Book Review: Daily Doctrine Devotional (Kevin DeYoung)
Do you know what you believe? Better yet, how well do you know the God of the Universe? Daily Doctrine aims to comprehensively and systematically break down the complex doctrinal issues the Church has wrestled with over two millennia and present it in an approachable, bite-sized format.
Kevin DeYoung is a Presbyterian pastor in North Carolina and a professor at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte. His goal in writing this book is that the Church would “understand what the Bible teaches, defend what the Bible teaches, and enjoy the God whom the Bible reveals”. As Kevin writes, “[o]ur goal must never be the bare minimum amount of knowledge necessary to get us into heaven. We want to move from platitudes to particulars…from seeing the hills of God’s Glory to seeing the mountains of God’s glory. That’s why we study, why we learn.”
Organized around traditional categories called loci, Kevin gives a one page summary of nearly every doctrinal issue the Church has faced. Think of it as the Tik Tok version of a PhD seminary degree. The topics are sorted in days and weeks (five days per week, 260 total entries) to be used as a daily devotional, but can also be used as a handy, quick reference guide or refresher. From agreed upon topics such as “The Attributes of God” to more controversial subjects such as “Millennial Views,” this book gives succinct, easy to digest answers to things the Church has spent lifetimes discussing.
The Eight Loci that this book is organized around are:
Prolegomena: Preliminary Considerations and Doctrine of Scripture
Theology Proper: The Being of God and the Works of God
Anthropology: Man as Created and Fallen
Covenant Theology: How God Relates to His Creatures
Christology (two parts): the Person and Work of Christ
Soteriology: Salvation in Christ
Ecclesiology: The Nature, Mission and Ordering of the Church
Eschatology: Last Things
This book would be helpful to any Christian who wants to know more about the details of the Reformed Christian faith tradition. I found this book to be very helpful to smooth out the rough edges of what I believe and it was an easy entry point summary on more in-depth topics. Its short, one-page daily format is easy to pick up and cuts straight to the point of the topic. If you are curious about a topic not often discussed in Church, but don’t have the time to read a seminary textbook, I highly recommend Daily Doctrine Devotional.