Sanctus Forum

Conspiracy Commentaries: Conversations ft. James Catford // on “All Things Visible and Invisible” by Dallas Willard

Any interested in bringing the spiritual and the secular together must first be able to say what exactly the spiritual is. This is the task that Dallas Willard wants to help us with in The Divine Conspiracy's chapter three. But that's where James Catford and Michael Stewart Robb pick up the conversation and start looking around modern society for the spiritual. We talk about her majesty the queen, architecture, going to hell and even punk rock. As James once told Mike (and Mike won't let James forget), "We have to blur the divide between the sacred and the secular." BE INFORMED and PRAY for us better by signing up for the Sanctus newsletter: https://sanctus.institute

Conspiracy Commentaries: §48 The Centrality of the Pulpit

What is it about church that keeps it from producing the kinds of people that the Old and New Testaments talk about?⁠ Dallas Willard grabs a saying from management experts, "Your system is perfectly designed to yield the result you are getting" and applies it to church. In this episode, Michael Stewart Robb shares Willard's diagnosis and he explains why Willard thinks that the solution must be natural. BE INFORMED and PRAY for us better by signing up for the Sanctus newsletter: https://sanctus.institute

Conspiracy Commentaries: §49 The Kingdom Must Make Sense

How many people in our churches could give a Sunday school answer to the question, what is the kingdom of God? In this episode Michael Stewart Robb talks about why Dallas Willard thinks this is a worrying question and what its cause is. The gospel of Jesus, discipleship to him and the fulfilled life all depend on the kingdom of God making sense to people. BE INFORMED and PRAY for us better by signing up for the Sanctus newsletter: https://sanctus.institute

Conspiracy Commentaries: §50 Re-Visioning God and His World

Michael Stewart Robb is thinking about joy today. How did Jesus have it? Supposedly it was a part of his belief system. That this was a world where one could be joyous because joy is the only reasonable response. ⁠It's not about being happy. You can be happy one hour and sad the next. Happy is a feeling it is best not to worry about it. But joy should be pursued if you don't have it like Jesus.⁠ And here to help Mike is Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy. BE INFORMED and PRAY for us better by signing up for the Sanctus newsletter: https://sanctus.institute
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Conspiracy Commentaries: §51 God’s Joyous Being

Joy should characterize the life of Jesus's students. It doesn't so often because we don't know God like Jesus does. And here to help us learn theology from Jesus is Dallas Willard. Michael Stewart Robb discusses the third chapter of Willard's The Divine Conspiracy. BE INFORMED and PRAY for us better by signing up for the Sanctus newsletter: https://sanctus.institute

Conspiracy Commentaries: §52 Finding Language to Express This Great God

It is psychologically impossible to believe a blur. But that is where modernity including postmodernity has left us with respect to God. Dallas Willard, a philosopher in his day job, saw that in the churches he entered. Thus it will be hard to believe in a God of joy, if we barely know what God is. BE INFORMED and PRAY for us better by signing up for the Sanctus newsletter: https://sanctus.institute/​

Conspiracy Commentaries: §53 Some Advice on Living

The challenge of Jesus' spirituality is coming to believe one thing, namely "our universe is a perfectly safe place to be."⁠ That may be a bit of an overstatement and you wouldn't want to build a whole systematic theology on it but you'd have most of Jesus' spirituality under your belt if you managed to believe it. Meaning, if you managed to internalize it. Michael Stewart Robb discusses this phrase which comes from chapter three of Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy. BE INFORMED and PRAY for us better by signing up for the Sanctus newsletter: https://sanctus.institute

Conspiracy Commentaries: §54 The Heavens Are Also Here

How did people depicted in the Bible, who had no Bible, know and relate to God? Dallas Willard's answer centers around experience and in this episode Michael Stewart Robb discusses how Dallas Willard characterizes these peoples' experience of God in some ways which are very different than we may have normally thought. It all comes together with the concept of heaven. BE INFORMED and PRAY for us better by signing up for the Sanctus newsletter: https://sanctus.institute/​

Conspiracy Commentaries: §55 Heaven Invading Human Space

At some point Dallas Willard changed his mind on what the kingdom of God is. He eventually comes to the view in The Divine Conspiracy that "heaven is here and God is here." In this episode Michael Stewart Robb shares what he's learned about when and how he changed his mind. BE INFORMED and PRAY for us better by signing up for the Sanctus newsletter: https://sanctus.institute/​

Conspiracy Commentaries: §56 The New Testament Experience

The 3rd chapter of The Divine Conspiracy is all about immanence. In this section Dallas Willard begins his description of how Jesus comes into the world to make God present in a new way. It is a compact argument and Michael Stewart Robb does his best to help make sense of it. BE INFORMED and PRAY for us better by signing up for the Sanctus newsletter: https://sanctus.institute/​