Dallas Willard was a philosopher who had a great influence on
American evangelicalism. He was conscious that Christianity was under attack in
parts of the university world, and much of his writing was an implicit response
to that. He constantly emphasised that there was such a thing as moral and
spiritual knowledge. This was a central theme in Knowing Christ Today (2009),
subtitled “Why we can trust spiritual knowledge”. Here he lamented that
Christianity had lost its reputation for promoting a basic body of knowledge
that was testable and available to anyone who wanted to know about it.
Elsewhere, he wrote that the mind becomes dysfunctional when the “light” of God
is put out in the heart and soul. The widespread loss of faith had resulted in
an ethical vacuum, he thought.
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