Ever since hearing of the “emergent/emerging church” movement, I’ve thought it would be interesting to try out-“emerging” “emergent church” writers’ style and substance.

I would have a great conversational style, interrupting myself multiple times for pop-culture and movie references to show (perhaps incidentally) how trendy and hip and with-it I am. I would be very well-read and adept at making seemingly complex ideas lay-level and understandable. And I would also subtly undermine orthodox Christian doctrine, along with the very idea that we can know revealed Truth — all while acting humble and tolerant, while suspecting and putting down those who claim to know objective facts about God.

In pastor Kevin DeYoung’s and sports journalist Ted Kluck’s book Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be), they do just that: out-“emerge” the emergents. They split the style: Kluck handles the conversational and cool stuff; DeYoung mostly debates the divergent views of the emergent mindset with well-read and complex yet lay-level flair. And they divide the substance. DeYoung offers solid doctrines of God’s Word and upholds God’s own understandability. He reveals and refutes the flagrantly illogical ideas of not even being able to know truth. Meanwhile, Kluck intersperses those lengthier, deep-doctrine-magic chapters with his own boots-on-the-ground accounts of delving into emergent culture.

All throughout, the authors are careful personally not to reject emergent gurus as false Christians. However, because so many emergent authors endorse one another, it’s difficult to avoid questioning whether they’re even well-intended as they often propagate blatantly false teachings. For example, the idea of Jesus suffering God’s wrath and dying as substitution for His people is derided by some emergent leaders as “divine [or cosmic] child abuse.” Instead, Jesus died to help humankind realize its True Potential to change itself and the world.

In response, DeYoung favorably quotes from D.A. Carson’s Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church: “‘. . . if words mean anything, both [Brian] McLaren and [Steve] Chalke have largely abandoned the gospel.’” DeYoung himself gently adds, “How else can you describe things when two men describe atonement for our sins as cosmic child abuse?”

Both authors often go after what seem to be countless false dichotomies and logical fallacies claimed by emergent advocates. For example, DeYoung debunks the oft-cited emergent gurus’ view that constantly claiming ignorance is the more humble way of thinking and living — so “humble,” in fact, that it directly places man’s view above God’s.

Let me be very clear: I don’t understand everything about God or the Bible. I don’t fully understand how God can be three in one. I don’t completely grasp how divine sovereignty works alongside human responsibility. The Christian faith is mysterious. But when we talk about Christianity, we don’t start with mystery. It’s some combination of pious confusion and intellectual laziness to claim that living in mystery is at the heart of Christianity.

[. . .] McLaren is guilty of a very modern error, insisting on either-or, when a both-and is possible. There is a place for questions. There is a time for conversation. But there is also the possibility of certainty [. . .] because God has spoken to us clearly and intelligibly and has given us ears to hear His voice.

These sorts of rebuttals — I’m not saying that; what I am saying is this — can be wearying after a while. Yet the pure, mere logic is so simple: God’s nature is both wrath and love, knowable and infinite, and our life in Him can be mental and emotional, academic and relational.

Meanwhile, Ted Kluck, stuck with the shorter chapters, relishes his task of adding personal flair to the book. He also gets to make most of the jokes, which he admits have a little fun with the emergent types’ “tics” and teaching tacks:

The book is called How (Not) to Speak of God by Peter Rollins. Similar to A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity and A Generous Orthodoxy, it has the requisite fetchingly rebellious title. And it also has what has become the emergent stamp of success—the Brian McLaren endorsement where he says he’s crazy about the book. Just nuts about it. It’s changed his life.

Kluck personally goes undercover at several popular emergent churches, including one where people sing an old song with the lyrics “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ‘round, turn me ‘round, turn me ‘round,” repeated a few times. “I really wonder what injustice it is they’re singing about,” Kluck quips. “Not finding their size at the Gap?”

But Kluck can certainly sling Biblical truth with the best of them, and when it comes to vital issues such as why Jesus came to Earth, both authors hit and hit hard. “According to [Rob Bell’s book] Velvet Elvis [. . .] God came to earth, to die, to help us realize the great potential inside us,” Kluck writes. “[. . .] There is nothing mentioned of those who reject God, and their fate, as laid out in Scripture.”

DeYoung notes that our cursed world needs more than the emergents’ emphasis on renewed morals for the here and now — an anti-war, pro-“environment” social “gospel” — which amounts to merely a different form of legalism than that their gurus so often slam.

[D]oes the emergent church really believe in original sin? Emergent leaders dare us to imagine a world without poverty and war and injustice. That’s good. We need to be stirred to have faith in the God of the impossible. But we should not expect something God has not promised, especially when He has promised the opposite. [. . .] This doesn’t mean we are pro-poverty warmongers. But it does mean that wars won’t go away just because we follow the secret message of Jesus.

DeYoung and Kluck have done the true Church a valuable service. Their gentle yet firm rebukes, both in-depth and entertaining, capture the paradox of loving correction and non-arrogant doctrinal defense — the kinds of Biblical, classy, Christ-centered, gracious both-and interactions the “emergent church” advocates apparently can’t (or refuse to) acknowledge.