Amelia Jennings

Professor Van Spronsen

EDU 450
22 March 2017

The Right Solution to A Timeless Problem

In his book, Love Your God with All Your Mind, J. P. Moreland argues for the reclamation

of the role of reason in the Christian consideration of soul strengthening. While he makes an

important point about the need for Christians to engage their whole person, including the mind,

in their search and service of God, the diagnosis he makes leading up to this suggested treatment

inaccurately tracks and assesses the situation in the church. He finds that, progressively, the

church has earned a reputation for anti-intellectualism and separation from reason and mental

engagement that trickles down to leave individual Christians helpless regarding training in the

understanding and engagement of their whole soul, including reasoning faculties. It might be

encouraging to note that this picture Moreland paints is too bleak to portray the current state of

Christian minds.

Moreland makes an important point about the failure of Christians to think critically and

intellectually engage with their faith. However, he goes too far in casting Christians as the sole

ignorant persons in a clash of worldviews. Because he connects Christian mind-shifts to the

cultural shifts around the church but isolates Christian mind phenomena, he misrepresents the

issue. Moreland accurately recounts the history of Christianity and its declining intellectualism,

citing things like the highly emotional mindset of the Great Awakenings and revivals, the often

oversimplified and oversocialized message of missionaries, and the churchs general response of

recoiling from intellectualism in the face of text criticism of the Bible (Moreland 23-24, 29). The

problem with this picture is that it paints the whole church with broad strokes, neglecting the
complexity of responses and countermovements within the church amid these events, and that it

neglects to recognize the bigger movements behind these events that reflect culture as a whole.

Besides which, it is important to note that the churchs historical reputation to be disengaged in

thinking is only as important to note as far as it may be true. All that to say, the same complexity

exists in the picture of today -the church is not completely devoid of intellectually engaged faith,

nor is the problem of lack of critical thinking regarding beliefs unique to the church. Just as

many non-Christians separate the things they believe from reason and plenty of Christians do

not.

Moreland makes an important point about the need to understand the role of the Holy

Spirit and the role of the Christian mind together, but his point is no less important for the first

century church than it is today (48). As he presents the main struggle for Christians to engage

with other people about their faith, he argues for a problem of feeling intellectually inadequate,

like the default is to be defensive and sever beliefs from logic (52). His solution, then, would be

to not separate faith from reason in the mind, since, he rightly points out, faith includes reason.

But even Christians who have been taught against that false dichotomy still struggle to engage

with non-Christians in this arena, and likely for good reason. If we are honest with ourselves, no

matter how confident we are that our faith is founded on reasonable truth and evidence, there are

things we do not understand and cannot account for. What Christian minds need is greater

training in the whole range of what is clear and defensible and when to be honest and humble

and admit that we have not studied and do not yet understand everything, but are working on that

very pursuit of knowledge.

Perhaps an examination of Reformed Christian education would offer a sample of the

complex array of problems for Christian thinkers today. In the Reformed church, generations of
believers have given preference to the things of the mind, perhaps still divorcing faith and reason

in the soul, but emphasizing the severed mind to a fault rather than standing on enfeebled faith as

Moreland depicts. This does not negate Morelands examples, but demonstrates the broadness of

the spectrum of Christian mindfulness. Young believers of the Reformed faith have still to train

their mind the way Moreland proscribes, but their need weighs more on the side of remarrying

their mental faculties with their heart faculties in a meaningful, expressive way, letting what they

know and can be confident of have a practical impact on how they act and speak and seek

Christs kingdom.

Finding Christians lacking, Moreland provides evidence of the lack of but benefits from a

trained mind, especially the ability to see and conceptualize (79, 81). His evidence is not wrong

-many Christians and non-Christians alike do not see the difference between negative and

positive claims to rights in politics, and it is inarguable that any person could not grasp

something within which they do not understand the connections and processes and structure. Yet

this does not characterize all persons in the current Western world, and this situation is no

different from that of any other time in history. The general populace is always a complex blend

of beliefs, levels of intelligence, and degrees of mental engagement. Christians in particular have

always struggled to balance engaging their whole person in the love and service of the Lord. We

will always be learning how to better focus on God first and see all our affections, thoughts,

reasons, logic, actions, and words in search and service of him (86). We cannot have empty

minds and hearts, but a whole person devoted to and filled by who God is and what he has said

and done. The solution of education, discourse, and practice of the mind which Moreland offers

is indeed needed, but the problem is not new or worsening, is is a timeless struggle for the

redeemed person in a fallen world.

 Works Cited:

Moreland, James P, and Dallas Willard. Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason
in the Life of the Soul. Colorado Springs, Colo: NavPress, 1997. Print.