems to me rambling and convoluted. He takes a long time to say good things that could be said more concisely, with less repetition and fewer mildly related tangents. Overall, the book could easily be cut by at least 30% and still be fine. Much improved, actually.

For those reasons, I recommend that readers pick up either a more recent book on a similar topic of “kingdom living” (Wright, of course, has a number of books that are right in this area), or another book by Willard (I’ve enjoyed his posthumous Life Without Lack, and his book The Spirit of the Disciplines may have aged better for current readers interested in practicing the spiritual disciplines). Regardless of how this particular book has aged in the past couple of decades, however, Willard’s influence on Christian thought and practice is enormous. In his life he pointed out many, many ways that Christians were “flying upside down” without realizing it. I know my faith is better because of Willard’s guidance.

11/10. probably the most valuable book i have read besides the Bible.

Read again in August of 2014 and I am revising my stars to 5 because it only gets better every time I read it!
Read again in March 2017. Here is the latest review with links to the other ones: http://carolhomeschool2.blogspot.com/...

Read it again September 2017 because it is OFFICIALLY in my Renovaré Institute Curriculum!
http://carolhomeschool2.blogspot.com/...

The Divine Conspiracy is definitely a book that I want to go back to in the future as I fully acknowledge the fact that I missed parts of it due listening the audio format instead of physically reading. I wouldn't say that The Divine Conspiracy is the best place to start with theology and Christian nonfiction in general. Willard packs a lot of research, theological knowledge, popular culture and philosophy into under 500-page-long book. I think Willard connects the dots of ancient and medieval world to how we should act as Christians nowadays. I absolutely loved his discussion on discipleship and the choices that we need to make to become disciples of Jesus.

I’ve been reading this on and off for years, and I think I’ll be reading it for another decade. I *liked* it when I started it, but in the last month or two, I *needed* it. Having come from one church tradition and attending another, significantly different tradition, I find myself wishing for words to help me think through my dissatisfactions and discomfort with some perspectives I meet. The Divine Conspiracy not only helps me understand the problems that trouble me but also provides a cohesive vision of what the gospel, the kingdom, the plan is all about.

“God’s desire for us is that we should live in him. He sends among us the Way to himself. That shows what, in his heart of hearts, God is really like—indeed, what reality is really like. In its deepest nature and meaning our universe is a community of boundless and totally competent love.”

“We should, to begin with, think that God leads a very interesting life, and that he is full of joy. Undoubtedly he is the most joyous being in the universe. The abundance of his love and generosity is inseparable from his infinite joy. All of the good and beautiful things from which we occasionally drink tiny droplets of soul-exhilarating joy, God continuously experiences in all their breadth and depth and richness.”


Reading through my highlighted passages I felt so much joy and comfort in knowing who God is through Jesus. So many points on God’s Kingdom and his rule now made me shake my head in thinking, “of course, this is exactly who God is.” This book was long, I won’t lie to you. I did wish it was split in two at points but the rich concepts were easily accessible to any reader I would say at any stage in their walk with Jesus.

I have been meaning to read Dallas Willard for some time, and I'm glad I did. Modern Christianity is not well known for its thinkers, so people like Dallas Willard stand out. And like many deep thinkers, the conclusions reached appear paradoxical. Although conservative, his agenda is radical change, critiquing established conventions in both the Christian and non Christian world view, holding a tension of both modern and traditional outlooks throughout. I liked that while warning the church against scientism, his view on the kingdom was resonant with quantum outlooks on the nature of reality. It's a shame that more of those who dislike Christianity have not read stuff like this, perhaps the issue more that those who do subscribe haven't. I wonder if the book would find more favour with the former than the latter.

The early chapters open a gentle rebuke of the existing 'consumerist' Christianity and its appeasement with philosophies in opposition to Christianity, while establishing that the kingdom as explained by Jesus was and is very different from modern concepts of it. He then moves into a description of what being a follower of Jesus means by working through the Sermon on the Mount - lessons which continue to hold surprises and challenges. I liked the treatment of the beatitudes in particular, as examples of what can happen rather than rules of what must happen. Finally, Willard offers a curriculum for learning to enter into the 'really real' of what Christianity is about, including the use of spiritual disciplines more readily associated with the monastic movement and often minimized in importance by Protestant Christianity.

Much of this will remain in my thinking for some time. It is difficult to read in places, sometimes because of syntax I found awkward, more often because of the concepts it presents. It requires a willingness to think, and an openness to think differently, but it certainly has my wholehearted recommendation as a reading selection.