Dallas Willard - The Divine Conspiracy Continued - Fulfilling God’s Kingdom on Earth

The widespread acceptance and appreciation of The Divine Conspiracy hit a significant chord with many readers seeking a more robust and authentic vision of Christian faith. It became Dallas’s most recognized and celebrated work, achieving Christianity Today ’s award for Book of the Year. Scot McKnight, a New Testament scholar and professor who has tracked the movements of contemporary evangelical Christianity for decades now, suggests that when historians look back at the key influencers of the twenty-first century, Dallas will arguably be among the few names mentioned as offering significant influence on the Christian faith. 2Long before becoming the director of the Dallas Willard Institute at Westmont College, Gary Moon argued Dallas’s thoughts and insights should be considered as revolutionary and catalytic as those of Martin Luther. John Ortberg, a leading preacher, psychologist, and writer, has stated that, in his considered opinion, no one has been able to articulate the power and depth of the gospel better than Dallas.

In large measure, the success of The Divine Conspiracy stems from Dallas’s unique, life-giving, and commonsense description of the intents and purposes of God for human life, both individually and collectively. Questions such as, “Why are we here? What are God’s purposes for human life? What is the purpose of the church?” are the kinds of philosophical and theological questions that Dallas brought the full force of his mind to bear upon. He knew God had called him to preach the gospel, the good news, or, as he sometimes called it, “the benevolent knowledge of the way things really are” to answer these crucial, essential human questions. The Divine Conspiracy and his later work Knowing Christ Today focus on helping human beings grasp the nature and reality of God and his kingdom ways.

Although The Divine Conspiracy was a revolutionary work of inestimable value in its own right, one need not have read The Divine Conspiracy in order to understand the perspectives presented in this sequel. Those familiar with Dallas’s previous publications and ministry will recognize this work as a consistent application and continuation of his vision, ideas, and concepts. What is new here are the situations and circumstances of contemporary society we chose to engage and overlay that original vision upon.

Our desire for this work was to cast and articulate a broader vision for the way the gospel must move first in and then through the church. The church is the means God uses to bring his kingdom to fruition. Such a transformation from the kingdoms of our world into the kingdom of Christ can best occur when discipled leaders of all types and in all contexts are poised to influence and direct the institutions and systems of government, education, economics, commerce, law, medicine, and religion. When this occurs, Dallas believed, the “kingdom of goodness and blessing” would begin to permeate every arena of life, every family, every street corner, every neighborhood, every city, and every citizen throughout the world. This was Dallas’s understanding of purposes behind the Great Commission.

Dallas believed God’s kingdom is firmly established and grown when followers of Jesus incarnate the virtues, faith, wisdom, power, and godly character enough to infect the world with an insatiable virus of goodwill. This is the primary thesis of this book.

The chapters that follow coalesce around three areas of interest that Dallas spent nearly forty years developing and honing. The first area conjoins his thoughts on moral knowledge and leadership. These are topics Dallas has already engaged in his more academic writings, but here we broadened his more philosophical and theoretical approach to include the way the nature of moral knowledge demonstrated in the gospel must move into the arenas of Christian leadership, discipleship, and spiritual transformation if there is to be a positive effect for the kingdom in both our communities and the broader culture at large. Dallas was devoted to helping Christians—from every walk of life, in every workplace, and in every social organization, business, or institution—to realize their full potential as leaders and ambassadors of light for the kingdom of God. Therefore, he attempted to cast an encouraging vision that bridges the gap separating Christian leaders ministering in the local church from Christian leaders in the broader secular workforce who minister in the institutions of government, education, business, service industries, commerce, and other professions. Closing the sacred-secular divide was the primary way he believed the local church could become the essential beachhead of the kingdom of God within contemporary society. Only then could the kingdoms of our world begin to experience the benefits and blessings of the kingdom of our God and of his Christ.

The second area centers on how the revealed knowledge of God, applied through moral leaders with integrity and courage, would positively impact the individual vocations that are central to the establishment and maintenance of flourishing societies. This includes, but is not exclusive to, the key institutions of government, business, commerce, education, and ministry. The final area dovetails with the first two. Dallas was devoted to the work of the church and its leaders. He never stopped seeking new and better ways of equipping and training disciples of Jesus to inhabit each of these key positions of societal governance and bear their responsibility for administering the manifestations of light, life, and hope to the world as a gift of a good and loving God. In one of our final conversations, Dallas made it clear that his great hope was to help Christians better understand what it is that Jesus is doing today. He said:

Gary, we must help the church understand that Jesus is leading a subversion of all human governance. And that [subversion] will happen by the transformation of individuals, through the power of the gospel. And the community that emerges as a result is the divine conspiracy. They will not be overcome by evil but will overcome evil with good. That’s the whole deal. And of course Christian leaders in every area of society are at the very heart of that mission.

Much of the material covered here grew from lectures and notes Dallas compiled for the very popular course he taught at USC on professional leadership and ethics. Many of our initial conversations also surrounded an article he had written and spoken about at Trinity International University in 2008. 3A third resource we often discussed and expounded on was a two-day lecture series given at a Kern Family Foundation conference in January 2013. Dallas’s thinking, writing, and research compiled from the class and those two proceedings were our springboard to dive deeper into what he believed were the essential core issues for Christian leaders and professionals to reconsider. His overarching desire was to provide persons of influence in every arena of society with a vision for what our collective lives might accomplish if given over to the ethics, power, wisdom, and grace found under the shepherding care of God’s kingdom. What you now hold is the culmination of those ideas.

Dallas was devoted to the idea that our societies need well-placed, well-informed, thoughtful, gifted, effective, and supremely devoted persons of moral integrity to lead us through the opportunities and trials of contemporary life. He worked long and hard at helping the future leaders of our world, represented by his USC undergrad students, to develop the vision and means through which their leadership could actively pursue and attain common flourishing, prosperity, and general welfare. Likewise, the primary motive and intent of this work is to catalyze conversation, imagination, cooperation, and reconsideration of the ways and means we as Christian leaders participate in the “coming” of God’s kingdom to the realms touched by our own spheres of influence.