Few books on Christian spirituality demand as much mental effort as The Divine Conspiracy, by the American philosopher Dallas Willard. He believed that faith requires both heart and mind, and that living as a disciple of Jesus means learning, day after day, to think and act as he would think and act in our place.
Willard was born on September 4, 1935, in Buffalo, Missouri, USA. He earned a degree in psychology from Tennessee Temple College in 1956, the year he was also ordained a Baptist minister, and the following year completed a second bachelor’s degree, in philosophy and religion, from Baylor University. He soon felt the call to academic life.
He earned his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin in 1964, with research on the German philosopher Edmund Husserl, whose works he helped translate into English. The following year he began teaching at the University of Southern California (USC), where he would remain for 47 years, eventually chairing the philosophy department.
In the 1970s, at the small Quaker church where his wife Jane played the organ, Willard formed a friendship with the young pastor Richard Foster. Together, in 1988, they would found the Renovaré movement, devoted to Christian spiritual formation, bringing together Protestant and Catholic traditions around the spiritual disciplines.
His most influential work, The Divine Conspiracy (1998), named Book of the Year by Christianity Today magazine, argued that the gospel proclaimed by Jesus is, above all, an invitation to live today under the government of God, not merely a guarantee for after death.
Willard also wrote The Spirit of the Disciplines, Renovation of the Heart, and The Great Omission, insisting that following Christ is an active process of character formation, not a single event. Some evangelical critics, aligned with more traditional views on salvation by grace, accused Willard of bringing discipleship and personal effort too close together, fearing that his emphasis on spiritual disciplines opened the door to a salvation by works; Willard replied that effort and grace are not opposed, and that action is a vessel for grace, not a substitute for it.
Diagnosed with advanced-stage cancer, Willard died on May 8, 2013, at Kaiser Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, just days after publicly announcing his illness to students and friends, leaving behind his wife, children, and grandchildren.
His books continue to shape pastors, leaders, and missionaries around the world who seek to unite careful thinking with deep spiritual life. For Willard, discipleship was, above all, a practical apprenticeship under the master Jesus, not merely a doctrine to be accepted.