Taking God at His Word
Taking God at His Word: Why the Bible is Knowable, Necessary, and Enough, and What that Means for You and Me
By: Kevin DeYoung
What does it mean to ‘take God at His word’?
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) options:
“Fundamentalism” and the Word of God by J.I. Packer (that last quote was from here)
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
Surviving Religion 101 by Michael J. Kruger (A few of his chapters address the Bible’s trustworthiness and the canon and how it was put together)
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