Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Scaling the Secular City)

Rating:
Summary: A definitive text that has endured the past decade
Review: J.P. Moreland has given the Christian community a definitive work in the area of apologetics. As is the case with most other apologetic works (or works of this nature), they tend to have a short shelf life. Thus, those who are interested in owning a copy have to spend too many hours tracking it down. This work has stood the test of time. Moreland is extremely decisive and clear in what he communicates in these pages. Moreover, he covers topics that are vital to the Christian faith. For example, Moreland covers the traditional arguments for the existence of God (i.e. cosmological, design argument, etc.). Moreland also offers a great exposition of why Jesus actually did rise physically from the grave, why the New Testament is historically accurate, and he includes a chapter concerning Science and Christianity (i.e. how science has effected Christianity over the years, including the age old debate over evolution and creationism). Furthermore, Moreland delineates the Kalam Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God. An argument which has gain popularity thanks to men like Moreland and William Lane Craig. Overall, this book is an invaluable tool for the Christian lay person and researcher alike.

Rating:
Summary: A Highly Recommended Defense of the Faith
Review: J.P. Moreland, one of today's top evangelical philosophers, released this valuable apologetics work about 15 years ago. Despite its age, the book is very relevant and useful even today.

Throughout the book, Moreland discusses various issues of importance to the Christian faith. The first few chapters cover arguments for the existence of God, such as the Cosmological Argument and the Argument from Mind. Moreland is thorough and persuasive in his powerful presentations of these arguments for a personal Creator.

Moreland also discusses issues dealing with the historicity of the New Testament and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Finishing off the book is a chapter on Christianity and Science, and a chapter that deals with various miscellany.

Also useful is a bibliography of recommended further material provided at the end of the book. Moreland offers suggestions for all sorts of topics, and each book is rated Beginner, Intermediate, or Expert. With this feature, Moreland solidifies his work as an excellent apologetic. If there is one apologetics book you buy, Moreland's "Scaling the Secular City" is a great choice.

Rating:
Summary: Quite Possibly the Best Ever...
Review: Moreland's work must be considered one of the premier works on apologetics written by an evangelical. Although William Lane Craig is probably now worthy to be called the dean of evangelical apologists, Moreland's volume from the 1980s still stands alone as the best single volume in dealing with challenges to the Christian faith. This is due in large part to two factors: the format of the book and Moreland's concise way in handling the issues under discussion.

For the most part, individual chapters are self-contained-they can be read apart from the others. They thus serve as extremely concise summaries of the key arguments.

Moreland's strength clearly shows up in the philosophy portions of the work, as he deals with most of the classical theistic proofs. However, he also takes on other issues, such as God as a mental projection, in a concise way that allows the reader to grasp the significant issues quickly.

W. L. Craig has a much longer bibliography in this area and must necessarily be consulted on most of the topics that Moreland covers here, but if you need one apologetics volume to keep handy to refresh your memory on the issues, this is the one to have.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This book is fantastic! Moreland tackles certain issues in a thorough way, which is not attained by any other book I know of. He very clearly lays down all the arguments and all the counterarguments and his conclusions seem inescapable. Here are the chapters:
1 The cosmological argument
2 The design argument
3 God and the argument from mind
4 God and the meaning of life
5 The historicity of the New Testament
6 The resurrection of Jesus
7 Science and Christianity
8 Four final issues
The excellent treatments of these issues are however not integrated, linked together. One must already have an idea of their relevance (I can recommend here the book of N. L. Geisler, "Christian Apologetics", Baker Book House).I also would like to recommend Moreland's other books ("The Creation Hypothesis", "Jesus under fire", ...).

Bruno Granger,
The Hague, Hollan

Rating:
Summary: Already a Classical Text
Review: This book, fashioned by J.P. Moreland of Biola University, has stood the test. While it appears as an introductory text; he avoids dumping down the information to the point of making the information irrelevant. In addition, he presents the information with enough technical language and argumentation as to make someone who has not encountered Philosophy of Religion studies before struggle enough to make them grow intellectually. This is the genius of the book, to accomplish this in a primer text.

He goes over most of the standard arguments in apologetics such as the design, cosmological, mind arguments and so forth. His chapter on the Resurrection of Jesus is outstanding and his chapter on Science and Christianity is good introductory fair by surveying the different positions.

I do think that he should have taken his morel relativism critique in his final four issues chapter devoted an entire chapter to this discussion and with the same depth of skill he used in the "design and cosmological" chapters, developed a chapter on relativism and the impact on the agreement from morals.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent defense of Christianity!
Review: This is one of the best books I have ever read on the topic of defending Christianity rationally. That said, for a Christian new to this topic, a more entry-level book would be more helpful (e.g. Lee Strobel's two books: The Case for Christ, The Case for Faith).

The book is written to an educated audience and parts of it are difficult. The most difficult part was Moreland's discussion of the kalam cosmological argument and the mathematical part evidence therein. Moreland is an excellent scholar; in total, there are 359 footnotes where Moreland documents arguments, refers to other philosophers and so on. There is also an excellent bibliography at the end where Moreland classes the books under three categories: Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced.

Moreland covers what one would expect to find in an apologetics book:
The Cosmological Argument
The Design Argument
The Historicity of the New Testament
The Resurrection of Jesus

Much of this material can be found in hundreds of other books. In his chapter on the Cosmological Argument, Moreland focuses on a specific form of it, recently revived by William Lane Craig, namely the kalam Cosmological argument (in brief: If the universe had a beginning, then it was either caused or not-caused, if caused, then the cause is either personal or not-personal). In the Design Argument, Moreland covers different forms of Design, some of which are untouched, even if evolution is true (e.g. Design as Order, Purpose, Simplicity, Complexity, Beauty, Sense and Cognition, Information and Cosmic Constants).

Moreland's defense of the Resurrection is similar in many respects to Craig's; see my reviews of, "Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Fiction," and, "Will the real Jesus please stand up?"

However, Moreland has several chapters that make his book stand out from the crowd:

God and the Argument from the Mind
God and the Meaning of Life
Science and Christianity
Four Final Issues

In the Mind chapter, Moreland argues for and defends the idea of substantial, immaterial human souls or minds to the existence of an original Mind or Soul (i.e. God). In the Meaning chapter, Moreland looks at the ethics dimension of the question, examines the options (e.g. Nihilism, optimistic humanism, immanent purpose and Christianity), and concludes that Christianity is not only the most rational but also provides more meaning than the competing views.

In the Science chapter, Moreland discusses philosophy of science and the creation/evolution debate. Often, there is an idea that either science and theology are working in totally different spheres of reality or that science should dictate to theology what it can and cannot do. I think Moreland makes an important advance here; his approach takes both science and the Bible seriously. He concludes the chapter with a discussion of evolution and offers a serious of reasons why creation science IS NOT a religion.

In the last chapter, he looks at four final issues; the 'problem' of the visibility of God, the religious experience argument for God, the objection that God is merely a psychological projection and relativism. To explain the visibility problem is the view that sense God cannot be seen, one cannot know He exists; Moreland rightly exposes this as, 'crude empiricism.' The author offers two fairly convincing arguments based on religious experience; the reader must keep in mind that even if you reject this argument, there are numerous other objective arguments that are objective in nature. Psychologists and sociologists originally came up with the idea that God is a projection of the mind, or a fulfillment of psychological needs, obviously forgot that philosophy is not their realm. Moreland responds by saying that to explain the origin of the belief does not show whether one is justified in believing it (to discredit an idea solely by pointing to its origin is to commit the genetic fallacy), and Moreland also questions the premise that people project God. Relativism is the view that there are no universal moral rules that apply to all people, all cultures and all times; for more on this topic, see my review of, 'Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air.'

Throughout the book, Moreland considers objections to his arguments and systematically disables them. He does not make up objections, but footnotes specific books written by advocates of different philosophies. To those that claim that Christianity is intellectually bankrupt, irrational or whatever, you have a challenge to deal with. Moreland shows the intellectual strength of Christianity and makes it difficult to dismiss Christianity casually.

I would highly recommend this book to college and university students and all those who long for a robust defense of the faith.