How to Read Dallas Willard / Steve Porter

Dallas Willard (1935-2013) was an influential philosopher and beloved author and speaker on Christian spiritual formation. He had the unique gift of being able to speak eloquently to academic and popular audiences, and it’s fascinating to observe the ways his philosophical thought pervades and influences his spiritual writings-and vice versa.
In this episode, Steve Porter (Senior Research Fellow and Executive Director of the Martin Institute, Westmont College / Affiliate Professor of Spiritual Formation at Biola University) joins Evan Rosa to explore the key concepts and ideas that appear throughout Dallas Willard’s philosophical and spiritual writings, including: epistemological realism; a relational view of knowledge; how knowledge makes love possible; phenomenology and how the mind experiences, represents, and comes into contact with reality; how the human mind can approach the reality of God with a love for the truth; moral psychology; and Dallas’s concerns about the recent resistance, loss, and disappearance of moral knowledge.
About Dallas Willard
Dallas Willard (1935-2013) was a philosopher, minister and beloved author and speaker on Christian philosophy and spiritual formation. For a full biography, visit Dallas Willard Ministries online (dwillard.org/a...) .
About Steve Porter
Dr. Steve Porter is Senior Research Fellow and Executive Director of the Martin Institute for Christianity & Culture at Westmont College, and an affiliate Professor of Theology and Spiritual Formation at the Institute for Spiritual Formation and Rosemead School of Psychology (Biola University). Steve received his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Southern California and M.Phil. in philosophical theology at the University of Oxford.
Steve teaches and writes in Christian spiritual formation, the doctrine of sanctification, the integration of psychology and theology, and philosophical theology. He co-edited Until Christ is Formed in You: Dallas Willard and Spiritual Formation (dwillard.org/r...) , Psychology and Spiritual Formation in Dialogue (amzn.to/3JqKSrN) , and Dallas’s final academic book: The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge (dwillard.org/r...) . He is the author of Restoring the Foundations of Epistemic Justification: A Direct Realist and Conceptualist Theory of Foundationalism (www.amazon.com/...) , and co-editor of Christian Scholarship in the 21st Century: Prospects and Perils (www.amazon.com/...) . In addition to various book chapters, he has contributed articles to the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care, Philosophia Christi, Faith and Philosophy, Journal of Psychology and Theology, Themelios, Christian Scholar’s Review, etc. Steve and his wife Alicia live with their son Luke and daughter Siena in Long Beach, CA.
Show Notes
• The Martin Institute for Christianity & Culture at Westmont College (www.westmont.e...)
• Dallas Willard Ministries (Free Online Resources) (dwillard.org/)
• Dallas Willard, The Spirit of Disciplines (dwillard.org/b...)
• Willard as both spiritual formation teacher/pastor and intellectual/philosopher
• Gary Moon, Becoming Dallas Willard (www.ivpress.co...)
• Dallas Willard Ministries (dwillard.org/)
• Conversatio Divina (conversatio.org/)
• Phenomenology-“One of the principles of phenomenology is you want to kind of help others come to see what you've seen.”
• Willard “presenting himself to God” while teaching
• “The kingdom of God was in the room.”
• The importance of finding your own way into your spiritual practices
• An ontology of knowing and epistemological realism: “We can come to know things the way they are.”
• What does it mean to say that being precedes knowledge or that metaphysics precedes epistemology? What does that imply for spiritutal formation?
• What is real?
• Operating on accurate information about reality
• Dallas Willard on Husserl: “What is most intriguing in Husserl's thought to me, the always hopeful realist, is the way he works out a theory of the substance and nature of consciousness and knowledge, which allows that knowledge to grasp a world that it does not make.”
• The Cambridge Companion to Husserl (www.cambridge....)
• The philosophical tradition of “saving the app...