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Friday, April 17, 2020

Is the church being obedient?

Some comments on these two posts:



i) Regarding the first, I'm not sure what Hodge is alluding to with respect to conspiracy theories. Does he mean the suspicion that COVID-19 is a hoax? Or does he mean the suspicion that the gov't response is cover to suppress Christianity? 

ii) To begin with, some Democrat officials have made it clear that they are using the crisis as a pretext to target and discriminate against Christians. So that, in itself, isn't paranoid.

iii) There is, though, the question of how far we can generalize from those examples. It's not so much that the intention of the containment policies is to single out Christians. Because the containment policies are general, they have the effect of shutting down public worship because they restrict social gatherings generally, of which church services are a subset. 

iv) When, however, public officials distinguish between essential and nonessential goods and services, and when they demote public worship to a nonessential good and service, that exposes their irreligious bias. They think Christianity is, at best, something to be tolerated. 

Then there's Hodge's statement that:
The truth is that if you do not have all of the information that the government does and have expertise in the right disciplines of medical research in order to assess that information correctly so that you would come to a correct conclusion of what is going on, then wisdom dictates that you zip your lip about it, not go off spouting whatever theory "might" be true.
i) To begin with, while medical expertise should be one source of information in formulating a public policy to deal with the pandemic, that's not the only relevant sphere of expertise. The risk assessment must not only take the projected harm of the pandemic into account, but the unintended consequences of a containment policy with regard to economic collapse. 

ii) And the idea that we should just trust public officials because we don't have all the information the government has is woefully gullible. During this crisis, many public officials have shown themselves to be reactionary, shortsighted fools who have no idea what the solution is, but just want to be seen as saviors. 

i) Regarding the second post, what I've seen is the opposite of  what Hodge has seen. Evangelical leaders stampeding to agree with public health officials, with very little pushback. 

ii) Regarding the risk of public worship, I don't have anything new to say. Hodge's objection is one-sided. It's a stock objection. I've responded in detail to that objection. Hodge hasn't engaged my arguments.

I'm not suggesting that he has any obligation to interact with my arguments, and his post was not specifically directed at anything I've written. My point is simply that I don't find his objection persuasive because I've dealt with that stock objection, and since he offers no counterargument, it's unconvincing. To be persuasive, he'd need to refute my counterargument.

Again, it's fine with me if his objective was never to engage my side of the argument. But it leaves my side of the argument untouched. 

iii) Hodge's principal argument is that physical fellowship was more necessary for 1C Christians (and even back then it wasn't absolute) than it is for 21C, hitech Christians who can achieve the same goals through technology. 

There's certainly a grain of truth to what Hodge says. To some degree the activities of the church as described in the NT reflect what was possible in the 1C. When we apply these principles to the 21C, we can adapt and update them to our own situation. We don't have the same limitations. And part of fidelity is to take advantage of resources which were not available to 1C Christians. 

iv) The question, though, is whether physical fellowship is just a timebound convention that can be replaced by the electronic church–or something essential to the communal dimension of Christianity. 

To take a comparison, artificial insemination can take the place of conjugal relations, and there are situations where artificial insemination is justifiable, but the mere fact that we have that alternative doesn't mean artificial insemination should replace conjugal relations in marital life. The normative practice is sex between husband and wife. Artificial insemination is an exception due to extenuating circumstances.

v) Hodge himself doesn't seem to think the electronic church ought to be a permanent substitute for public worship, but instead a necessary yet temporary compromise during the pandemic. And I myself am not adverse to reasonable compromises during the pandemic. 

But that pushes the question back to what is a reasonable compromise? How temporary is temporary? 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? 

vi) As far as I can tell, Hodge has a very authoritarian view of church eldership. Ironically, he absolutizes 1C church eldership while relativizing 1C church fellowship. So he's quite selective about updating his theological principles. But surely it could be argued that 21C Christian laymen are in a very different situation in relation to church elders than 1C Christian laymen. In the 1C, illiteracy was widespread. Private copies of the Bible were rare. To some degree Christians could rely on living memory of the ministry of Christ. Many 1C elders were either eyewitnesses to the public ministry of Christ or disciples of the apostles. But that situation can't be replicated in the 21C.

By contrast, literacy is almost universal among 21C Christians in the West. Many are colleges graduates. Every layman can own a Bible. Every layman can read Bible commentaries and systematic theologies. They can read whatever the pastor can read. An elder doesn't have a unique source of theological information. Elders and laymen are in the same boat. So why is Hodge's view of the lay/elder dynamic frozen in the circumstances of the 1C when he's so flexible about public worship? 

10 comments:

  1. steve, you've made this same basic point in various posts dealing with the topic of the virtual vs. in-person gathering of Christ's people for worship:

    "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?"

    Would you care to explain what types of distinctive supernatural blessings you have in mind here, and maybe why they would not be conferred on, for example, me and my family as we worship in our home?

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    1. 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.

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  2. I guess he could also be referring to the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 is a bioweapon developed by China.

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  3. Where have you found that Dems have stated that they using it as a pretext?

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  4. Bryan Hodge has views on birth control that are extremely contrary to the majority opinion of most evangelical theologians writing today, to say nothing of most medical experts, Christian and not. Is arguing against birth control, even calling it a form of murder, as he does in his book on contraception, therefore conspiracy theorizing? Is it malicious nonsense?

    Mr. Hodge would likely respond that he has done his research and his opinion on the matter is well studied, while being contrary. Two problems. 1) Hodge, despite his theological expertise on the subject, is not a medical doctor. He is not well versed on the science of reproduction. Of course he would probably say that medical knowledge is only one of several kinds of knowledge, and that the issue of birth control is bigger than mere scientific expertise. It requires a moral and theological and ethical analysis. And he would be right about that. But why does he claim it there and not here, with this virus.

    We have no choice but to opine on the fly because the virus is novel. There is much about it that we do not know. Policymakers, both those with medical expertise and those without, are making decisions based on a lack of data. The more data that comes out, the more apparent it is that whatever they were relying upon was false. It's not speaking out of turn for us to be skeptical, even militantly so, particularly as the data-driven case for draconian lockdowns continues to collapse in a breathtaking fashion.

    This is a small sample size in the Christian world, but something I have noticed among some friends and others I follow is that many of the contrarians, hard Christian contrarians, have taken a line on this virus and the policy response to it that is coming down squarely on the side of the medical establishment and the draconian lockdowns. Many of these same people believe in conspiracy theories on other subjects. They don't believe in the standard explanations for all sorts of historical or scientific events. But on this virus, they come down squarely with the conventional wisdom. Why?

    I think it's because they enjoy being contrary for it's own sake. They see fellow Christians challenging the consensus in masse, and they feel a compulsion to oppose it for that reason. I realize that's a very uncharitable interpretation, but it's the only one that makes sense.

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  5. Steve,

    1. I'm not familiar with your argument as to why we must physically meet in the same room, but if you have summarized it above as a distinction between corporate and private/family worship then you 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 you are arguing that something supernatural happens from us being physically in a room together then you also didn't read it carefully because I argue that this is not why we meet from a biblical standpoint. You 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. You didn't address that here, but I don't see a refutation in the idea that we must meet corporately.

    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 above. 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. 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. Non-experts create a lot of noise and get in the way of the truth advancing.

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  6. Ben, I'll try to be more generous with someone who disagrees with me than you have been to me here.

    1. I don't need to be a medical expert to discuss biblical ethics concerning sexuality. Medical issues in which I have no expertise are not the subject of the book. Biblical ethics are. Medicine is an "is" not an "ought" unless you are talking about medical ethics in which case such is reliant upon a biblical worldview. Since the Bible is my field of study, I am not guilty of any inconsistency there. Nor is the issue of birth control a conspiracy theory since the switch in worldviews is easy to see and the public push for it is well documented. So I'm afraid your argument fails there.

    You actually do have a choice, and that would be to either be foolish and discuss something of which you are not expert or do what is wise and take the expert's opinion as your own until otherwise disproved by other experts. The other choice you have is becoming an expert yourself but that would take tons of time and research in the right methods of inquiry in order to become competent enough to speak on a subject dogmatically.

    As for assuming motive as an argument, we all know what happens when we assume. I stated why I take contrarian opinions. You can comfort yourself in whatever way you wish though. If assigning ulterior motives allows you to dismiss arguments and comforts you in rejecting what people say, then by all means feel free.

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  7. btw, it is a bit humorous that you end with a conspiracy theory about conspiracy theorists.

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