Emergent critics

David F. Wells and others show the flaws in the market-driven church | Marvin Olasky

Handout

Tough-minded theologian David F. Wells wants wavering evangelicals to have The Courage to Be Protestant (Eerdmans, 2008). He emphasizes what in these pages we call "biblical objectivity," the idea that even though we are fallen sinners we can know many things about how the world works. Wells criticizes the "emergent church," which tries not to sound arrogant, for under-using Scripture: He states that God "wants us to know. It is not immodest, nor arrogant, to claim that we know, when what we know is what God has given us to know through his Word."

Wells also worries about an emphasis on "self" in churches that are market-driven and have fallen into "a new Pelagianism. That is the heresy that denied original sin." His subtitle, Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World, rightly advertises this book as one to give to evangelicals who care about truth and are looking for critical analysis of those latter two categories.