My Argument Unaddressed

Steve Hayes addressed my argument that the church is being perfectly obedient by meeting through social media here (as well as my exhortation for the conspiracy theories to stop and to trust in experts), but failed to actually address the argument at all.

"Hodge's analysis suffers from the myopic fixation on risk factors, as if that's the only salient consideration, as if nothing happens in public worship to offset and compensate for risk factors, as if there are no blessings distinctive to public worship which will be sacrificed by suspending public worship. Why have public worship at all unless God assigns some distinctive supernatural blessings to public worship?" 

"I've given examples, but for instance:

Are there prayers that God answers when they take the form of corporate prayer rather than private, individual prayer? Does corporate song have a sanctifying influence? Does God use physical fellowship as a means of grace? I don't object to family worship. No doubt that carries its own blessings. But public worship involves a group of individuals who are naturally strangers to each other. Their only bond is a shared experience of saving grace. So that's a case of God forming a new supernatural union. Of course, congregations often largely consist of sets of families. The family members are related to each other, but one family isn't naturally related to another family. If there are no unique supernatural blessings that God reserves for Christians who assemble to worship together, then it's unclear what purpose is served by public worship. Yet that's clearly a fixture of NT worship."

1. I'm not familiar with Steve's argument as to why we must physically meet in the same room, but if he has summarized it above as a distinction between corporate and private/family worship then he did not read my post carefully, as I am not arguing for family or private worship. I am arguing for corporate worship through the means of online media. If he is arguing that something supernatural happens from us being physically in a room together then he also didn't read it carefully because I argue that this is not why we meet from a biblical standpoint. He can believe that physicality is sacramental, but that isn't biblical.

2. I don't think either eldership or my ecclesiology are fluid in their essential components. The point of the argument was to ask what the essential components of corporate worship are and whether those can still be performed through online media. Again, I am arguing that if the first-century church had the internet their ministries to one another, which is why they meet, would be fulfilled then as they are now. There is no bending because physicality is not a part of the command. That was the whole point of the argument. He didn't address that here, so I don't see a refutation in the idea that we must meet corporately, as though that assumes physicality.

3. My argument has little to do with what people do with work and the economy because it is strictly an argument about the nature of the church and whether it is a necessity to meet physically due to whether an inherent component of physical presence exists in the practice of corporate worship. I wasn't arguing why everyone should stay at home and be unemployed. The cost-risk assessment when it comes to church is an issue for each church to think about independently of the economic issue in the larger culture.

4. The conspiracy theories to which I'm referring are legion. They include all of the things Steve addressed and then some. My point, however, is that it stems from a larger issue where laymen and scholars outside a field of study feel comfortable commenting dogmatically about that field of study and even push back against experts as though they were experts. It's simply foolish to speak as though one is an expert who understands how the data should be read, or that he or she even has the right data. It's like Hawking or Dawkins talking about religion or philosophy when they have never studied those things, or Ehrman talking about the doctrine of inerrancy. Non-experts create a lot of noise and get in the way of the truth advancing.