Book Review: "Knowing Christ Today" by a Favorite Drinking Buddy

When I was in college, my staff worker, Dean Miller, encouraged us all to have drinking buddies. A drinking buddy is someone whose writing and thinking you're so familiar with that you could represent them in a conversation or debate.

This has proven to be excellent advice, and over the years I've acquired many such drinking buddies. C.S. Lewis, Eugene Peterson, Lesslie Newbiggin, John Piper, NT Wright, Marva Dawn, Larry Crabb, and Dallas Willard have all proved to be faithful and instructive mentors in the faith.

So I read just about everything these people write. And Dallas Willard is someone who's stuff I thought I'd about figured out. His previous books have been spectacular calls to Christians to take life as a disciple ("student") of Christ seriously. "The Divine Conspiracy" and "Renovation of the Heart" along with "The Spirit of the Disciplines" all drill this message home with astounding clarity.

So when I picked up his latest book, Knowing Christ Today, I figured I knew what his deal was and that I'd get more of the same. Good, but not new.

And then I read it. And I was blown away.

Willard is a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California. And for the first time in his popular Christian writing, he writes as a philosophy professor taking on the university culture. In particular, he engages in the area of how we can know anything, and whether or not religion in general and Christianity in particular can be a part of the conversation about knowledge of what is ultimately real.

Is faith just ultimately about 'feelings' and 'preferences' or is there something factual that can be stated? Do the sciences debunk Christian faith? Are there two different worlds: the world of "facts" (things we can know) and the world of "faith" (things no one can ever really know)?

If knowledge is involved, what role should it play in a pluralistic context? And how can we bring that to bear without being jerks?

That sounds more confusing than it is. If you're at all involved in the university setting or just serious about engaging questions of how or if religion should play a role in the public conversation about how to live, then you will instantly recognize the issues that Willard engages.

He gets a little squirrely towards the end when it comes to the conversation about religious pluralism--some things I agree with, other things I'm not so sure.

But this book is a 'must read' for anyone who's engaging with the campus world or asking questions about or if "Christian knowledge" actually exists...and what role (if any) that can play in the broader, pluralistic context which we find ourselves in today.