Daily Doctrine by Kevin DeYoung: An Appreciation and Critique

DeYoung, Kevin. Daily Doctrine: A One-Year Guide to Systematic Theology. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024. 

Kevin DeYoung presently serves as the senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, and as an associate professor of systematic theology in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 2008, DeYoung's book Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be, written with Ted Kluck, brought him to national attention within Reformed and evangelical circles. Since then, DeYoung has written books for children, adults, and academics, including Just Do Something, Impossible Christianity, and The Biggest Story Bible Storybook. DeYoung has been a blogger for The Gospel Coalition website, and he was one of the featured speakers at the biennial Together for the Gospel Conference from 2012-2022.

The unique contribution of Daily Doctrine: A One-Year Guide to Systematic Theology is its format: this systematic theology is broken into 260 daily readings, each between a page to a page-and-a-half in length. (DeYoung intentionally made the number of readings less than the days of a calendar year, so that readers could skip weekends or otherwise catch up on missed entries to still complete the book in a year.)

Summary

On pages 8-9, DeYoung writes:

Traditionally...systematic theology has been comprised of seven main topics: prolegomena (literally "first words," where ground rules and the doctrine of Scripture are usually covered); theology proper (covering the doctrine of God, the Trinity, the decrees, creation, and providence); anthropology (the doctrine of man's creation and fall); Christology (the person and work of Christ); soteriology (how we are saved and how saved people live by the Spirit); ecclesiology (the doctrine of the church); and eschatology (the doctrine of last things, both personally and cosmically).

DeYoung follows this traditional structure, except that he adds a section on Covenant Theology after his section on Anthropology, and he divides Christology into two sections: one for the person of Christ, and one for the work of Christ. So the parts of Daily Doctrine 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 1: The Person of Christ

• Christology 2: The Work of Christ

• Soteriology: The Doctrine of Salvation

• Ecclesiology: The Nature, Mission, and Ordering of the Church

• Eschatology: Last Things

Critical Evaluation

DeYoung does an excellent job presenting a systematic study of theology in a clear and concise manner. Though intended to serve "pastors, students, leaders, and laypeople" alike, in this book, DeYoung does not shy away from using technical language, including distinctions like anhypostasia versus enhypostasia (terms I did not learn until I was in seminary) and archetypal theology versus ectypal theology (terms I did not learn until well after I left seminary). Because it is both brief and technical, this book may be of better service to those who have had at least a survey of systematic theology, rather than complete beginners to the subject.

Though intended to serve the church as a whole (and–in many ways–accomplishing this goal admirably), DeYoung's teaching in Daily Doctrine is from a specifically Presbyterian perspective. This is especially evident in certain entries within his sections on Covenant Theology and Ecclesiology. Unsurprisingly, a Reformed Baptist reader will have objections with some statements in these sections.

In his section on Covenant Theology, DeYoung devotes two daily readings to views that differ from his own: Dispensationalism and Baptist Covenant Theology. From a Reformed Baptist perspective, the entry explaining and critiquing Dispensationalism is commendable. A Reformed Baptist may also express thanks to DeYoung for the entry on Baptist Covenant Theology, at least for his acknowledgment of the existence of Baptist Covenant Theology–often overlooked by paedobaptist covenant theologians–and his fairness in using terms that Baptist covenant theologians would accept when explaining our position. DeYoung spends half of his entry on historic Baptist Covenant Theology–the theology following the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith–and the other half of that entry on "progressive covenantalism," and uninformed readers might not be able to understand the nuances between these views from DeYoung's brief entry, but this is understandable considering the significant overlap in the two Baptist views, especially in considering the newness of the new covenant.

In offering a critique to Baptist Covenant Theology's view of the new covenant, DeYoung writes:

[W]e might ask whether the establishment of the new covenant moves us, in God's redemptive economy, from a mouse to a cat or from a puppy to a dog. The nature of the covenant community, the recipients of baptism, and the way in which the church becomes visible...are all related to the question of whether the new covenant is fundamentally different or the same essential thing brought to fullness and completion. [Paedobaptist] Covenant theology answers this question by seeing the new covenant as a grown-up dog, not a different animal entirely.

Notice that if in DeYoung's analogy dog = covenant, then there is no new dog in his analogy. If a parent told a child with a puppy, "We're going to get you a new dog in three years," then–after three years–the parents pointed to the grown-up dog and said, "There's the new dog we promised." The child would rightly feel deceived. DeYoung is basically saying that the new covenant is not a new covenant.

But notice how Scripture describes the new covenant. In Jeremiah 31, the LORD says that the new covenant is "not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt" (Jer 31:32a). Explaining Jeremiah's prophecy, the author of Hebrews does not only call the new covenant "new," but also "second" and "better," since the new covenant is "enacted on better promises" (Heb 8:6). The Spirit-inspired author of Hebrews does not say that the old covenant simply matures, but that it is faulty, obsolete, and vanishing away (Heb 8:7-13). The text could hardly be clearer about the essentially different nature of the new covenant.

Conclusion

In many ways, Daily Doctrine is a helpful resource for those who would like daily help to grow in loving the Lord with all of our minds. It would be a great resource to give to graduates of a Christian high school or Bible college: those who have received some theological education and would benefit from having that doctrinal consideration sharpened. However, a Reformed Baptist giving this book as a gift would want to make sure that the recipient is quite clear on the nature of the new covenant, so that DeYoung's paedobaptist Covenant Theology would not have a negative effect on church membership and future family decisions.