Not by Might, Nor by Power, Nor by the Spirit, Says the Lord, but by Geographical Location and Proximity

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/05/spectral-koinonia.html?m=1 

I don't know what new thing Hodge has in mind. The electronic church isn't new. Jews and Christians have practiced physical fellowship for millennia. Christians have continued to worship during time of plague for centuries. Perhaps Hodge means his own understanding of the church. 

This seems rather confused. Electronic church is new, as Steve admits here. It hasn’t been practiced for millennia as when we did not have it. Even if the electronic church was as old as the internet, it would still be considered new. Likewise, this comment, and others, tell me that Steve doesn’t really have a grasp on what I am arguing because a widespread phenomenon of having live church meetings that are being held through apps like Jitsi or Zoom are new even for the age of the internet. Again, if Steve thinks I am talking about someone who is only listening to sermons online and making private prayers, that is not assembling for corporate worship, and therefore, not for that which I am arguing.

i)                    That, of course, is the stock excuse to suspend public worship. During times when it's deemed to be riskier to meet together than to avoid meeting together. 

Because it’s a good one. If you still meet in a building when there is a bomb threat, that's up to you, but wisdom would say to suspend it. However, we are not suspending public worship unless Steve is conflating "public worship" with "being in the same geographical location." We are all still performing public worship services online.

ii) One problem, as I recently noted, is that it's a matter of degree:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/04/if-it-saves-just-one-life.html

How risky is too risky? Does Hodge think there should be a moratorium on public worship until we develop a vaccine? 

Sure it is. I never said otherwise. I’m not the one to decide what is too risky as I am not an expert on the matter. That is why deferring to medical researchers who track and study plagues and have been assigned to this one, i.e., experts, is crucial.

As I noted in another post, the ancient church didn't practice social distancing:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/03/praying-with-sick.html

Of course it didn’t. It couldn’t refrain from meeting in the same physical geographical area and be obedient. There was no other way to meet or minister to the sick. Likewise, they likely didn’t take more precautions with the sick because they had no concept that illness was spread through viruses and bacteria. This is simply an “is-ought” fallacy. Because people in church history didn’t do X, we ought not to do X. According to what? The authority of a tradition that had no alternative means available to them. If there is only one means to be obedient, then there is no choice to between options. There are no options. Were they choosing between physical contact and the internet? Of course not. So this isn’t even a good argument from tradition as it isn’t parallel to the church today and what choices it needs to make. These choices have never been made before because these options have never existed before.

So is it essential or just ideal?

Ideal. That’s been my entire argument. If it was essential then there could be no exceptions even in the first century. If being in the same physical geographical location with one another is essential to perform the ministries and receive from the ministry what needs to be performed and received, i.e., the reasons why the assembly meets, then to even have one exception to these ministries is to be disobedient. The very reason there are exceptions is because physicality is not an essential component.

i) To begin with, it's revealing that Hodge has no categories for what I describe, so he substitutes categories like "sacramental" and "mystical" that I don't use. Classic examples of sacramentalism would be baptismal regeneration, penance, and reception of the real body and blood of Christ in the eucharist.  But I haven't used those examples  because I don't subscribe to that kind of sacramentalism.

ii) Another kind of supernaturalism would be something like xenoglossy, miraculous healing, prophetic insight and foresight. But I haven't used those examples.

iii) Take more mundane examples like answer to prayer. An answer to prayer is supernatural in the sense that it's something that wouldn't naturally happen. God must grant the petition. It may not be supernatural in a spectacular or sensational sense, but it's not just something that was going happened whether or not the prayer request was made. Does Hodge think answered prayer is "mystical"? 

Another example is sanctification. That's supernatural, but it can use the means of grace. Ordinary public worship can facilitate sanctification. 

This is exactly what a sacrament is. The idea that some physical thing is being used as a means of grace, has a greater power in getting prayers answered, etc. Perhaps, Steve’s category of what makes a sacrament is too narrow, as it has not allowed him to see that he is arguing sacramentally.

Furthermore, his last statement again begs the question. I have been arguing that what we are doing is public worship, but Steve keeps inserting the idea that public, corporate worship of the assembly necessarily entails our meeting in the same geographical location. His argument demands it. Yet, this is the very idea I refuted in the original post.

It looks like the electronic church. 

No, it doesn’t. See, we can all make assertions. LOL. One would have to be disembodied in order to have disembodied worship, like the saints in heaven.

He keeps missing the point of coming together for physical fellowship. 

For some reason, Hodge is hung up on "geography". The primary principle is physical assembly. A common space is simply a necessary instrumental means to that end. It could be inside or outside, although weather can be a practical factor. 

First, I don’t think Steve realizes that he is hung up on geography. His entire argument demands it. My point is that geography is irrelevant if one can be in unity through the Word and Spirit as they are assembled whether geographically or online. But Steve seems to be arguing that something special happens through the geographical proximity of Christians to one another, along with the other elements I’m sure. This is what he cannot prove biblically so it’s a matter of just assuming it.

But what of the original assemblies under Moses when you have (possibly) a couple million people involved? There are no mics so the elders of the clans likely heard Moses, Aaron, the priests, and then taught what was heard to the rest of the tribes. So they are not hearing the Word directly from the mouths of those who speak it. They are not participating directly in the sacrifices. Is the blood being sprinkled on everyone in the congregation or everyone by proxy?

My only point here is that those in the rest of the congregation are not geographically near enough to technically be in the assembly. Yet, they are a part of it.

Likewise, what about meeting in an outdoor location like a Park. Everyone can hear the ministers, thanks to those non-normative electronic microphones we all use now, so that all are receiving the same Word in unity, all are speaking the same truth to one another in liturgy, all singing the same songs, all praying together, etc. Yet, is the guy who is a quarter of a mile away at the edge of the crowd from the guy on the opposite side and aren’t in a close geographical proximity in unity and fellowship in the assembly? I would say so because it is the same Word heard and spoken in preaching, confession, prayer, and song that binds them. They partake of the same communion service together. But if this qualifies, why not two people a mile away doing the same thing? Why not 10 miles? 500? 1000? Steve acts as though geography is not the issue when it is the only issue his position could argue for unless he wants to say that two people who don’t physically touch one another aren’t in the same assembly.

i)                    There's a sense in which heaven (i.e. the intermediate state) is deficient. It's a temporary stopgap until the resurrection of the just. 

Agreed when it comes to the saints, not Jesus. Jesus isn’t in an intermediate state. He has His eternal body and yet exclusively fellowships with His people through the non-physical means of the Spirit.

However, I am arguing for deficiency in being able to obey the necessary requirements for something to be defined as an obedient assembly. If physical touch is necessary for fellowship then spirits can’t fellowship. If physical touch is necessary to worship God in obedience to the assembly, then spirits can’t do that. Neither the saints nor Jesus are unified with one another in the assembly either in heaven or on earth.

ii)                  However, the comparison is off because, to judge by visions of heaven in Scripture, it's like a collective dream where the saints have simulated bodies and interact with each other as if they were embodied agents. 

You mean like we do online? A spirit has a projection of his former bodily form. That is true. So does speaking to one another through cameras.

ii) Hodge trivialized the role of touch, but consider how much physical touch figured in the public ministry of Christ. Consider the role of touch in ecclesiastical prayer for healing: 

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/03/praying-with-sick.html

Touching was a common way of transferring blessing in the first century. Steve can argue that this is normative. I’m not sure I would agree. Do we confer blessing now through physical touch when we do meet in the same location? Sometimes, but I doubt many think that a blessing does not transfer without physical touch. It certainly isn’t necessary for Christ or the early church to touch people in order to do it since Christ and the apostles don’t always do it to heal people.

iii)                Embodied experience, embodied interaction are part of Christian worship, not in the first place because we're Christian, but because we're human, and so that's something we bring to the proceeding, whether inside church or outside church. That's just how God made us. It conditions our humanity. 

1.      If it is an essential part then we are back to the saints in heaven incapable of partaking in worship. Steve’s idea of what is “embodied” keeps slipping back and forth between definitions. On the one hand, it cannot be through the internet because that does not allow our physical bodies to be near each other, and on the other it can be done by spirits in heaven because they have projected images of their bodies that interact with one another, although not through physical touch.

2.      We are embodied. Everything we do as physical creatures on earth is embodied, even when we are talking through cameras and microphones. Does Steve think that using a microphone is disembodied because it is now not a direct interaction between my vocal chords and the ear drums of the congregation? The microphone and camera are mediums of our physical, embodied interactions, not a disembodied replacement of them.

iv)                Physical interaction can mean many things. Eye-contact. Speaking face-to-face. Singing alongside each other. Praying in unison. 

This is where I think that Steve is not tracking with my argument. We are making eye-contact through the camera. We are speaking face-to-face through the camera and mic. We are singing with one another in unity. We are praying as one through the app. Has Steve actually participated in this kind of service before? Or is again arguing for geographical proximity as a means of grace?

v) By Hodge/s logic, a married couple might as well conduct their marital life entirely through cellphones. They could raise their kids entirely through cellphones. No physical interaction required. Just the electronic voice and the image on the screen. Have domestic robots provide for the physical necessities while we communicate with our kids through cellphones. 

Here is where Steve’s argument goes off the rails. Is he actually arguing that the relationship between husband and wife, that is of a physical nature, is the same as what makes up the essential components of how the church should interact? Pagan worship is pretty physical. You could probably make this analogy in that setting, but Christian worship is in truth and Spirit and those who worship the Father do so through those means, not through the physical location (that’s Christ’s whole point to the woman at the well). Our fellowship is in the One Spirit given to us, not touch. Our communion with Christ is through the Spirit, not through physical touch. The nature of the spousal relationship can only occur physically. The two become one flesh, not one spirit. Without the physical interaction, the marriage relationship is not made nor sustained, but is a practical divorce and disobedient. Such is not true of the assemblies of God so this is simply a false analogy.

That just begs the question. Were conjugal relations never normative but just a temporary stopgap until we developed artificial insemination? 

No, because the nature of the relationship is physical. That is not true of the Christian’s relationship with other Christians in the assembly.

Nowadays you don't need to hug your kids or hold their hands or take them in your arms or give them piggyback rides if you have domestic robots can do that. You don't need to read to your kids. A computer can do that. 

I’ve already argued for the basic necessity of humans to touch one another and be physically present with one another. Parents give this health benefit to their children in their show of physical affection. Friends can. Family can. Christians can. That is ideal. Is it necessary for Christians to give it to one another rather than family and other friends? No, but it is ideal that they participate in it. I’ve never said otherwise. However, should men and women who aren’t married be physical with one another? I personally don’t think that should be the norm, nor was it for most of church history. Does that mean that men aren’t fellowshipping with the women and that they are of two different assemblies? Of course not.

By Hodge's logic, there was never any intrinsic necessity in Christians meeting together for worship. Why bother with house-churches or the agape feast? 

Why bother? Because there is an intrinsic necessity for Christians to meet together in houses or catacombs or buildings or outdoor settings, etc. because there is no other way to assemble and meet the ministry requirements, i.e., the very reasons for which those meetings take place (the feast is done away quite early so is Steve arguing that we haven’t been in the church for a couple thousand years because we no longer meet in what was a normative way for the early church?).

Me: “Now that isn’t the case. If by “normative,” Steve means “an essential component of the command” then my entire post refuted that idea. If it was normative then none of these things could be done by proxy, and they were even in the early church.” 

Steve: That's a non sequitur.

No, it isn’t. If an essential component, i.e., a component of X that must be present in order for X to be performed, then X is not performed when that  necessary component is absent. Ergo, to obediently perform X without that component of being physically present with other believers in the same geographical location is to show that such is not an essential component Steve should have read my original post more carefully.

The fact that some things can be done by proxy doesn't mean that's a permanent alternative. Is bottle-feeding preferable to breastfeeding? Is it preferable for able-bodied teenagers to use electric skateboards instead of using their own muscles to walk? 

I’ve maintained the whole time that this isn’t permanent or preferable/ideal. However, what is preferable depends upon the situation. It’s preferable to breastfeed all things being equal. However, if the mother has a debilitating disease that can be transferred through breastfeeding, it is preferable in that situation to use formula. Again, all things being equal, it is preferable that the guy use his legs for exercise, but if late for work or he is feeling weak, the skateboard is preferable. No one wants these alternate situations to last, however, so it is the situation that is not ideal that makes the alternative preferable. Once the situation changes back to normal, the means with more benefit becomes preferable.

Why did God institute public worship in the first place unless he reserves certain kinds of blessings for public worship?

I’ve already answered this in the original post I wrote. Notice, again, that Steve conflates public worship with being physically in the same geographical location. The entire argument is over whether the blessings through the ministries of the assembly are still being delivered and received by the church because it is publically assembling online. My post argued that they are because the medium of the internet allows for all of these ministries to still thrive.

This reminds me of Televangelists who instruct viewers to put their hands on the TV screen to receive healing.

And Jesus resurrecting reminds atheists of a cosmic zombie. Everything can be reduced to an absurd description, which is why mockery isn’t an argument. The same goes for calling these things “spectral,” as that has connotations of quackery. I could just as easily say that Steve’s touching ministry reminds me of a Benny Hinn Crusade or Todd Bentley kicking people in the congregation in the face. But on another note, isn’t Jesus’ ministry spectral? In fact, isn’t it the only ministry He has to us right now? Isn’t it the only fellowship He has had with His church for the past two thousand years? Though embodied, He communes and transfers every blessing that exists through the Spirit. No physical touch needed, that is, unless one wants to argue for Jesus being physically present in the Mass.

Preaching has always been physical. I think what he means is that the message is abstract. 

I mean the actual message that goes out is not through physical touch. Obviously, preaching, even through the internet or a microphone, is physical. It just doesn’t require being physically in the same geographical location.

But Hodge doesn't seem to think there's any spiritual benefit to physical fellowship. Certainly nothing to outweigh the alleged physical risk. 

Steve himself argued that the benefit of touch wasn’t spiritual, but a basic human need. I’ve argued against the sacramental idea of physical proximity.

i)                    But Hodge is very selective and one-sided about the experts he listens to. He's totally sold on the social distancing model. He shrugs off the herd immunity model. Or discriminating quarantine based on individuals who test positive. 

The experts are sold on the model. If they were sold on the herd immunity model, I’d do that. I should also be clear that by "experts" I do not mean politicians in government or general practitioners or doctors in other fields or statisticians, etc. I mean people who follow pandemics, chase them and track them, medical researchers, who are now assigned to studying and given all they need to study, this particular pandemic. They seem to be suggesting that herd immunity isn’t ideal because many infected may not be obtaining immunity. In any case, wisdom is an assumption that the opinions of the novice and the experienced are not to be trusted equally.

Are We Disembodied and Digitized by Meeting Online?

Steve responded to my previous post. I appreciate the discussion. It’s good for people to think through this new territory and I understand the suspicion toward what is completely new. We should be suspicious. We should ask, Why is this new thing presented to us? Is it harmful or helpful?

“But is online media a permanent alternative to corporate worship? Is that what's meant by corporate worship?”

No. I’ve tried to make this clear. The ideal is to be physically present with one another, but such is not the ideal because it is somehow more obedient to meet physically than meeting online in a time when the risk of physically meeting is assessed to be a greater threat than not meeting physically. It is ideal because it provides a basic human component to human health, as Steve mentions below. But this is a basic human need that all humans, believer or unbeliever, have. I just believe it should be primarily met with other believers when possible. So if the church can meet physically in the same place without this threat, it should. Furthermore, when the church does again meet physically, anyone not doing so would be in sin, since they are not in submission to the elders nor partaking in a church that is meeting in all of the aspects of ministry I mentioned before. Along those same lines, watching Youtube videos or listening to podcasts alone is not meeting as the church online. Fellowship and all it assumes, the meeting of needs, spiritual and physical, must remain as essential components of the assembly.

i)                    I haven't referred to the sacraments or sacramental grace. I'm Zwinglian. I haven't suggested that physicality is sacramental. 

Steve hasn’t referred to it with the word “sacrament.” That is true. However, when he speaks as though there is something supernatural or mystical happening due to our physical presence in the same place, as though a grace, a transformation, or a power is given to us through it, then this is, in fact, a sacramental idea. It isn’t biblical, but you can see how tradition has shaped our thinking, even if subconsciously. We think there is something mystical happening when we physically meet in the same place. But what does physically meeting in the same place do that meeting through some other means not do?

Now, I would argue for the sacramental nature of the assembly as God’s temple, but as argued before, this is not limited by what geographical area we occupy. The church is the temple when they do not meet. The temple is enlarged when they do meet so that sacred space is enlarged to a greater geographical area. God’s life-giving glory/presence occupies and flows from sacred space. This is only magnified when meeting online, not diminished.

ii)                  However, human beings aren't angels. We're embodied agents, Embodied souls. Even the intermediate state is a temporary stopgap.

Two things here. 1. Steve seems to be suggesting that we are becoming digitized ourselves, disembodied. We aren’t living in the Matrix. Everyone online is still embodied. Everyone meeting is still physical. I don’t how physical church gets for people, but I’ve never heard anyone make the argument that you did not go to church unless you physically touched someone. So what exactly does disembodied worship/fellowship look like? Have we been practicing it even when we do physically meet in the same room? Our physical brains engaged, our physical mouths take communion, our physical vocal chords sing, our physical tongues speak the truth. I’m one of the biggest adversaries toward gnostic thinking in our culture that I know of, but online worship is very physical and hardly disembodied.

2. The problem with this line of argumentation is that it will eventually have to argue that Christ can’t join us in our worship/fellowship in the way that He should because He is not meeting with us physically but through the Spirit. Likewise, those in heaven can have no real worship and fellowship with Christ because they are spirits and disembodied at the moment. If embodied worship is a necessity, then they all are deficient in it.

We are physical beings by design. Physical interaction is natural component of corporate worship. In person fellowship. The role of touch in human relations. Face-to-face conversation. Singing together. Praying to gather.

What does “physical interaction” mean? I agree that what is devoid of technology is natural, but confusing what is natural with what is ultimately good or ideal has implications on numerous things. If Christians must shun technology for the natural as an ethical good then we must all reconsider becoming Amish. What is natural is normative by necessity in a non-technical age, not something that is ideal. I see no biblical argument in suggesting otherwise. We sing together, have face-to-face interactions with one another online, so the only thing missing is physical touch. Is that actually necessary for fellowship? Have you not fellowshipped or gone to church until you physically touch someone? Does that mean that men should never fellowship or worship with women? Certainly, in church history, unmarried men and women did not touch one another in the assembly. I’m not sure that even married people did so. Does this mean they were all out of fellowship and had forsaken the assembly? Is it necessary to just touch one person or all of them? All joking aside, touch is a part of a physical need that Christians can provide for one another and should when they are able. It is not a necessary component of fellowship and worship though. If you are a leper, and it's not Jesus or an apostle with a healing gift you're reaching out for, please love people and keep your hands to yourself.

iii)                It's not necessarily about meeting in the same room, but meeting together. Weather permitting, it could be an out-door event, although buildings provide shelter from the inclement elements.

iv)                By Hodge's logic, to assemble in public worship was never a normative feature of Christian (or Jewish?) worship? There's no obligation or necessity for Christians to ever meet together in physical worship. There are no supernatural blessings that God reserves for public worship. It could all be cubical and disembodied. 

That’s really not my argument at all. It was normative because it was the only way a church could meet together. Now that isn’t the case. If by “normative,” Steve means “an essential component of the command” then my entire post refuted that idea. If it was normative then none of these things could be done by proxy, and they were even in the early church. This is a new technology which allows for it in our day, which is really why what I am saying is so shocking to people. It simply is unfamiliar, and therefore, uncomfortable, not disobedient. It certainly is not ideal because we should want to be with one another in order to meet one another’s needs concerning physical interaction, but my argument is that this is not a necessary component of the believer’s ministry to one another. Other humans can fill it, but believers can only fulfill the ministries to one another the Lord has assigned to them and them alone. There is a longing to be with the people that you love in every way that you can. We long to be in the physical presence of Jesus, and as Paul says, we are absent from Him right now. That is the ideal that we would try and fulfill while being obedient in any way that we can. But that phrase “while being obedient” is important. We don’t off ourselves to be present with Christ. Hence, we need to ask whether we are doing what is right and most loving first and then ask if there is more that we can do to be present with Christ and one another in our love and obedience.

There are situations where representatives communicated through letter rather than in person. In some cases that's a practical necessity. And it can have the advantage of a permanent verbal record for posterity. But worship and instruction of distinct, if often related. 

Instruction in a letter is not distinct from the instruction in the assembly. They assembly was instructed by the letter. Paul taught the Corinthian congregation through letter and was there in spirit with them through it. It is one and the same in that regard. Corporate worship requires the assembly to meet together and receive that instruction though. I never argued otherwise. That is accomplished both through physically meeting and meeting online.

v)                  Hodge has an oddly ghostly view of Christian worship, as if embodied agency is generally expendable or superfluous. Simulated physical fellowship. Spectral worship. Digitized communion. 

Maybe I have an oddly Holy Ghostly view. LOL. Here we see again this idea that if one is communicating through video he is somehow disembodied. Does everyone who speaks to someone through a camera go out of their bodies? Is Steven suggesting again that some mystical thing happens through the physical body being present in the same geographical location with other physical bodies? Certainly, chemical things happen. This is why people like going to places where there are lots of other people. It’s why they like visiting friends and family. There is something very natural that happens, but I don’t see anything supernatural  about it that only believers can fill.

Again, is the communion digitized? Are we all eating gigabytes? No. We’re all eating physical bread and drinking physical wine while we meet and see one another’s faces as an elder conducts the communion ceremony. It remains a very physical thing we are doing with our physical bodies. We are all still connected because of the digital media. We are not digital nor is our partaking in the body and the blood. Furthermore, worship is in spirit and truth, not physical presence, as Jesus instructed the woman at the well. Isn’t all worship “spectral worship”? Isn’t it all the Holy Spirit working with our inner beings, our spirits, since the body right now is dead in sin? Certainly, worship is performed with our bodies, but this isn’t different when meeting online. As I said, we are still doing everything in our bodies, singing with our physical vocal chords, eating the bread and wine with our mouths, speaking the truth in love with our tongues, etc. Preaching has always been non-physical. The non-physical word is the medium through which we worship God and are transformed as His church. Whether digitized or in person, the Word is used by the Spirit to transform the physical temple of the church on earth by their hearing it and receiving faith and grace through it. This is all accomplished through an online meeting.

Indefinite lockdowns will cause churches to go broke. They will never reopen. Moreover, Tech Giants are cracking down on the electronic church.

Sure, but my argument wasn’t about the economics of the localized church either. It was solely about whether believers are being obedient to their ministry by meeting online in order to protect the church’s members from plague. Whether a local church has enough money should not be brought into the ethical equation until the money is the ethical question itself. Certainly, if the spiritual risk outweighed the physical risk, then the physical risk would have to take a backseat. But Steve’s statement confuses what I am arguing. I am not arguing anything about the larger economy, even though the larger economy certainly will affect the church’s finances. I am arguing about whether we further a risk to members because we believe it a necessity to ministry to physically meet in the same place (we are meeting in the same places online, but are not in the same geographical area). The risk to church finances is related to another question concerning the risk assessment of going to work versus staying at home. I have not addressed that question.

Expert opinion isn't monolithic. At the same time, expert opinion can become insular and ingrown.

I never suggested expert opinion was monolithic, but the people equipped to disagree with experts are other experts, not some armchair experts who read a bunch of articles on the internet and watched Youtube videos that are contrarian to expert opinions. It reminds me of the documentaries about the exodus and Jesus that were done by Simcha Jacobovici. Lots of data without the ability to understand it that comes with being in the fields of study he attempts to use in his arguments. This happens in every field.

I don trust "experts" on the co-ed military or indoctrinating students about trangenderism or obliterating the distinction between boys teams and girls teams. I don't delegate that to the "experts". Credulity is not intellectual or theological virtue for Christians to cultivate. That's not something we're entitled to delegate to unaccountable experts driven by a secular social agenda. 

I actually do trust experts on all of these things because the experts are the orthodox teachers of the church using the Bible to assess ethics. All of these issues are ethical issues and in the realm of ecclesiastical authority. The secular state has no authority or expertise on these issues at all. So these are not good examples. In this case, we’re the experts the secularists aren’t trusting, which makes them just as much fools, if not more so, as we are when we do not trust them in their actual fields of expertise God has given over to them.

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.