Objection: Luke Was a Physician; He Didn't Give Up His Vocation to Lay Hands on People

First, I contend that Luke DID at least suspend his profession to travel.  We don’t know the extent to which he laid hands on people, but it would be hard to run a medical business, especially in those days of limited communication, if your patients were back in Judea, Samaria or Galilee and you were gallivanting all over the place with Paul.  There is no indication that Luke continued to run any kind of medical practice while he traveled.  There is certainly no case where a sick person was referred to Dr. Luke to get healed!  It is entirely possible that he kept his practice between journeys, but we don’t know that.  Paul may just be referring to him by his former profession.  Luke also spent a lot of time writing Luke and Acts; we don’t know if he was still practicing medicine while he was doing that.

The implication of the objection is that Luke didn’t believe in the laying on of hands, so he just kept practicing natural medicine.  But it would be hard for Luke NOT to believe in healing the sick when he traveled with the miracle-working Apostle Paul!  Paul referred to cases of people being healed through supernatural means in his writings, but he never referred to anyone being healed by going to Dr. Luke or any other earthly doctor.  An argument from silence is probably the thinnest argument you can make.

This “gave up his vocation” assertion falls as flat on its noggin as the fake god Dagon did.  If we follow this logic, we can determine that Aquila, Priscilla and Paul were primarily tentmakers, not preachers who flowed in the supernatural.  After all, we see this said about them:

Acts 18:1-3:
After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth;
And found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla; (because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome:) and came unto them.
And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought: for by their occupation they were tentmakers.

So to be consistent, we would have to conclude:

“Paul, Aquila and Priscilla went out to practice tentmaking, not to lay hands on the sick – they didn’t give up their vocations and here’s the proof!”

Of course, being identified as tentmakers did not mean that tentmaking was their main role in life, and you can tell by the accounts of Paul, Aquila and Priscilla that God used them in much greater ways than tentmaking.  Identifying Luke as a doctor doesn’t mean that he went everywhere practicing medicine any more than it means that Paul, Aquila and Priscilla went everywhere making tents.

Given that Luke penned both the Gospel of Luke and Acts, it seems that he did a lot of things other than practice medicine.  By his writings, He helped propagate the good news of all the supernatural healings that Jesus and then His followers did!