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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Holy Communion: double-blind RCT
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
Uh, I may have missed it, but did anyone develop a holiness index by which we might measure our results?
Personally, I think that is the elephant in the room.
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a theological scrapbook
Posts: 9481 | From: Australia | Registered: Apr 2009
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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
No. Good point. I think I say in the OP that we'd have to decide what people hope to gain from partaking of the Sacrament, and then devise an index of indicators, and some questionnaires to use to grade people on the index.
But I don't think we've got very far into that subject. Someone said that one of the ends of communion is the salvation of your soul. But this cannot be the only or whole story, since, as I understand it, the Church does not equate excluding someone from communion with counting them damned.
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
Posts: 2950 | From: I cannot tell you, for you are not a friar | Registered: Jan 2006
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
EM: When you write " quote:
Marv did you just point and shout "Elephant! Over there!"?
, are you admitting that you actually have a desired conclusion in mind for your experiment and just want to collect "proof" for your pre-existing prejudice? Because if that's so you're no better than the American fundamentalists arguing that Loch Ness Monster sightings are "proof" of their pre-conceived notions about the Genesis creation and flood stories.
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LutheranChik:
EM: When you write " quote:
Marv did you just point and shout "Elephant! Over there!"?
, are you admitting that you actually have a desired conclusion in mind for your experiment and just want to collect "proof" for your pre-existing prejudice? Because if that's so you're no better than the American fundamentalists arguing that Loch Ness Monster sightings are "proof" of their pre-conceived notions about the Genesis creation and flood stories.
No, I meant exactly what I said - that Marvin (despite his protestations) had pointed out that he considers there to be the elephant in the room.
This is, as has been pointed out a few times above, a thought experiment, rather than a proposal that we subject the Blessed Sacrament to a clinical trial. If you're interested in my view:
- I wouldn't personally want to carry out such a trial or participate in it. I'm a Roman Catholic, so the idea of doing anything with the Blessed Sacrament once it has been consecrated (for example hiding it under the table and substituting blanks) other than treating it with love and reverence, isn't something I could ever be comfortable with.
- However, I'm not sure whether the trial would find any statistical significance in whatever variables were chosed as measurable outcomes.
- And, for me, that lack of variation in outcomes would mean *nothing at all*.
I don't think my loving father God has any problem with me going through a mental exercise to consider what would be involved in an attempt to gather evidence about Him and what that evidence might or might not mean.
Incidentally, I'm no better than anyone. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
Posts: 2950 | From: I cannot tell you, for you are not a friar | Registered: Jan 2006
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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Where do the "fruits of the spirit" rest in all this by the way.
Are they not Paul's "proof"?
That would be a good start, but we'd have to determine how to measure them.
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
Posts: 2950 | From: I cannot tell you, for you are not a friar | Registered: Jan 2006
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The Man with a Stick
Shipmate
# 12664
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Arrietty:
quote:
Originally posted by The Man with a Stick:
If there is no "commission or authority" there is no sacrament. Therefore if the celebrant is an imposter, there is no eucharist, whether or not the people taking communion had every reason to believe it was being correctly done.
The experiment as I understand it would be to provide something that looked exactly like a communion service but which was invalid because the person presiding was not actually authorised or commissioned to preside.
This article covers exactly that point - the minister may be unfit to minister but that does not per se invalidate the sacrament - implicitly because God will not be mocked or allow those devoutly seeking his presence through the sacrament to be mocked.
This is not my reading of that Article at all - you would have a lay person not intending to do what the church does at the Eucharist and neither orthodox Catholic nor orthodox Anglican theology would deem that the elements could be validly consecrated in such circumstances.
The article to which you refer deals with *ordained* clergy for whatever reason morally unworthy (thief, adulterer, murderer etc etc). It only applies to people Ministering by christ's authority (ie ordination), not those pretending so to do.
Posts: 335 | From: UK | Registered: May 2007
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The Great Gumby
Ship's Brain Surgeon
# 10989
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Where do the "fruits of the spirit" rest in all this by the way.
Are they not Paul's "proof"?
That would be a good start, but we'd have to determine how to measure them.
You need proxies, but they'd have to be validated first. I doubt anyone's covered this in depth, so that's another bit of preliminary research to be carried out before we get to the serious stuff.
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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman
A letter to my son about death
Posts: 5382 | From: Home for shot clergy spouses | Registered: Feb 2006
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Arrietty
Ship's borrower
# 45
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Man with a Stick:
The article to which you refer deals with *ordained* clergy for whatever reason morally unworthy (thief, adulterer, murderer etc etc). It only applies to people Ministering by christ's authority (ie ordination), not those pretending so to do.
Within the proposed 'experiment', the format and setting of the service will be genuine; everything about the service will be authorised apart from the person presiding, who is acting as if s/he is authorised while knowing s/he isn't ordained.
Depending on your views about 'evil', the statement
quote:
sometimes the evil have chief authority in the Ministration of the Word and Sacraments
could apply as much to someone pretending to be authorised when they're not, as to any other 'unfitness'.
If the presider is using authorised words, and pretending to have the correct authority to preside, then it is surely a moot point whether
quote:
yet forasmuch as they do not the same in their own name, but in Christ's, and do minister by his commission and authority
applies. Clearly I would say it does, because the alternative is that God would allow people to be taken in through no fault of their own.
Thus I would say (but obviously you wouldn't) that
quote:
we may use their Ministry, both in hearing the Word of God, and in receiving the Sacraments
for the very reason stated in the article:
quote:
Neither is the effect of Christ's ordinance taken away by their wickedness, nor the grace of God's gifts diminished from such as by faith, and rightly, do receive the Sacraments ministered unto them; which be effectual, because of Christ's institution and promise, although they be ministered by evil men
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i-church
Online Mission and Ministry
Posts: 6634 | From: Coventry, UK | Registered: May 2001
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Uh, I may have missed it, but did anyone develop a holiness index by which we might measure our results?
What a lovely idea. One of those polls like the ones in the weekend papers.
"There is a beggar with suppurating sores at your gate. Is your response?
a. To set the dogs on him.
b. To send out the dogs so that he may be comforted by having them lick his sores.
c. To give him a tract telling him how he can find salvation.
d. To lick his sores yourself.
e. To take him into your house and kill a specially fattened calf which he can eat.
f. You're a vegetarian, and so as e except that it's a veggyburger from S****burys.
g. To give money to help beggars in the Third World.
h. To ring Social Services."
Then a list of scores for each answer.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
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