What do you think?
Rate this book
The Kingdom Among Us: The Gospel According to Dallas Willard
Despite perennial attraction to his teachings, Dallas Willard's theology has not been easy for his readers and colleagues to figure out or piece together. His approach to theology was an odd one. His five bestselling books on the Christian life were a ""side job"" to his quiet career as a professional philosopher. To what, if not to his profession, can one attribute the lasting attraction of his books? On one hand, it is Willard's rhetorical skill and his cross-disciplinary knowledge--philosophical, psychological, biblical--regarding the central issues of human life. But more importantly, his books all proclaim a gospel which in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries can be especially hard to hear. Willard spoke of this gospel in biblical terms, ""the gospel of the kingdom,"" a gospel of spiritual living. The Kingdom Among Us presents a comprehensive account of that gospel. But it is much more than mere interpretation. By examining both Willard's writings and hundreds of hours of audio recordings, Michael Steward Robb both recovers and expands Willard's theological vision. The book will help long time readers of Willard's books make sense of his position in professional theology and philosophy. Robb's reconstruction of a gospel of spiritual living will help scholars, theologians, and philosophers make sense of Willard's ""side job."" But all readers will encounter in these pages the most complete picture available of one of the giants of modern Christian spirituality.
- GenresTheology
522 pages, Paperback
Published June 25, 2024
25 people are currently reading
109 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 18, 2023
Summary: A formulation of the theology of Dallas Willard, centering around his focus on the gospel of the kingdom, and three stages of understanding Jesus followers go through in their progressive apprehension of the realities of that kingdom.
Dallas Willard is known by many for his book, The Spirit of the Disciplines. Even this book suggests a deeper substrate to Willard’s thought, as it pointed to the disciplines positioning us for life under God’s gracious and transforming rule. He develops that further in The Divine Conspiracy, where he introduces his ideas of the center of Jesus message being the gospel of the Kingdom of God.
Beyond his academic writing, Dallas Willard gave us these books plus several others, written thoughtfully for a wide audience. Over his life he spoke widely (I heard him on several occasions and even picked him up at an airport once) on a variety of topics, from venues as varied as Sunday school classes, to lecture series to Veritas Forums and plenary talks at national conferences. While his ideas called many into a deeper life of discipleship as apprentices to Jesus, he never took the time to formulate the substrate of his ideas, his theology, in a systematic sense.
\That is what Michael Stewart Robb seeks to do in this work, centering around his message of the gospel of the kingdom, and around the progressive apprehension of those who listened and followed. To do this, Robb went beyond the published works of Willard to listen to hundreds of hours of recorded messages, gathering course materials and teaching notes from Sunday school classes. From this, he elaborates, more systematically than Willard himself, Willard’s theology undergirding his ideas of the gospel of the kingdom.
Robb sees Willard’s ideas of the kingdom both rooted in creation and moving toward a telos of a “community of loving, creative, intelligent, loyal, faithful, powerful human beings. And they are going to rule the earth.” While the kingdom precedes the coming of Jesus, his coming marks the “nearness” of the kingdom, its accessibility to those who follow and believe. The major part of the book traces the progressive apprehension of the gospel of the kingdom through three stages, progressing from what is known to greater understanding and a deeper apprehension of Jesus.
In the first stage, they encounter Jesus as a prophet announcing the presence of the kingdom and evidencing that in his person through a ministry of deliverance from demons, illness, and death. Those who trusted in Jesus experience deliverance in the form of regeneration into a new life.
In the second stage, they encounter Jesus as teacher, apprenticing themselves to him as disciples, learning in his bodily presence the abundant life of the kingdom, practicing what they see in him. Their faith in him is in the faith of Christ toward God.
The third stage then is the encounter with Jesus as king, as the Son of God, the Incarnate God. Here, disciples become the friends of Jesus and enjoy the access of friends to the king’s domain. They move from faith in Jesus to the faith of Jesus and ultimately to faith in God. They know the nearness of the kingdom as nearness to Jesus and God as friends.
This is a vast simplification, and probably oversimplification, of what Robb does in over 500 pages, addressing a number of theological and philosophical matters along the way–ontology, redemptive history, and soteriology. Robb incorporates his research into the extant papers, addresses, lecture notes and published works to “connect the dots” and explore the nuances of Willard’s thought. This can be quite involved in places, requiring close attention. The picture emerges of Willard as a profound but not simple teacher.
One of the matters I would like to see Robb address further is that, while this is a Christocentric account, it is not crucicentric. If I grasp this account correctly, we are saved by the whole life of Christ, in our encounter with and faith in him, into the life of the kingdom. If I am reading this accurately, this reflects something of a departure from evangelical distinctives, notably Bebbington’s Quadrilateral. This makes me want to read Willard more closely and to understand more of the place the cross occupies in Willard’s thought.
Robb has clearly made a formidable contribution to studies of a figure he calls “an odd duck.” Willard was a pastor-philosopher whose reading of theologians was focused not on contemporaries but on classic figures, from Augustine to Calvin to Finney. He was not part of the “theological guild” and something of a maverick. Hopefully Robb’s work will spark further study to mine the distinctive ideas that challenged so many of us during Willard’s life and even lead to the discovery of Willard’s work by a new generation.
____________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
Dallas Willard is known by many for his book, The Spirit of the Disciplines. Even this book suggests a deeper substrate to Willard’s thought, as it pointed to the disciplines positioning us for life under God’s gracious and transforming rule. He develops that further in The Divine Conspiracy, where he introduces his ideas of the center of Jesus message being the gospel of the Kingdom of God.
Beyond his academic writing, Dallas Willard gave us these books plus several others, written thoughtfully for a wide audience. Over his life he spoke widely (I heard him on several occasions and even picked him up at an airport once) on a variety of topics, from venues as varied as Sunday school classes, to lecture series to Veritas Forums and plenary talks at national conferences. While his ideas called many into a deeper life of discipleship as apprentices to Jesus, he never took the time to formulate the substrate of his ideas, his theology, in a systematic sense.
\That is what Michael Stewart Robb seeks to do in this work, centering around his message of the gospel of the kingdom, and around the progressive apprehension of those who listened and followed. To do this, Robb went beyond the published works of Willard to listen to hundreds of hours of recorded messages, gathering course materials and teaching notes from Sunday school classes. From this, he elaborates, more systematically than Willard himself, Willard’s theology undergirding his ideas of the gospel of the kingdom.
Robb sees Willard’s ideas of the kingdom both rooted in creation and moving toward a telos of a “community of loving, creative, intelligent, loyal, faithful, powerful human beings. And they are going to rule the earth.” While the kingdom precedes the coming of Jesus, his coming marks the “nearness” of the kingdom, its accessibility to those who follow and believe. The major part of the book traces the progressive apprehension of the gospel of the kingdom through three stages, progressing from what is known to greater understanding and a deeper apprehension of Jesus.
In the first stage, they encounter Jesus as a prophet announcing the presence of the kingdom and evidencing that in his person through a ministry of deliverance from demons, illness, and death. Those who trusted in Jesus experience deliverance in the form of regeneration into a new life.
In the second stage, they encounter Jesus as teacher, apprenticing themselves to him as disciples, learning in his bodily presence the abundant life of the kingdom, practicing what they see in him. Their faith in him is in the faith of Christ toward God.
The third stage then is the encounter with Jesus as king, as the Son of God, the Incarnate God. Here, disciples become the friends of Jesus and enjoy the access of friends to the king’s domain. They move from faith in Jesus to the faith of Jesus and ultimately to faith in God. They know the nearness of the kingdom as nearness to Jesus and God as friends.
This is a vast simplification, and probably oversimplification, of what Robb does in over 500 pages, addressing a number of theological and philosophical matters along the way–ontology, redemptive history, and soteriology. Robb incorporates his research into the extant papers, addresses, lecture notes and published works to “connect the dots” and explore the nuances of Willard’s thought. This can be quite involved in places, requiring close attention. The picture emerges of Willard as a profound but not simple teacher.
One of the matters I would like to see Robb address further is that, while this is a Christocentric account, it is not crucicentric. If I grasp this account correctly, we are saved by the whole life of Christ, in our encounter with and faith in him, into the life of the kingdom. If I am reading this accurately, this reflects something of a departure from evangelical distinctives, notably Bebbington’s Quadrilateral. This makes me want to read Willard more closely and to understand more of the place the cross occupies in Willard’s thought.
Robb has clearly made a formidable contribution to studies of a figure he calls “an odd duck.” Willard was a pastor-philosopher whose reading of theologians was focused not on contemporaries but on classic figures, from Augustine to Calvin to Finney. He was not part of the “theological guild” and something of a maverick. Hopefully Robb’s work will spark further study to mine the distinctive ideas that challenged so many of us during Willard’s life and even lead to the discovery of Willard’s work by a new generation.
____________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
October 25, 2025
In a 2018 talk, Michael Stewart Robb reflected on his decision to shift his PhD focus to Dallas Willard:
“I was in the middle of a PhD on Karl Barth and Martin Kahler when—after prayer and pastoral guidance—I decided to do something stupid: tell my supervisors I wanted to write on Dallas Willard.
You have to understand; everyone I knew in academic theology who had heard of Dallas thought of him as a nice man who wrote nice books. Philosophical realism? Out of style. Husserl? Obscure. The gospel of the Kingdom? We have our own interpretations, thank you. Discipleship? Disciplines? Nice ideas—but not ‘serious theology.’
But I persevered in my stupidity—because I had read Dallas’s philosophical writings. I knew he wasn’t just ‘nice.’ He might be wrong, but he wasn’t shallow. He was brilliant.”
In The Kingdom Among Us, Robb decisively demonstrates that Dallas Willard was indeed a brilliant theologian. I’ll admit that chapters 3 and 4 were largely over my head, and chapter 12 (“Cur Deus Homo?”) left me with a few lingering questions. Nevertheless, this book deepened my appreciation for Willard’s work and theological vision.
Drawing not only from Willard’s writings but also from countless hours of his lectures and sermons, Robb organizes Willard’s gospel theology into three stages that trace how Jesus’ first listeners came to understand him: first as a prophet who brought God’s kingdom near through acts of deliverance, then as a teacher who invited them into apprenticeship in the life of the kingdom, and finally as the King and divine Son who offers intimate union and shared life with God.
Robb says, "...it is the listeners' faith in Jesus that made them into regenerate children (stage 1), then disciples of Jesus (stage 2), and then friends of God (stage 3)."
“I was in the middle of a PhD on Karl Barth and Martin Kahler when—after prayer and pastoral guidance—I decided to do something stupid: tell my supervisors I wanted to write on Dallas Willard.
You have to understand; everyone I knew in academic theology who had heard of Dallas thought of him as a nice man who wrote nice books. Philosophical realism? Out of style. Husserl? Obscure. The gospel of the Kingdom? We have our own interpretations, thank you. Discipleship? Disciplines? Nice ideas—but not ‘serious theology.’
But I persevered in my stupidity—because I had read Dallas’s philosophical writings. I knew he wasn’t just ‘nice.’ He might be wrong, but he wasn’t shallow. He was brilliant.”
In The Kingdom Among Us, Robb decisively demonstrates that Dallas Willard was indeed a brilliant theologian. I’ll admit that chapters 3 and 4 were largely over my head, and chapter 12 (“Cur Deus Homo?”) left me with a few lingering questions. Nevertheless, this book deepened my appreciation for Willard’s work and theological vision.
Drawing not only from Willard’s writings but also from countless hours of his lectures and sermons, Robb organizes Willard’s gospel theology into three stages that trace how Jesus’ first listeners came to understand him: first as a prophet who brought God’s kingdom near through acts of deliverance, then as a teacher who invited them into apprenticeship in the life of the kingdom, and finally as the King and divine Son who offers intimate union and shared life with God.
Robb says, "...it is the listeners' faith in Jesus that made them into regenerate children (stage 1), then disciples of Jesus (stage 2), and then friends of God (stage 3)."
June 5, 2024
Dallas Willard has been my favourite Christian author for more than 20 years. It pains me to give this book such a low rating, which I will now explain. My hope was that the book would provide clarity around the theology of Willard, yet I found the opposite. The writing was in the style of an academic theologian, which I am (unfortunately for me) not capable of fully understanding. The result was that after the first chapter (which was wonderful), the rest of the book was filled with sentences and paragraphs whose content didn’t make it into my head. Certainly, there were large parts of the book that were very interesting, but larger parts that for me were just words. For those who understand the type of language used, I hope the book was wonderful. I expect that most people, who struggle (like I do) with Dallas Willard will find the contents of this book considerably more difficult and therefore not likely worth the effort.
October 28, 2023
For a long time I considered myself the greatest fan and student of Dallas Willard; I am grateful to discover that that is far from the truth. Michael Stewart Robb did a masterful job at assembly the thoughts of a philosopher and theologian, who didn’t intend to do much of anything other than announce the reign of God and teach about life in the Kingdom of God as disciples of Jesus the Christ.
I have noticed a need to reread Willard more carefully and systematically; with the help of Robb this will be accomplished easier.
This book is helpful is you’ve never read Willard, but it’s really helpful if you have somewhat of an understanding of his work. Either way, it has my recommendation.
I have noticed a need to reread Willard more carefully and systematically; with the help of Robb this will be accomplished easier.
This book is helpful is you’ve never read Willard, but it’s really helpful if you have somewhat of an understanding of his work. Either way, it has my recommendation.
June 15, 2023
It was good, but it was thick and, at times, needlessly complicated. I do feel like I understand Willard's thinking and theology a little better now.
February 8, 2024
I used to consider Dallas Willard one of the smartest people to ever live. Now I think he might be the smartest.
August 23, 2024
Excellent approach to understanding the systematic thinking of Dallas Willard. Dallas was a great philosopher and Christ-follower. Robb's integrated way of looking at his thinking was insightful.
December 27, 2022
An insane amount of research went into this book. The author does some crazy work in an attempt to systematize Dallas Willard's theology. It's at times relatively readable (for someone already considerably adept at academic theology). It made me want to lean into a friendship with Christ and also dig more into Dallas Willard's books, which I think, in the author's eyes, makes the book a success.
It's interesting to think about how widely-accepted DW is, despite that many of his ideas are rather drastically unconventional in 2oth century US evangelicalism (as suggested by this book, that is).
It's interesting to think about how widely-accepted DW is, despite that many of his ideas are rather drastically unconventional in 2oth century US evangelicalism (as suggested by this book, that is).
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews