Taking God at His Word (book review)

Taking God at His Word: Why the Bible Is Knowable, Necessary, and Enough, and What That Means for You and Me
Kevin DeYoung
Crossway, 2014 (looks to be published by IVP in the UK – with a much worse cover!)

taking God at his word

There was a lot of hype over this book when it came out in April – and I’m glad to say that on this occasion it was justified! If you looked at the price (£8.99 on Amazon) you might think this was a normal-sized book, but in actual fact it’s only 130 pages (including a helpful annotated bibliography) . The book’s brevity is one of its strengths though – this is the sort of book that, as Don Carson notes on the back, is worth buying ‘by the case’ and giving away. It would be great for going through with a new/young Christian to ground them in the importance of the Bible.
DeYoung starts where he wants to end with Psalm 119 – a love poem to the Bible. After two introductory chapters he uses the acronym SCAN to set the agenda for the rest of the book – showing the Sufficiency (which he notes evangelicals particularly struggle with), Clarity, Authority and Necessity of the Scriptures. He notes that our attitude to the Bible doesn’t just affect what we read but what we sing and in light of all this he asks ‘Why would we sing songs bereft of biblical substance?’. In a healthy corrective to many current views on what a ‘spiritual’ person is, he shows that true spirituality is to be rooted in the Bible. DeYoung is unswayed by Higher Criticism, which he summarises well. He notes in a chapter on Jesus attitude to Scripture that if Jesus handled the Bible in a certain way then ‘boatloads of higher biblical criticism must be wrong’. Even on areas some evangelicals have capitulated on like the historicity of Jonah, DeYoung stands firm. He has a great quote from T. T. Perowne about imaginary people repenting at the preaching of an imaginary prophet rising up to condemn Jesus’ actual hearers.
His final chapter, encouraging us to ‘Stick with the Scriptures’, is covenantal and brilliant. He reminds us that we’ll not just face attacks on the Scriptures from outside but will be tempted to unbelief ourselves. He attributes holding onto his own faith at a liberal college to the grounding he had received from his parents – and the chapter is a great encouragement for today’s parents to do the same. Finally, how could I not love a book in which he call us to get ‘rid, once and for all, of this “red letter nonsense”‘ which he describes as incompatible with an evangelical understanding of inspiration.
Satan will never stop attacking the doctrine of Scripture so this is a book to read regularly and to give to others.

Thanks to Crossway for a complimentary copy of this book through their Beyond the Page review programme.