Dallas Willard is a bestselling author and professor at the University of Southern California's School of Philosophy. He won the Christianity Today book award in 2007 for The Great Omission. In this reason-based and philosophical work, he presents a defense of the Christian faith by showing its teachings are not false or groundless, as many secular critics contend. In the process, Willard argues that knowledge is not an enemy but a friend to faith and an essential factor in our relationship with God.
The author asks four worldview questions which everyone must come to terms with at one time or another: What is reality? Who is well-off or blessed? Who is a truly good person? And how does one become a truly good person? Willard looks at the three sources of knowledge honored by scientists and scholars: authority, reason, and experience. He then goes on to lament the disappearance of moral knowledge and suggests that the ethic of love incarnated by Jesus be renewed in the lives and actions of believers.
Other elements of spiritual knowledge covered by the author include miracles; living interactively with Christ in everyday life; practicing the spiritual disciplines of solitude, silence, and fellowship; the nature of Christian pluralism; and the challenges of discipleship and "Divine service."
