Willard’s Intellectual Eclecticism

As I have noted, Willard was a professional philosopher who moonlighted as a preacher and author of theological books, becoming much more known for this side job than his nine-to-five work in the academy. In this respect, he is comparable to a British figure from a generation earlier. A scholar of medieval literature, C. S. Lewis taught across the humanities but is best known for his Christian nonfiction and novels. Eclectic and incredibly well-read, both men defy easy categorization and were deeply committed to the practical implications of ideas. Even a brief comparative glance further illuminates the nuances of Willard’s intellectual approach.

To begin, both were remarkable thinkers whose enduring influence extends beyond their academic fields. More important, though, is the idiosyncratic way they went about their work. In the mind of an eclectic thinker, philosophy and theology (as well as other domains of knowledge) are not sharply distinguished but often overlap. Willard’s thoughts are not necessarily unique in content, but they are distinctive in the cross-disciplinary way they are formed and expressed. Although quite competent in theology, he was not a standard theologian; and while he was both a Christian and a philosopher, it is not entirely accurate to classify him as a ​“Christian philosopher” in the same mold of Alvin Plantinga, James K. A. Smith, and Rebecca DeYoung. His intellectual eclecticism meant that he, like Lewis, was a bit of everything-theologian, philosopher, psychologist, and so on —and able to lecture at the drop of a hat on a wide range of topics! Yet the ultimate interest of both men lay in the practicality of theories and ideas, which in turn sparked their intellectual pursuits, guided by the question of what makes human life go well. The vocational parallels go further. Each was a kind of contextual evangelist within secular higher education, Lewis in Britain and Willard in America, laboring to communicate the gospel in the rare, intellectual atmosphere of their respective settings. And both were deeply concerned about how prevailing epistemologies obscure the nature of truth.” Less positively, there is a certain unreflective assumption, even prejudice, that some in the guild have about the work of both. Due to the practical character of Willard’s spiritual writings, some theologians and biblical exegetes have dismissed him as a theological lightweight. This accounts for why, despite his significant influence on the North American spiritual formation movement and his broad readership among Protestant Christians, his work has received little scholarly engagement from the academy.

Likewise, some of Lewis’s peers never considered him a true academic because of his popular writings, works in fiction, and evangelistic endeavors. It is well documented that this was why he was never appointed as professor at Oxford, only lecturer, and thus eventually switched to Cambridge since it offered him a professorship. All this to say, both Lewis and Willard were serious thinkers but had peers who saw them as second-class academics because of their popular writings and practical approaches.

A key difference, however, is in their sense of calling. Lewis, for all his pastoral impact, was uneasy offering personal spiritual counsel and hesitant to adopt the mantle of pastor or spiritual director, leading one biographer to describe him as a ​“reluctant guide.” Willard, by contrast, readily embraced these roles, seeing himself above all as a minister of the gospel. His willingness to give spiritual counsel was well known, and this same pastoral spirit permeates his theology — a point to which I now turn.

THE PASTORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF A THEOLOGIAN 

In a 2006 seminar held in Europe, Willard defined the domain of theology as ​“inquiry into the existence and nature of God and of his relations to creation, with special reference to the purposes of human life and salvation.” The theological task, he added, ​“could be pursued simply as an intellectual exercise, driven by the will to know, or as an exercise in being right, driven by the need to control.” But over against such approaches, his understanding of said task ​“emphasizes the primary need of human beings to know how to live. The general human problem is practical: to find an adequate knowledge-base for practice.” Let us examine this a bit more closely. His initial description of theology — ​“inquiry into the existence and nature of God and of his relations to creation” resembles that of Thomas Aquinass in the thirteenth century and is given a specific telos in ​“the purposes of human life and salvation. The Greek word for ​“salvation” (sotēria) can also be translated as ​“healing” which may explain Willard’s next move: distancing his understanding of theology from those who view it mainly as an intellectual endeavor without concern for its therapeutic use and real-life consequences. Hence, he stresses that theology is meant to provide ​“an adequate knowledge-base for practice,” for ​“how to live.” The title he assigned the seminar says it all: ​“The Pastoral Responsibility of a Theologian.

Further down in the lecture handout, Willard states, ​“Christian theology has its point in the furthering of discipleship to Jesus Christ in the present Kingdom of God. From such discipleship all else follows, and within such discipleship every human ability and resource is welcome.” Willard’s theology could be appropriately called therapeutic theology, but it can also be termed apprenticeship theology. Theology, for Willard, is ultimately concerned with fostering divine friendship through apprenticeship to Jesus that leads to the transformation and flourishing of human persons in all aspects of their lives. Theology done well enables humans to live deeply in God’s kingdom. This aligns with a lecture given a decade earlier, in which Willard suggests that all forms of theology other than clinical theology should be outlawed.

Here it may be advantageous to distinguish Willard’s theological method from what we might call ​“higher thought” theology. The latter is promulgated by those who believe real theology is conducted only in the academy among trained specialists. One must read relevant monographs in the field, understand the sociohistorical background of the first-century Greco-Roman world, and possess other specialized knowledge in order to ​“do” theology. Complex theoretical constructs are valued over practical concerns. Theology is treated as an intellectual exercise, largely removed from the realities of everyday life and with little interest in whether the grammar of Christian belief actually corresponds to what is spiritually real. I should add that some notable thinkers have recently argued that modern theology has in large part been colonized by these higher thought sensibilities. For it was within modernity that theology came to be seen as the intellectual justification of the faith, apart from the worship of God and the practice of the Christian life.

This is in stark contrast with Willard’s theological approach, which holds that ordinary people can do good theology and thereby interact with the living God. That is not to say that good theology doesn’t require one to think deeply and carefully, for Willard insists it does. But theology is an exercise or inquiry open to all, not just some elite group who have so-called higher thought. This is where his theological method corresponds with his common sense philosophy, namely that our everyday experiences and intuitions provide a trustworthy basis for knowledge, and such knowledge is accessible to everyone. Willard would likely detect more than a hint of gnosticism in much contemporary academic theology.

The purpose of theology, from this perspective, is deeply pastoral and therapeutic. It aims at human healing and human flourishing through knowing and loving God. Such flourishing implies growth in character and wisdom; thus the development of virtue is a central concern of the theological task. This perspective is also why, I suggest, Willard concentrated much of his teaching on the book of Acts in the 1970s — a time before his fame rose, when he likely had more freedom in choosing his subjects, rather than being asked to address specific topics such as discipleship and spiritual disciplines. From the surviving recordings of that decade, we know he taught at least four separate series on Acts. Acts possesses a realism unique in the New Testament — save for the Gospels themselves — as it narrates the power of God unleashed in the early Christian community. Its doctrines and theological principles arise from real historical experiences, making it an ideal foundation for a theologian of the Christian life like Willard, who sought to understand and apply spiritual truths in the practical realities of everyday life.