As I noted in another post, the ancient church didn't practice social distancing:
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.
1. That's a very revealing response. This isn't simply about the practice of ancient Christians in general or ecclesiastical tradition but the NT church. This is a divine command. So Hodge is saying the command is predicated on a faulty, prescientific understanding of disease transmission.
2. In addition, he misses the point. Prayer doesn't require physical compresence. You can pray for someone without praying with them or over them. You can pray by remote control. The efficacy of prayer is normally independent of time and place in that regard. You don't have to be there to pray about it.
Yet the command enjoins elders to go to the sick and pray for them on site. Indeed, make physical contact by anointing their skin with oil. skin on skin contact. A hands-on ministry.
That's the polar opposite of the social distancing measures that Hodges thinks we have a duty to practice. Evidently, Hodge thinks this is a command that elders ought to defy. Indeed, if they knew then what we know now, this is a command that should never have been obeyed. It was a fallible, misbegotten command from the outset.
I don't know anything about your interlocutor, but if he's a MacArthurite then he likely adheres to JMacs unusual, maybe even novel, interpretation of the text in question such that it doesn't refer to an actual physical ailment, but to a spiritual ailment. So strong is their aversion to supernatural healing and their commitment to hardline, almost atheistic cessationism.
ReplyDeleteBut even laboring under MacArthur's odd interpretation of the text it nevertheless enjoins physical contact as you've rightly pointed out.