J. P. Moreland, Love Your God with All Your Mind (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1997).  Paperback. 249 pages.  Grade level 12.

J. P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987).  Paperback, 275 pages.  Grade level 13-14.

J. P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen, Does God Exist?: The Great Debate (Nashville:  Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1990).  Hardback, 317 pages.  Grade level 12.

J. P. Moreland has a beautiful mind. This is not in the limited sense that John Nash has a beautiful mind due to his insights and mathematical reasoning. Rather in the fuller sense that Moreland has set his mind to love God in all aspects of life, with intellectual, spiritual, and practical fervor. Furthermore J. P.  Moreland seeks a beautiful mind for all Christians. 

J. P. Moreland is a first order theologian and philosopher and a second order apologist.  In contrast Ravi Zacharias is a first order apologist and a second order theologian and philosopher.  Please understand that no disservice is meant to either man.  Rather the characterization should prepare you to approach each of these wonderful writers on their own turf.  Ravi Zacharias will produce images, “sound bites,” and a very engaging argument for a wide audience.  However, his follow through as a theologian often lead one wanting more.  On the other hand J. P. Moreland is all about a tight, well developed, and extremely well worded line of thought and reasoning.  J. P. Moreland speaks in pages not lines; he reasons in chapters not paragraphs.  You will find few illustrations in his writing, few punch lines, and even fewer “sound bites.”  
 
Love Your God with All Your Mind

Jesus commands that all His followers should love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.Moreland states that cultivating a mind that loves God is necessary to our devotion to God.  Moreland doesn’t just leave us there to fend for ourselves; however, the book is also a practical guide for that pursuit.

In chapter one, Moreland details how the church has abandonment public debate for the intellectual validity of Christianity in the last century. Without well reasoned arguments in the public forum the church’s message of salvation has been greatly weakened. Moreland moves onto a persuasive exposition of the Bible’s portrait of the mind (chapter 2) and then most importantly the role of the mind in the believer’s transformation (chapter 3). His exposition of Romans 12:2 is brilliant and upon reading it you will want to live up to all God wants of your mind. In short, Moreland maintains that you will not experience God’s full blessing in your life without a transformation of your mind.

 If you have time to only read one of Moreland’s book this is the one to read.  It is also the easiest to grasp of the three.

 
Scaling the Secular City

This most difficult to read of the three books. Despite its difficutly it is an indispensable and invaluable contemporary Christian response to secularism. The book covers the cosmological argument, the design argument, God and the argument from mind, God and the meaning of life, the Historicity of the New Testament, the resurrection of Jesus, and science and Christianity. Moreland draws upon his training in science, theology, and philosophy to address these issues in an informed and cogent manner. 

In all his writings Moreland defends the grammatical, historical, and plenary inspiration of the Bible. By that we mean that the Bible is the inspired word of God. Its inspiration is through common words in language and typical grammar, within the context of history, and all the content of the autographs—the original writings—are inspired by God.

Summarizing the material is difficult, but here is an example of the content on just one page (Chapter 7 “Science and Christianity, p. 198).

 Science has several presuppositions which are philosophical not scientific: 

• Our senses must be reliable and give accurate information;
•  Science must assume that the mind is rational;
•  Science must assume uniformity of nature for inductive reasoning;
•  The justification of inductive reasoning is a philosophic argument;
•  Science must assume that the laws of logic are true, numbers exist, language has meaning, and terms refer to things in the world;
•  Science assumes moral values (scientists truthfully report their results), epistemic virtues (simple explanations are better than complex ones), methodological values (double blind experiments, etc.)

This is an excellent book for Christian and non believer alike. Nothing derogatory is written toward non-Christian viewpoints.  It is scholarly with excellent footnotes and good references in the back including a bibliography and an index.

Does God Exist?

This book contains a fascinating debate between J. P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen (one of North America’s premier atheists).  Moreland is absolutely brilliant in his command of material and his reasoning and response.  Neilsen, however, scarcely participates in the debate and rather relies on a single argument: since we cannot fully define God the word “God” has no meaning and therefore the question “Does God exist?” is meaningless.  In other words, God doesn’t exist because the word “God” cannot properly identify the concept of God.

 The book has further value due to the responses solicited from several other authors. Of the greatest interest is the amazing reply from Dallas Willard “Language, Being, God, and the Three Stages of Theistic Evidence.”  In the three stages Willard demonstrates that logically creation contains a bias (not just a possibility) towards God’s existence. 

There is an extensive bibliography added to the book.  Believers and non-believers would find this book interesting since it seeks to bring a balance to both viewpoints.