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is fair to say that he places a greater emphasis on this relational intimacy with Christ as the goal

and result of progressive spiritual formation.

While Demarest agrees with Willard that spiritual formation is a holistic process

dealing with humans as holistic beings, he is more fluid and less precise when describing the

component elements of the human person. Willard, as you recall, identifies six distinct and

distinguishable elements of the human person. Yet he never gives biblical warrant for these

distinctions and at times seems to run into trouble in trying to distinguish these elements. For

example, Willard defines the human heart/will/spirit to be "the center or core to which every

other component of the self owes its proper functioning [DW, 29]. As such, it is "the executive

center of a human life, . . . where decisions and choices are made for the whole person" [DW,

30].

Yet Willard will also say that it is the human soul, as distinct from the human

heart/will/spirit that is "the dimension of the person that interrelates all of the other dimensions

so that they form one life" [DW, 37]. It is the soul, according to Willard, that runs your life at

any given moment [DW, 199]. The confusion seems evident, stemming, I think, from an undue

desire to rigidly and consistently separate these dimensions of the human person. Demarest, on

the other hand, identifies intellectual, volitional, emotional, moral, relational and functional

dimensions of human image-bearers of God [BD, 51]. But he speaks functionally, not

Willard likens the heart/will/spirit, in its relationship to the totality of the human person

to the CEO of a company [DW, 30]. Later, Willard says that "functionally . . . the will is the

executive center of the human self. From it the whole self or life is meant to be directed and

organized" [DW, 144].