This article was carried from a book report I wrote on "Taking God at His Word" by Kevin DeYoung. In this article, I will cover the Bible's sufficiency, accuracy, and divinity, along with ways we can interpret the Bible, based on Kevin DeYoung's explanations in his book.
Kevin DeYoung's excellent work, Taking God at His Word, was masterfully written and provides solid and practical methods for biblical interpretation, along with setting an elaborate foundation for our faith in God's Word. As he walks through how a Christian can have a faithful outlook on Scripture and how it can be applied in our lives, he puts great effort into providing the reader with understandable and clear points while still providing the depth and truth essential for a correct understanding of Scripture.
DeYoung begins by laying out principles and actions that should occur in the Christian life in response to the Word of God. He examines the emotion that must be present to have a committed grip on Scripture and magnifies the importance and due merit of passion, which we are called to in our daily lives in response to the Bible. In that same calling, he goes into great detail to point out the proper response to Scripture, in that we "delight, desire, and depend" on everything that outflows from God's Word.
In the following chapter, he describes assuring truths by which we can find support for those responses, mainly focusing on the most crucial point, which is that Scripture is entirely without error because it is the Word of God. He describes the truth of the inerrancy of God's Word in the common dispute regarding the belief of human interference with the writing of scriptural truth. A common view among liberal Christians of today's world is that God's Word holds flaws and inaccuracies because of the human instrumentation that went into writing the Bible. These beliefs are quickly set aside as DeYoung makes remarkable points arguing for the inerrancy of Scripture. DeYoung states that God entirely wrote Scripture without error because His sovereign will was poured into Scripture at its creation, not that of the fallible man. The use of man as a means to physically transcribe scriptural truth played no hindrance to the will of God in action. He uses Scripture to defend this point, particularly 2 Peter 1:20, which directly mirrors his statement. This truth eliminates any doubt in the fallibility of Scripture, assuring us that we can depend on the Word of God with complete confidence in its accuracy.
Next, DeYoung works through the total sufficiency of Scripture in the Christian life. While he touched on this before in his previous chapter regarding the belief of man's fallenness tainting God's Word during its authorship, he proceeds to further refine this concept by assuring Scripture's continued applicability in today's modern world because the truth that lies within Scripture is beyond the constraint of time, in contrast to human work, which eventually falls obsolete. He further clarifies this in his second statement, where he cites 2 Timothy 3:16 to argue that the Bible is sufficient to equip us for every work and challenge we might face in our walk in faith. It does not need addition or removal because it is already perfect and, as he argues: "enough."
In the following chapter, DeYoung details the genuine clearness of Scripture, covering topics such as common arguments against its understandability and resolving them thoroughly with Scripture. The provided arguments followed patterns such as stating that Scripture could not be fully known or understood by human intellect or needed additional support to be adequately understood. Another view that arose was that the denominational differences among the Christian faith proved that Scripture could not be clearly comprehended. DeYoung quickly tackles these by providing proof that God does not obscure Scripture, and He created His Word to be comprehensible. He cites Scripture that directly speaks to this point, starting with Moses's calling Israel to obedience in Deuteronomy 30. DeYoung then notes Christ's command to obey His Word in Matthew 28:20, along with the apostle John's assurance that this is a possible task. Then, in support of the Bible's clarity, he answers the conflicting statement about the imperfection of human language and its substance-robbing claims remarkably in the section titled: "The Clarity Imperative." During this section, he presents and answers further arguments regarding the belief that human language constrains proper comprehension of the Word of God. In response to this view, he claims that the human language is a divine gift from God to his human creation, a gift we possess because we bear his image. I found this point quite extraordinary, and it helped me better understand God's sovereignty over the conciseness of his Word. He draws language back to the world's creation and God's speaking of the universe into existence. Through this, he concludes that Scripture is not man's attempt to comprehend God's commands and nature, but rather God's gift of his law and Word, comprehendible through his gift of language to man, which surpasses any boundaries of human speech and further solidifies his previous point that God's will is poured out in Scripture.
In the subsequent chapter, DeYoung looks at the critical finality of Scripture and its absolute authority in the Christian life. He brings biblical examples of contrasting views of held scriptural authority. He compares the Thessalonian and Berean views regarding the authority of God's Word. The Thessalonian Christians' beliefs are clouded by their pride and opinions, which have been set as higher than Scripture, hardening their hearts against having a correct understanding of the Word of God. In contrast, the Bereans are eager to study Scripture and compare what they hear to the filter of God's Word. The Bereans held Scripture as the highest authority by which each action and reception of knowledge was passed through and resolved. This brought them great wisdom and prosperity in their faith, as they correctly placed God's Word as final above their personal experiences. DeYoung then takes a similar approach to the views and groups of today's world. He compares the beliefs of the authority of the Bible from Roman Catholicism, Liberal Protestantism, and the Westminster Confession of Faith. Roman Catholics seem to put tradition on the same level of authority as Scripture, and Liberal Protestants put reason and experience above the authority of Scripture. The Westminster Confession of Faith instead puts Scripture alone as the sole authority by which we live. He then compares General Revelation and Special Revelation, which portray God's existence through nature and His Word. He concludes that General Revelation reveals the reality of God to us, and Special Revelation enables us to know God more intimately in His Word. While both complement one another, we must put Scripture as the higher authority because it is how we know God more fully. He ends the chapter with a magnificent excerpt from J. I. Packer's book: "Fundamentalism" and the Word of God, regarding that even though Scripture does not provide answers to all the questions we may face throughout our lives, it gives us the wisdom that we need to live a life of faithfulness and devotion to Christ, and the mysteries further serve to humble our hearts and supply us with a desire to trust in Him.
Bringing the essential characteristics of Scripture to a close, Kevin DeYoung discusses the necessity of Scripture for Christians by helping us see its essentiality with the understanding that it is the only way we can understand God, salvation, and our humanity. Quoting from John Calvin, DeYoung states that Scripture is our "spectacles" that give us the capability to comprehend all these things. God's Word provides us with a special and unique wisdom that we cannot receive from anywhere else. He goes on to say that all truth that saves us is the truth that God reveals to us through His Word, and outside of the wisdom of Scripture, we cannot correctly understand all of these things. The Spirit of God reveals this genuine wisdom to us as we study His Word.
As the book nears a close, in the following chapter, DeYoung looks at what Christ fulfilled and believed about Scripture through his ministry and life on Earth. Looking at the life of Christ, DeYoung makes clear that Christ thought that Scripture is unbreakable in that it holds all authority in our lives. It carries complete inerrancy, lacking any contradiction against itself. He then states that Christ never went against Scripture, even though some critics might believe He defied the Old Testament laws and practices. He instead proves that Christ came to fulfill the laws of the old covenant and that Christ wants Scripture to have a greater dominance in our lives, setting aside the diverting practices of accentuated tradition that cloud the Christian pursuit of sanctification, instead encouraging that we must live a life fully dedicated to the truths of Scripture, just as Christ had fulfilled them in His. Following this, DeYoung approaches Christ's recognition of the Bible's authenticity. Just as Christ refers to the book of Jonah in complete factuality, we as Christians must also revere our hearts toward full belief in Scripture's truthfulness. He further emphasizes that Christ does not stand above Scripture because He was the fulfillment of Scripture itself. In a final regard to Jesus' view on the factuality of Scripture, DeYoung points out that Christ saw Scripture as completely and divinely written by God. He draws a connection between Matthew 19:4-5 and Genesis 2:24. In the passage of Matthew, Jesus directly correlates the Genesis 2:24 verse as genuinely coming from the mouth of God Himself.
In the final chapter of this book, DeYoung neatly ties in nearly every aspect of the book and assures us of Scripture's importance in our lives as believers. He begins by making a case for the importance of God's Word in our lives and why we should equip and hold fast to His promises and commandments. He asks us to consider our familial history, observe the faith and lives of our parents and grandparents, see how God was with them faithfully through each trial and tribulation, and learn by their example of being steadfast in the value of Scripture. This admiration bleeds into DeYoung's next section as evidence supporting that Scripture has a supreme ability and power that no other thing on this Earth can achieve. He again solidates that Scripture is God's genuine, inerrant Word, breathed out and entirely created by Him. He then further reinforces that Scripture is essential to living a life of faithfulness, being a witness to others, and every other action and decision throughout our daily lives. He concludes on the essential fact that God's Word is Holy, and His truth and Christ Himself are completely unchanging and will always be applicable throughout time.
This book truly impacted my understanding of Scripture, and I have a more excellent grasp of the essential truths toward living faithfully in response to the truth found in God's Word. The first of the three things that I most learned from this book is that the Bible is completely inerrant. Meticulously echoed throughout each section of DeYoung's work, its importance was elegantly conveyed and powerfully spoken. My most important takeaway from his remarks was that human instrumentation truly has no effect on the Bible's inerrancy and that though God used man as a means by which Scripture was physically produced, God's will was a catalyst at the forefront of truth when it was written, unhindered by human error or inaccuracy. The next important thing I took away from the book was the Bible's sufficiency. I enjoyed his analysis in the "Practical Sufficiency" section regarding catholic doctrine. It was interesting to look at how we must cast aside unnecessary human traditions, which distract from our genuine imperfection and need of a Savior and can cloud the true meaning of Scripture and our devotion and worship to Christ. I admired how DeYoung showed that we are called to pledge our allegiance to Scripture alone and that it has everything we need for life and godliness, as reflected in 2 Peter 1:3. My final concept, which I learned most from this book was its emphasis on the Bible's clarity. As Christians, we can sometimes find ourselves questioning what we have read in Scripture, but it was reassuring to know that despite any doubts, God's Word is uncontradictory. Though we might not have the answers, we can put our trust and hope in a God who does. It is even more incredible to know that the Bible is clear and understandable and to know that understanding Scripture is not a notion limited to theologians, pastors, and professors. I learned many other teachings and subjects from this book. I am thankful for the further foundation it provided me regarding the Bible's authority, sufficiency, necessity, clarity, and perfection.