Dallas Willard’s background is in philosophy with a bent toward spiritual formation. He teaches philosophy at University of Southern California. His books The Divine Conspiracy and Renovation of the Heart have each won Christianity Today’s book of the year. Willard wrote The Spirit of the Disciplines as follow up to his In Search of Guidance. Willard has been influenced by a variety of saints from Teresa of Avila to John Wesley. Willard encourages his students to read Richard Foster among others as a good source on spirituality.
A bulk of The Spirit of the Disciplines is dedicated to a background given to the cause and reasons of pursuing the disciplines, rather than an actual study of the disciplines themselves. “Christianity has not so much been tried and found wanting, as it has been found difficult and left untrained.” This famous Chesterton quote is the frame for Willard’s book. Like Foster, Willard does not deal with evangelism, and embraces a much wider expertise in the field of disciplines. Willard deals explicitly with sexuality as a discipline. While the first half of the book is helpful in answering causal questions, Willard spends comparatively few sections on the actual disciplines.
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