Critical Summary - “Renovation of the Heart” by Dallas Willard - Chapter 1
Chapter 1: Introducing spiritual formation - The “beyond within” and the way of Jesus
Willard starts his chapter by pointing out that “we live from our hearts”.
Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life .
— Proverbs 4:23
It this from this inner reality of the heart that we make decisions, interpret reality and exist.
This means that the external problems we face at a collective and individual level is just symptomatic. It is indeed telling us something: there is a problem. But those externalities cannot be confused with the root, with the illness.
The greatest need you and I have—the greatest need of collective humanity—is renovation of our hearts. That spiritual place within us from which outlook, choices, and actions come has been formed by a world away from God. Now it must be transformed.
— Willard
The main focus of spiritual formation is that we can be transformed, that is, our current spiritual “form”, as bad as it may be, can be shaped into the person of Christ. In fact, most people believe that people can change; “disagreements have only to do with what in our spirits needs to be changes and how that change can be brought about”.
What was the type of revolution Jesus intended?
His is a revolution of character, which proceeds by changing people from the inside through ongoing personal relationship to God in Christ and to one another. It is one that changes their ideas, beliefs, feelings, and habits of choice, as well as their bodily tendencies and social relations. It penetrates to the deepest layers of their souls .
— Willard
Willard sees the the fundamental changes has to be the inner person, the individual. This should not be taken as a individualist theology about human change. He elaborates more on this point.
From those divinely renovated depths of the person, social structures will naturally be transformed so that “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24). Such streams cannot flow through corrupted souls. Conversely, a renovated “within” will not cooperate with public streams of unrighteousness. It will block them—or die trying. It is the only thing that can do so.
— Willard
This makes sense when one takes into account that no matter how good a system or societal structure is, if it is comprised of corrupted people.
What is the “spiritual” aspect of man?
Man shall not live by bread alone.
— Matthew 4:4, KJV.
Willard wants to make sure we grasp what he means by “spiritual”: “[this] means only ‘nonphysical,’ the hidden or inner world of the human self is indeed spiritual”.
Sciences can’t tell us nothing about the inner life because they measure “the world of the five senses”. It is true that science can establish important correlations on how external events affect our lives. But there is something hidden, the spiritual self, that has do with desire, motivation, feelings. It has to do with what we consider important in a moral sense. That is why “the spiritual simply is our life”.
In light of this, I think Willard is referring to the domain of meaning in the human experience. We live in a qualitative manner, living according to a conception of the good, of that thing that is the most valuable to us, such that it has the power to guide our action and behaviour and penetrate our conscious state. Now, this inner reality is not always articulated, for the most part it can be a mystery. That is why it is easy to make sense of our lives through stories. It is more intuitive. Science can only explain things at the level of mechanism, how things function, operate, and behave under certain conditions. But the spirituality in us is concerned with “value question” regarding how we should live our lives and what the “good life” is.
Where does spiritual salvation come from?
Willard continues his thesis by making clear that “our deliverance (salvation) does not arise out of the murky human depths from which our natural lives spring”. Spiritual deliverance “that come from Jesus are nothing less than an invasion of natural human reality by a supernatural life ‘from above’”.
This clarification is essential in the context of spiritual formation because, from my perspective, much of Ancient Philosophy and the current new age “spiritualities” have a paradigm of human progress and growth that starts with us and ends with us. There is a circularity. But, the Gospel does not simply bring out the best in us, but gives us a new “nature”. We are “new creatures” in God. Therefore, any spiritual change that reduces spiritual transformation to "just “will power” or “ascetic discipline” is rejected under Jesus’s teaching.
We are all being “formed” into something or someone
Spiritual formation, without regard to any specifically religious context or tradition, is the process by which the human spirit or will is given a definite “form” or character. It is a process that happens to everyone. The most despicable as well as the most admirable of persons have had a spiritual formation. Terrorist as well as saints are the outcome of spiritual formation. Their spirits or hearts have been formed. Period.
— Willard
In the Christian context, spiritual formations “refers to the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself”.
This implies that the focus is not only in the external behaviour or actions, but also, where these actions emerge from, that is, the heart. As Galatians 4:19 puts it, Christ needs to be formed within us. We need to do good things for the right reasons, or better put, from a place of a loving self who has the aroma of Christ.
Now, obviously, this inner change has an outward expression. But there can be “outward expression” without a true transformation of our spiritual self, and that leads us to corruption and legalism. Such was the case of the Pharisees who did the rights things for the wrong reasons (sinful motivations): love of money and reputation.
