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heathergladney's review
5.0
I really liked this book. I haven’t read anything by Kevin DeYoung before but although this is weighty information, he speaks very clearly and with many Scripture references.
hgbutchwalker's review
4.0
Very good discussion of the reliability of God's Word in plain language. Also see DeYoung's message from 2014 Together for the Gospel
skinnercolin221's review
2.0
Here’s my unedited draft of note-taking overkill:
Chapter 1
Deyoung starts with Psalm 119 and argues that it is a long and passionate poem about the Word of God. He then lays out his purpose, which is to get us feeling like the psalmist. He wants to do this by convincing us that the Bible *”makes no mistakes, can be understood, and cannot be overturned”*.
He then goes on to quote a part of Psalm 119 which says “the Word of God is true.” He immediately proceeds to calling out all other information sources as untrustworthy, because they can be faked and manipulated. Ironically, this ignores the fact that an ancient collection of books could include fake reports and misinformation (possibly even verifiably so in some places - I’m not saying the Bible *is* full of fake reports, just that it is also an information source in the category he’s mentioning) It’s interesting that he says our eyes can deceive us… because those are what I’m using to read the pages of scripture. Our brains can deceive us, yet I’m wholly reliant on it to interpret the Bible and… literally everything else.
Early on I can see some dangerous ideas creeping into a seemingly harmless book on loving the Bible. He makes the argument that we should experience a natural *extreme disgust* when encountering those who are not passionate about the Bible (pg 20). This seems like a good way to end up with a bad attitude toward unbelievers. It makes me worry that we have subconsciously developed these attitudes from constant absorption of books like this.
Deyoung says this is not a book on principles of interpretation, but a book unpacking what the Bible says about the Bible. Yet, I have a feeling the book is going to be packed with his principles of interpretation. I will say that I understand his argument that this is not an apologetics book, but I just get the impression he is going to be attempting a lot of Bible defense based on how much he has talked about skepticism already. Yet he has already dismissed common skeptic’s issues as something to be dealt with in other books. I guess we’ll see as I go on.
Chapter 2
(Page 30) He seemingly didn’t do his research here considering he is arguing that eyewitness testimony is incredibly important today in the court of law. It’s actually the opposite, one study showed it was used in about 6% of criminal cases and another showed that even when it is used, it leads to misidentification of criminals over half the time. Psychology has found eyewitness reliability to be majorly lacking and lawyers are aware of this. All these things could have been googled, but they would no doubt have hurt his argument. Also… what happened to not being able to “trust our eyes?”
Recommendation to DeYoung and anyone reading this: watch 12 Angry Men
Unsurprisingly it is already acting like an apologetics book, just as he promised it would not in the last chapter. He spends half of this chapter refuting “liberals.” I was particularly struck by how damaging his idea of “differing views on inerrancy” was. He said, “denying inerrancy is putting ourselves in judgment over God” and ultimately to “commit the sin of unbelief.” Yet he also doesn’t define his view of inerrancy beyond saying “it means the Bible is over us not the other way around.” How does that address the seriously nuanced argument that has been going on for centuries? If I read one story in the Bible that says something took 3 days and another says 7 have I committed the sin of unbelief? DeYoung’s reach is far, and I know personally that this line of thinking has influenced a lot of people. It has led to the hurt of many people I know who began to investigate the concept.
Chapter 3: The sufficiency of scripture
I really appreciated his clarification that the sufficiency of scripture means that “the Bible tells us enough about everything that matters most” rather than “everything about everything.” Although I would probably edit that to say “everything spiritual that matters most.” I don’t think the verse he chose really was the best foundational verse for the concept either, but I’m less concerned with diving into that.
Instead, I want to mention something I was reminded of that happened just this week where my friend sent a message to a member of a fundamentalist group we. He shared a book on the history of fundamentalism in America and was refused because the “Bible is enough.” I think DeYoung did touch (although very lightly) on this kind of thinking, this misplaced sense of the sufficiency of scripture that denies scholarly or scientific input on how to look at religious history, Bible history and genre etc. The Bible doesn’t teach us how to read genres. It doesn’t even announce what genre you’re about to read. It doesn’t have footnotes about how “this is cultural” or “the ancients were less concerned with chronology just fyi.” I just feel like he could have dove into what it meant by doing a bit more examples. I think this stuff could really help people. .
Chapter 4: The Clarity of Scripture
It was a bit ironic how DeYoung used a confusing scripture and aspect of scripture to say the Bible is clear. He admits it’s ironic on page 62. However, his answer to the puzzle is not itself one of the theological givens. According to DeYoung, Moses, the Law-bearer, was not talking about law-keeping as a way of justification. But… Leviticus says “You shall keep my statutes and my ordinances; by doing so one shall live.” I’m not a scholar, but having read the OT a few times, I did not get strong vibes from Moses of “Hey Israel, you’ve been saved by faith, now just follow this law as a standard.”
Appealing to Jesus and the apostles as evidence that the scriptures are plain and clear, because they treated it such is a bit problematic. For instance, Paul acts like it’s obvious that the law about “not muzzling an ox while it’s threshing” is about giving money to religious leaders, but I think the majority of us are extremely uncertain on how to apply the rest of the OT laws. So, what percentage of it is clear? Some of it? The majority of it? Only the essentials?
All that being said, he’s giving one of the best arguments you can here. Jesus and the apostles viewed the OT as being inspired by the Holy Spirit, not just personal reflections of humans of their culture. That argument is not entirely convincing for the reasons I’ve given above and I have some more reasons below. But credit where credit is due.
The Bible treats itself as spiritual revelation, not spiritual suggestions.
At one point DeYoung bashes the analogy of the six blind men and the elephant where they all feel a different part of the whole and have different conclusion about what it is. His first objection is that the narrator must be seeing the elephant… which seems to split at hairs and miss the entire point of the analogy. I could explain why but I’m not sure that objection is as much worth the time as his second point, which is “what if the elephant told them what each part was, is it humble to ignore the elephant’s word?” There are major flaws here. For one, we have a million different voices coming at us from every which way. If you grow up in a Muslim country then the elephant is saying “I’m the elephant trust me, you’re feeling xyz.” If you grow up in a Christian country the elephant tends to be saying something totally different. Even if you talk to an atheist, the elephant might talk a lot about empiricism. All analogies break down if you extend them too far and DeYoung fell victim to this here. Ironically, I’m going to do the same. The Bible isn’t a talking elephant that tells the blind men to trust them. The Bible, fitting with the analogy, would be more like people claiming to have their eyes opened people in the analogy, since all humanity is blind in the analogy, and since the Bible was written by and passed down by people.
I was surprised by the oversimplification and false dichotomy on page 69 in which he says “is God wise and good enough or does he give us commands we can’t understand and a self-revelation that reveals more questions than answers?” He can be wise and good and also be wildly above us to the point that we have enough answers, while also being left with unending questions and mystery. Some might even say that’s what you’d expect of God. I’m reminded of the verse “His thoughts are higher than our thoughts and his ways are higher than our ways.”
I think this chapter failed to discuss the nuance of the idea of the clarity of scripture. I have so many issues with it I’m not sure which to choose from, but I’ll just say it was extremely lacking in discussing *which* things are clear and which things aren’t. I think that would be the place to dig right? He mentioned the part of the Westminster Confession that says the things essential to salvation are what are clear, but then he goes on to seemingly ignore that and make sweeping statements about all of scripture rather than sticking to explaining what the “essential clear truths” are.
To be fair, I question the WC statement on this to begin with. If the essentials are abundantly clear then I’d ask, what saves us, faith alone or faith and baptism? There are verses in the New Testament that literally say that baptism saves you. There are verses that connect it directly to the forgiveness of sins. There are ones that say that it is a pledge of a good conscience toward God. While I myself think that those who claim that you must be baptized to be saved are wrong, they would say they are taking the *plain* reading of scripture on the matter of salvation.
Chapter 5: God’s Word is Final
The comparison of the Jews who were jealous of Paul to people who “dismiss the word because they knew a mean Christian once” doesn’t seem to be an apt comparison, and also seems to show a trivializing of a massive amount of individuals hurt by church hypocrisy.
It’s a welcome surprise that he has acknowledged that some people reject the Bible because of genuine intellectual concerns. This would seem to go against various past statements in the book, but I appreciate that he can say that. Many of his peers would not agree with him. I would be interested to hear a biblical basis for that idea though.
He says that we need to “believe in order to understand” but doesn’t explain how that would work or where in the Bible this idea comes from. He says “trusting the Bible means we trust God more than our own ability to reason.” I have to disagree with this. We can do nothing but trust our ability to reason *in order to* trust the Bible in the first place. If I didn’t trust that I could reason, then how could I trust any of my conclusions about what I read in the Bible or see in nature? Pitting these against each other in this way is a surefire way to stress out and confuse a lot of people.
Chapter 6: God’s Word is Necessary
Almost the entire chapter and his choice of the scripture on which it was based did not really follow a logical progression for why scripture is necessary. I would’ve chosen passages that refer to the Word as “bread” or that “faith comes from hearing.”
Unfortunately he once again decries human reason in one spot of this chapter and in another asks “why would we prostrate the word of God to even the smartest-sounding words of men?” The repetition in random parts of this book of his distaste with any scholarship and reason other than evangelical makes me feel like he must feel personally threatened or upset by it.
Chapter 7: Christ’s Unbreakable Bible
In one sense I think this is his best argument in the book. In another sense it only really works for someone who is already convinced the Bible is God’s Word, because the entire chapter is mainly focused on the historicity of the Old Testament and how Jesus accepts that. Jesus thought highly of the scriptures, it’s hard to argue against that. However, since Jesus admits to not being all-knowing (at least in regards to the exact date of the end times), was his knowledge of history unlimited at the time of his incarnation as well?
“This is not an apologetics book” he said in the beginning, but once again he finds himself arguing with “liberal scholars” in this chapter and specifically, without any prelude he bashes “German scholars.” It’s unfortunate that both sides of the issue try to use Germany and Hitler to make implications on whether an idea is good or bad.
He also makes reference to Jesus’ “you have heard it said in the Bible this, but I say to you” statements and argues that they don’t say what they sound like they say. I think if you read them yourself, this ultimately hurts his point, but he only references and dismisses the counterpoints. For instance, Jesus ends up saying that the divorce command was given because of hard hearts, begging the question of whether all OT law was the perfect standard. Jesus then says divorcing a wife is committing adultery. At least that’s how he says it in Mark. He says it with different qualifications in another chapter (one among many reasons we can’t be too literalistic in our Bible reading as fundamentalists and many evangelicals are).
Chapter 1
Deyoung starts with Psalm 119 and argues that it is a long and passionate poem about the Word of God. He then lays out his purpose, which is to get us feeling like the psalmist. He wants to do this by convincing us that the Bible *”makes no mistakes, can be understood, and cannot be overturned”*.
He then goes on to quote a part of Psalm 119 which says “the Word of God is true.” He immediately proceeds to calling out all other information sources as untrustworthy, because they can be faked and manipulated. Ironically, this ignores the fact that an ancient collection of books could include fake reports and misinformation (possibly even verifiably so in some places - I’m not saying the Bible *is* full of fake reports, just that it is also an information source in the category he’s mentioning) It’s interesting that he says our eyes can deceive us… because those are what I’m using to read the pages of scripture. Our brains can deceive us, yet I’m wholly reliant on it to interpret the Bible and… literally everything else.
Early on I can see some dangerous ideas creeping into a seemingly harmless book on loving the Bible. He makes the argument that we should experience a natural *extreme disgust* when encountering those who are not passionate about the Bible (pg 20). This seems like a good way to end up with a bad attitude toward unbelievers. It makes me worry that we have subconsciously developed these attitudes from constant absorption of books like this.
Deyoung says this is not a book on principles of interpretation, but a book unpacking what the Bible says about the Bible. Yet, I have a feeling the book is going to be packed with his principles of interpretation. I will say that I understand his argument that this is not an apologetics book, but I just get the impression he is going to be attempting a lot of Bible defense based on how much he has talked about skepticism already. Yet he has already dismissed common skeptic’s issues as something to be dealt with in other books. I guess we’ll see as I go on.
Chapter 2
(Page 30) He seemingly didn’t do his research here considering he is arguing that eyewitness testimony is incredibly important today in the court of law. It’s actually the opposite, one study showed it was used in about 6% of criminal cases and another showed that even when it is used, it leads to misidentification of criminals over half the time. Psychology has found eyewitness reliability to be majorly lacking and lawyers are aware of this. All these things could have been googled, but they would no doubt have hurt his argument. Also… what happened to not being able to “trust our eyes?”
Recommendation to DeYoung and anyone reading this: watch 12 Angry Men
Unsurprisingly it is already acting like an apologetics book, just as he promised it would not in the last chapter. He spends half of this chapter refuting “liberals.” I was particularly struck by how damaging his idea of “differing views on inerrancy” was. He said, “denying inerrancy is putting ourselves in judgment over God” and ultimately to “commit the sin of unbelief.” Yet he also doesn’t define his view of inerrancy beyond saying “it means the Bible is over us not the other way around.” How does that address the seriously nuanced argument that has been going on for centuries? If I read one story in the Bible that says something took 3 days and another says 7 have I committed the sin of unbelief? DeYoung’s reach is far, and I know personally that this line of thinking has influenced a lot of people. It has led to the hurt of many people I know who began to investigate the concept.
Chapter 3: The sufficiency of scripture
I really appreciated his clarification that the sufficiency of scripture means that “the Bible tells us enough about everything that matters most” rather than “everything about everything.” Although I would probably edit that to say “everything spiritual that matters most.” I don’t think the verse he chose really was the best foundational verse for the concept either, but I’m less concerned with diving into that.
Instead, I want to mention something I was reminded of that happened just this week where my friend sent a message to a member of a fundamentalist group we. He shared a book on the history of fundamentalism in America and was refused because the “Bible is enough.” I think DeYoung did touch (although very lightly) on this kind of thinking, this misplaced sense of the sufficiency of scripture that denies scholarly or scientific input on how to look at religious history, Bible history and genre etc. The Bible doesn’t teach us how to read genres. It doesn’t even announce what genre you’re about to read. It doesn’t have footnotes about how “this is cultural” or “the ancients were less concerned with chronology just fyi.” I just feel like he could have dove into what it meant by doing a bit more examples. I think this stuff could really help people. .
Chapter 4: The Clarity of Scripture
It was a bit ironic how DeYoung used a confusing scripture and aspect of scripture to say the Bible is clear. He admits it’s ironic on page 62. However, his answer to the puzzle is not itself one of the theological givens. According to DeYoung, Moses, the Law-bearer, was not talking about law-keeping as a way of justification. But… Leviticus says “You shall keep my statutes and my ordinances; by doing so one shall live.” I’m not a scholar, but having read the OT a few times, I did not get strong vibes from Moses of “Hey Israel, you’ve been saved by faith, now just follow this law as a standard.”
Appealing to Jesus and the apostles as evidence that the scriptures are plain and clear, because they treated it such is a bit problematic. For instance, Paul acts like it’s obvious that the law about “not muzzling an ox while it’s threshing” is about giving money to religious leaders, but I think the majority of us are extremely uncertain on how to apply the rest of the OT laws. So, what percentage of it is clear? Some of it? The majority of it? Only the essentials?
All that being said, he’s giving one of the best arguments you can here. Jesus and the apostles viewed the OT as being inspired by the Holy Spirit, not just personal reflections of humans of their culture. That argument is not entirely convincing for the reasons I’ve given above and I have some more reasons below. But credit where credit is due.
The Bible treats itself as spiritual revelation, not spiritual suggestions.
At one point DeYoung bashes the analogy of the six blind men and the elephant where they all feel a different part of the whole and have different conclusion about what it is. His first objection is that the narrator must be seeing the elephant… which seems to split at hairs and miss the entire point of the analogy. I could explain why but I’m not sure that objection is as much worth the time as his second point, which is “what if the elephant told them what each part was, is it humble to ignore the elephant’s word?” There are major flaws here. For one, we have a million different voices coming at us from every which way. If you grow up in a Muslim country then the elephant is saying “I’m the elephant trust me, you’re feeling xyz.” If you grow up in a Christian country the elephant tends to be saying something totally different. Even if you talk to an atheist, the elephant might talk a lot about empiricism. All analogies break down if you extend them too far and DeYoung fell victim to this here. Ironically, I’m going to do the same. The Bible isn’t a talking elephant that tells the blind men to trust them. The Bible, fitting with the analogy, would be more like people claiming to have their eyes opened people in the analogy, since all humanity is blind in the analogy, and since the Bible was written by and passed down by people.
I was surprised by the oversimplification and false dichotomy on page 69 in which he says “is God wise and good enough or does he give us commands we can’t understand and a self-revelation that reveals more questions than answers?” He can be wise and good and also be wildly above us to the point that we have enough answers, while also being left with unending questions and mystery. Some might even say that’s what you’d expect of God. I’m reminded of the verse “His thoughts are higher than our thoughts and his ways are higher than our ways.”
I think this chapter failed to discuss the nuance of the idea of the clarity of scripture. I have so many issues with it I’m not sure which to choose from, but I’ll just say it was extremely lacking in discussing *which* things are clear and which things aren’t. I think that would be the place to dig right? He mentioned the part of the Westminster Confession that says the things essential to salvation are what are clear, but then he goes on to seemingly ignore that and make sweeping statements about all of scripture rather than sticking to explaining what the “essential clear truths” are.
To be fair, I question the WC statement on this to begin with. If the essentials are abundantly clear then I’d ask, what saves us, faith alone or faith and baptism? There are verses in the New Testament that literally say that baptism saves you. There are verses that connect it directly to the forgiveness of sins. There are ones that say that it is a pledge of a good conscience toward God. While I myself think that those who claim that you must be baptized to be saved are wrong, they would say they are taking the *plain* reading of scripture on the matter of salvation.
Chapter 5: God’s Word is Final
The comparison of the Jews who were jealous of Paul to people who “dismiss the word because they knew a mean Christian once” doesn’t seem to be an apt comparison, and also seems to show a trivializing of a massive amount of individuals hurt by church hypocrisy.
It’s a welcome surprise that he has acknowledged that some people reject the Bible because of genuine intellectual concerns. This would seem to go against various past statements in the book, but I appreciate that he can say that. Many of his peers would not agree with him. I would be interested to hear a biblical basis for that idea though.
He says that we need to “believe in order to understand” but doesn’t explain how that would work or where in the Bible this idea comes from. He says “trusting the Bible means we trust God more than our own ability to reason.” I have to disagree with this. We can do nothing but trust our ability to reason *in order to* trust the Bible in the first place. If I didn’t trust that I could reason, then how could I trust any of my conclusions about what I read in the Bible or see in nature? Pitting these against each other in this way is a surefire way to stress out and confuse a lot of people.
Chapter 6: God’s Word is Necessary
Almost the entire chapter and his choice of the scripture on which it was based did not really follow a logical progression for why scripture is necessary. I would’ve chosen passages that refer to the Word as “bread” or that “faith comes from hearing.”
Unfortunately he once again decries human reason in one spot of this chapter and in another asks “why would we prostrate the word of God to even the smartest-sounding words of men?” The repetition in random parts of this book of his distaste with any scholarship and reason other than evangelical makes me feel like he must feel personally threatened or upset by it.
Chapter 7: Christ’s Unbreakable Bible
In one sense I think this is his best argument in the book. In another sense it only really works for someone who is already convinced the Bible is God’s Word, because the entire chapter is mainly focused on the historicity of the Old Testament and how Jesus accepts that. Jesus thought highly of the scriptures, it’s hard to argue against that. However, since Jesus admits to not being all-knowing (at least in regards to the exact date of the end times), was his knowledge of history unlimited at the time of his incarnation as well?
“This is not an apologetics book” he said in the beginning, but once again he finds himself arguing with “liberal scholars” in this chapter and specifically, without any prelude he bashes “German scholars.” It’s unfortunate that both sides of the issue try to use Germany and Hitler to make implications on whether an idea is good or bad.
He also makes reference to Jesus’ “you have heard it said in the Bible this, but I say to you” statements and argues that they don’t say what they sound like they say. I think if you read them yourself, this ultimately hurts his point, but he only references and dismisses the counterpoints. For instance, Jesus ends up saying that the divorce command was given because of hard hearts, begging the question of whether all OT law was the perfect standard. Jesus then says divorcing a wife is committing adultery. At least that’s how he says it in Mark. He says it with different qualifications in another chapter (one among many reasons we can’t be too literalistic in our Bible reading as fundamentalists and many evangelicals are).
adamschoenmaker's review
4.0
A relatively brief, but incisive look into what we should believe about Scripture. In typical DeYoung fashion, there are some absolutely killer paragraphs that summarise a wealth of either theological or historical information with profound insight.
sofer_mahir's review
4.0
A clear, concise, and thoroughly accessible presentation of the historical doctrine of Scripture, especially as developed by Calvin, Warfield, and Bavinck.
shelfreflectionofficial's review
4.0
Kevin DeYoung begins his book with his conclusion: “I want to convince you that the Bible makes no mistakes, can be understood, cannot be overturned, and is the most important word in your life, the most relevant thing you can read each day.” His desire is that we would all read our Bibles with the zeal of the Psalmist who wrote Psalm 119, i.e. “The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple. I open my mouth and pant, because I long for your commandments.”
Whether you’ve never read the Bible in your life, or you read it every day, this book will explain, why the Bible is clear, authoritative, relevant, and sufficient.
I grew up in a Christian home and attended a conservative Christian college. I was confronted with a lot of questions about the Bible there that I didn’t readily have answers for. After four years there, I had seen several friends, when asked hard questions or things they’d never thought about, just reject the Bible altogether or reject their faith entirely. I was disheartened by this because instead of throwing out a faith I couldn’t defend to a T, I sought the truth and I looked for answers.
Just because a question is hard or new to you, does not mean it’s never been asked before or that it doesn’t have an explanation.
This book is such a valuable resource to give you confidence in the very book that connects us with the truths of our Lord and Savior.
DeYoung is quick to clarify that ‘Taking God at His Word’ is not meant to be exhaustive— at just over 100 pages there is much more to be covered when regarding the authenticity and historicity of Scripture—and so he includes a list of 30 books in the appendix to provide you with resources to conduct a more in-depth study if you so desire.
He does not address the canonization of Scripture (how it was put together and organized) and does not discuss in detail the manuscripts, translations, authorship, or historical and archeological support for the Bible and its contents. Those can all be found within the appendixed (new word?) books.
Things he does cover include:
- What does the Bible say about itself?
- What does Jesus believe about the Bible?
- Is the Bible just myth or metaphor for a more general, abstract understanding of God’s power and how to relate to him?
- Doesn’t the Bible have discrepancies?
- What about different interpretations?
- How can we trust something written by sinful humans?
If this isn’t a reasonable and powerful passage of Scripture to defend Christianity and the Bible itself, I don’t know what is:
2 Peter 1:16-21 “For we do not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
Many have claimed that conservative Christians believe the inspiration of Scripture means that God dictated each word to be written down and that that’s why we believe it’s infallible. However, this is not the case. “The phrase “concursive operation” is often used to describe the process of inspiration, meaning that God used the intellect, skills, and personality of fallible men to write down what was divine and infallible. The Bible is, in one sense, both a human and a divine book. But this in no way implies any fallibility in the Scriptures. The dual authorship of Scripture does not necessitate imperfection any more than the two natures of Christ mean our Savior must have sinned.”
The core of the book follows the nifty little acronym, SCAN, which is explained below (and subtitled above).
Sufficiency: The Scriptures contain everything we need for knowledge of salvation and godly living. We don’t need any new revelation from heaven.
Clarity: The saving message of Jesus Christ is plainly taught in the Scriptures and can be understood by all who have ears to hear it. We don’t need an official magisterium to tell us what the Bible means.
Authority: The last word always goes to the word of God. We must never allow the teachings of science, of human experience, or of church councils to take precedence over Scripture.
Necessity: General revelation is not enough to save us. We cannot know God savingly by means of personal experience and human reason. We need God’s word to tell us how to live, who Christ is, and how to be saved.
Or to put simply, the Bible is final, understandable, necessary, and enough.
Sufficiency keeps traditions from subverting God’s words, keeps us from adding to it, even with good intentions, and it means it’s always relevant.
Clarity doesn’t mean every single verse can be read once and instantly understood in every sense, but rather “ordinary people using ordinary means can accurately understand enough of what must be known.” DeYoung addresses some objections to clarity that propose: God is too mysterious to really understand and the Bible falls short; if the Bible was so clear, why do we still disagree on interpretations or use the Bible to justify wrong things; some parts need to be further supplemented or explained through tradition (per Catholics). He then imparts what is at stake if we compromise the clarity of Scripture.
Authority has to do with where we make our final appeal as to what is truth when it comes down to it? Tradition, our feelings, science, another book, our parents, our teachers, logic, culture, the government? Or is it the Bible?
Necessity speaks to the idea of spirituality. Many view spirituality as something within ourselves that we need to tap into, but true spirituality must be outside of ourselves. We need God’s revelation to know God and that can only be found in Scripture.
While I would still highly suggest a full reading of this short book, here are some quotes:
“The authority of God’s word resides in the written text—the words, the sentences, the paragraphs—of Scripture, not merely in our existential experience of the truth in our hearts… the inspiration of holy Scripture is an objective reality outside of us.”
“Inerrancy means the word of God always stands over us and we never stand over the word of God. When we reject inerrancy we put ourselves in judgment over God’s word. We claim the right to determine which parts of God’s revelation can be trusted and which cannot. When we deny the complete trustworthiness of the Scriptures—in its claims with regard to history; its teachings on the material world; its miracles; in the tiniest ‘jots and tittles’ of all that it affirms—then we are forced to accept one of two conclusions: either Scripture is not all from God, or God is not always dependable.”
“Scripture is enough because the work of Christ is enough. They stand or fall together.”
“No doubt, some people reject the gospel and the Bible because of genuine intellectual concerns, but just as often, I’m convinced, pride and personal prejudice are to blame. We don’t like the people teaching the Bible, and we don’t like what the Bible teaches.”
“God’s people should be testing everything against God’s word…[The Bereans (in Acts)] would accept something new—if it could be supported in the Scriptures. They would believe something controversial—if it was based in the Scripture. They were willing to follow Christ for the rest of their lives, provided they were, in the process, following the Scriptures.”
“When interpreted correctly—paying attention to the original context, considering the literary genre, thinking through authorial intent—the Bible is never wrong in what it affirms and must never be marginalized as anything less than the last word on everything it teaches.”
“We have no reason to be intimidated by difficulties and apparent discrepancies in the Bible. Many of them are easily explained. Most of the rest of them have good, plausible solutions. And for the few humdingers that are left, there are possible explanations, even if we aren’t sure that we’ve found the right one yet. Our confidence in the Bible is not an irrational confidence. The findings of history, archaeology, and textual criticism give us many reasons to trust the Old and New Testaments.”
And this gem of a quote from J.I. Packer:
“God, then, does not profess to answer in Scripture all the questions that we, in our boundless curiosity, would like to ask about Scripture. He tells us merely as much as He sees we need to know as a basis for our life of faith. And he leaves unsolved some of the problems raised by what He tells us, in order to teach us a humble trust in His veracity. The question, therefore, that we must ask ourselves when faced with these puzzles is not, is it reasonable to imagine that this is so? but, is it reasonable to accept God’s assurance that this is so? Is it reasonable to take God’s word and believe that He has spoken the truth, even though I cannot fully comprehend what He has said? The question carries its own answer. We should not abandon faith in anything God has taught us merely because we cannot solve all the problems which it raises. Our own intellectual competence is not the test and measure of divine truth. It is not for us to stop believing because we lack understanding, but to believe in order that we may understand.”
Don’t let hard questions cause you to trash your Bible and discard your faith. Christianity is not a blind, unreasonable faith. Search it out for yourself. Read this book. Read some others. Put in the work. It’s of utmost importance.
In addition to the books DeYoung lists in the back of ‘Taking God at His Word,’ here are a few additional (though not specifically about the trustworthiness of Scripture and probably less scholarly) options:
Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus by Nabeel Qureshi (seeking to defend Islam he studies the person of Jesus and comes to believe in Christianity)
The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Tim Keller
Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion by Rebecca McLaughlin
Read more of my reviews at www.shelfreflection.com!
Whether you’ve never read the Bible in your life, or you read it every day, this book will explain, why the Bible is clear, authoritative, relevant, and sufficient.
I grew up in a Christian home and attended a conservative Christian college. I was confronted with a lot of questions about the Bible there that I didn’t readily have answers for. After four years there, I had seen several friends, when asked hard questions or things they’d never thought about, just reject the Bible altogether or reject their faith entirely. I was disheartened by this because instead of throwing out a faith I couldn’t defend to a T, I sought the truth and I looked for answers.
Just because a question is hard or new to you, does not mean it’s never been asked before or that it doesn’t have an explanation.
This book is such a valuable resource to give you confidence in the very book that connects us with the truths of our Lord and Savior.
DeYoung is quick to clarify that ‘Taking God at His Word’ is not meant to be exhaustive— at just over 100 pages there is much more to be covered when regarding the authenticity and historicity of Scripture—and so he includes a list of 30 books in the appendix to provide you with resources to conduct a more in-depth study if you so desire.
He does not address the canonization of Scripture (how it was put together and organized) and does not discuss in detail the manuscripts, translations, authorship, or historical and archeological support for the Bible and its contents. Those can all be found within the appendixed (new word?) books.
Things he does cover include:
- What does the Bible say about itself?
- What does Jesus believe about the Bible?
- Is the Bible just myth or metaphor for a more general, abstract understanding of God’s power and how to relate to him?
- Doesn’t the Bible have discrepancies?
- What about different interpretations?
- How can we trust something written by sinful humans?
If this isn’t a reasonable and powerful passage of Scripture to defend Christianity and the Bible itself, I don’t know what is:
2 Peter 1:16-21 “For we do not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
Many have claimed that conservative Christians believe the inspiration of Scripture means that God dictated each word to be written down and that that’s why we believe it’s infallible. However, this is not the case. “The phrase “concursive operation” is often used to describe the process of inspiration, meaning that God used the intellect, skills, and personality of fallible men to write down what was divine and infallible. The Bible is, in one sense, both a human and a divine book. But this in no way implies any fallibility in the Scriptures. The dual authorship of Scripture does not necessitate imperfection any more than the two natures of Christ mean our Savior must have sinned.”
The core of the book follows the nifty little acronym, SCAN, which is explained below (and subtitled above).
Sufficiency: The Scriptures contain everything we need for knowledge of salvation and godly living. We don’t need any new revelation from heaven.
Clarity: The saving message of Jesus Christ is plainly taught in the Scriptures and can be understood by all who have ears to hear it. We don’t need an official magisterium to tell us what the Bible means.
Authority: The last word always goes to the word of God. We must never allow the teachings of science, of human experience, or of church councils to take precedence over Scripture.
Necessity: General revelation is not enough to save us. We cannot know God savingly by means of personal experience and human reason. We need God’s word to tell us how to live, who Christ is, and how to be saved.
Or to put simply, the Bible is final, understandable, necessary, and enough.
Sufficiency keeps traditions from subverting God’s words, keeps us from adding to it, even with good intentions, and it means it’s always relevant.
Clarity doesn’t mean every single verse can be read once and instantly understood in every sense, but rather “ordinary people using ordinary means can accurately understand enough of what must be known.” DeYoung addresses some objections to clarity that propose: God is too mysterious to really understand and the Bible falls short; if the Bible was so clear, why do we still disagree on interpretations or use the Bible to justify wrong things; some parts need to be further supplemented or explained through tradition (per Catholics). He then imparts what is at stake if we compromise the clarity of Scripture.
Authority has to do with where we make our final appeal as to what is truth when it comes down to it? Tradition, our feelings, science, another book, our parents, our teachers, logic, culture, the government? Or is it the Bible?
Necessity speaks to the idea of spirituality. Many view spirituality as something within ourselves that we need to tap into, but true spirituality must be outside of ourselves. We need God’s revelation to know God and that can only be found in Scripture.
While I would still highly suggest a full reading of this short book, here are some quotes:
“The authority of God’s word resides in the written text—the words, the sentences, the paragraphs—of Scripture, not merely in our existential experience of the truth in our hearts… the inspiration of holy Scripture is an objective reality outside of us.”
“Inerrancy means the word of God always stands over us and we never stand over the word of God. When we reject inerrancy we put ourselves in judgment over God’s word. We claim the right to determine which parts of God’s revelation can be trusted and which cannot. When we deny the complete trustworthiness of the Scriptures—in its claims with regard to history; its teachings on the material world; its miracles; in the tiniest ‘jots and tittles’ of all that it affirms—then we are forced to accept one of two conclusions: either Scripture is not all from God, or God is not always dependable.”
“Scripture is enough because the work of Christ is enough. They stand or fall together.”
“No doubt, some people reject the gospel and the Bible because of genuine intellectual concerns, but just as often, I’m convinced, pride and personal prejudice are to blame. We don’t like the people teaching the Bible, and we don’t like what the Bible teaches.”
“God’s people should be testing everything against God’s word…[The Bereans (in Acts)] would accept something new—if it could be supported in the Scriptures. They would believe something controversial—if it was based in the Scripture. They were willing to follow Christ for the rest of their lives, provided they were, in the process, following the Scriptures.”
“When interpreted correctly—paying attention to the original context, considering the literary genre, thinking through authorial intent—the Bible is never wrong in what it affirms and must never be marginalized as anything less than the last word on everything it teaches.”
“We have no reason to be intimidated by difficulties and apparent discrepancies in the Bible. Many of them are easily explained. Most of the rest of them have good, plausible solutions. And for the few humdingers that are left, there are possible explanations, even if we aren’t sure that we’ve found the right one yet. Our confidence in the Bible is not an irrational confidence. The findings of history, archaeology, and textual criticism give us many reasons to trust the Old and New Testaments.”
And this gem of a quote from J.I. Packer:
“God, then, does not profess to answer in Scripture all the questions that we, in our boundless curiosity, would like to ask about Scripture. He tells us merely as much as He sees we need to know as a basis for our life of faith. And he leaves unsolved some of the problems raised by what He tells us, in order to teach us a humble trust in His veracity. The question, therefore, that we must ask ourselves when faced with these puzzles is not, is it reasonable to imagine that this is so? but, is it reasonable to accept God’s assurance that this is so? Is it reasonable to take God’s word and believe that He has spoken the truth, even though I cannot fully comprehend what He has said? The question carries its own answer. We should not abandon faith in anything God has taught us merely because we cannot solve all the problems which it raises. Our own intellectual competence is not the test and measure of divine truth. It is not for us to stop believing because we lack understanding, but to believe in order that we may understand.”
Don’t let hard questions cause you to trash your Bible and discard your faith. Christianity is not a blind, unreasonable faith. Search it out for yourself. Read this book. Read some others. Put in the work. It’s of utmost importance.
In addition to the books DeYoung lists in the back of ‘Taking God at His Word,’ here are a few additional (though not specifically about the trustworthiness of Scripture and probably less scholarly) options:
Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus by Nabeel Qureshi (seeking to defend Islam he studies the person of Jesus and comes to believe in Christianity)
The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Tim Keller
Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion by Rebecca McLaughlin
Read more of my reviews at www.shelfreflection.com!
lingfish7's review
5.0
An excellent and concise book articulating the desperate need for Christians to treasure the word of God like David did in Psalm 119. Another pragmatic and scripture-based book by Kevin DeYoung!
mc_moose's review
5.0
A helpful refresher. And a great introduction to the doctrine of Scripture for new Christians, students and older teens.
shortthoughts's review
4.0
This is a brief, readable book on the authority, clarity, necessity, and sufficiency of Scripture. DeYoung writes for the normal Christian to help understand what the Bible says about the Bible. Overall, it's a helpful look at the most important book.