Prepare Your Mind For Action. The mind plays an important role in Christianity. Unfortunately, many of us leave our minds behind when it comes to our faith. In Love Your God with All Your Mind, J. P. Moreland presents a compelling case for the role of the mind in spiritual transformation. He challenges us to develop a Christian mind and to use our intellect to further God’s kingdom through evangelism, apologetics, worship, and vocation. "This exploration into the mind of evangelical Christianity is one of the most courageous books of our time. In language that is thoroughly erudite but compassionate, theological but practical, and scriptural but entirely relevant to today, the author presents the deeper significance of Paul’s plea to the Christians at Phillipi: ‘Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. ‘". ~ From the Publisher

Table of Contents

• PART 1: WHY THE MIND MATTERS IN CHRISTIANITY
  • Chapter 1: How We Lost the Christian Mind and Why We Must Recover It
  • Chapter 2: Sketching a Biblical Portrait of the Life of the Mind
  • Chapter 3: The Mind’s Role in Spiritual Transformation
• PART 2: HOW TO DEVELOP A MATURE CHRISTIAN MIND
  • Chapter 4: Harassing the Hobgoblins of the Christian Mind
  • Chapter 5: Clearing the Cobwebs from My Mental Attic
• PART 3: WHAT A MATURE CHRISTIAN MIND LOOKS LIKE
  • Chapter 6: Evangelism and the Christian Mind
  • Chapter 7: Apologetic Reasoning and the Christian Mind
  • Chapter 8: Worship, Fellowship, and the Christian Mind
  • Chapter 9: Vocation and an Integrated Christian Worldview
• PART 4: GUARANTEEING A FUTURE FOR THE CHRISTIAN MIND
  • Chapter 10: Recapturing the Intellectual Life in the Church

Excerpts

"From Old Testament times and ancient Greece until this century, the good life was widely understood to mean a life of intellectual and moral virtue. The good life is the life of ideal human functioning according to the nature that God Himself gave to us. According to this view, prior to creation God had in mind an ideal blueprint of human nature from which he created each and every human being. Happiness was understood as a life of virtue, and the successful person was one who knew how to live life well according to what we are by nature due to the creative design of God." (p. 35)

"Humility and the associated traits of open-mindedness, self-criticality, and nondefensiveness [are] virtues relevant to the intellectual life. We must be willing to seek the truth in a spirit of humility with an admission of our own finitude; we must be willing to learn from our critics; and we need to learn to argue against our own positions in order to strengthen our understanding of them? The purpose of intellectual humility, open-mindedness , and so forth is not to create a skeptical mind that never lands on a position about anything, preferring to remain suspended in midair. Rather, the purpose is for you to do anything you can to remove your unhelpful biases and get at the truth in a reasoned way." (p. 109)

"Unfortunately, I have seen too many Christian thinkers who have a certain texture or posture in life that gives the impression that they are far more concerned with assuring their academic colleagues that they are not ignorant fundamentalist than they are with pleasing God and serving His people. Such thinkers often give up too much intellectual real estate far too readily to secular or other perspectives inimical to the Christian faith. This is why many average Christian folk are suspicious of the mind today. All too often, they have seen intellectual growth in Christian academics lead to a cynical posture unfaithful to the spirit of the Christian way? Fidelity to God and His cause is the core commitment of a growing Christian mind." (p. 111)

A Review

"JP Moreland exemplifies the Christian mind as it ought to be — tough and analytic, but also generous and caring. Christians who want to develp their minds in the service of Christ couldn’t find a better teacher, or a better book for the task." ~ Phillip E. Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial.