necessarily seen as super-permanent: sick people could get better temporarily
but eventually relapse and even die, which would then contradict people’s
initial understanding of the ritual.Maybe further interpretation of the
sickness (as caused by particularly grave sins, for example) could explain
such a failure. Alternatively, we can ask whether elders really needed less
enabling rituals than believers whom they tried to heal. Thus we can leave
the possibility open that it was the oil used in the name of the Lord, or
the name of the Lord itself, that was perceived as most directly related to the
divine, making the healing a special-instrument ritual—which could explain,
in terms of the Ritual Form Theory, why the effects were not expected to be
irreversible.
Evidence for the understanding of healing as a special-instrument ritual is
found in Acts:“God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that when
the handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were brought to the
sick, their diseases left them, and the evil spirits came out of them”
(Acts 19:11–12, NRSV). We have already mentioned the use of holy water
in special-instrument rituals. Finally, exorcism can be also thought of as a
special-patient ritual, where the demon itself is a culturally postulated super-
human agent. This leads to the question of why believers using Paul’s aprons
can successfully drive out demons, whereas the sons of the Jewish high-priest
Sceva cannot (Acts 19:13–16). What makes the difference here is the relative
power of different superhuman agents, as well as the ability of the performer of
the healing to secure the help of the agents (the sons of Sceva invoke Jesus’
name without success). This leads us to theories of magical agency, which we
will discuss in more detail in Chapter 6 below, followed by a more detailed
treatment of the passage.
The Ritual Form Theory also offers an interesting framework for interpret-
ing the Lord’s Supper in the New Testament and in various Christian tradi-
tions. It is difficult to establish how far the Corinthian meal was a ritual (in
terms of the Lawson–McCauley theory) in the form that Paul disapproved of.
Paul’s instructions (if absorbed and implemented by the congregation) trans-
formed the meal into a special-patient ritual, inasmuch as he suggested that
the bread and wine consumed were connected to theflesh and blood of the
Lord. At the celebration of the Eucharist in historical and contemporary
mainline Christian traditions, in contrast, the priest can be seen as the agent
of the ritual who transforms ordinary bread and wine into theflesh and blood
of Christ. This seems to lead to a contradiction because special-agent rituals
are not supposed to be repeated, yet the Eucharist is repeated regularly; still
one can argue that the ritual is not repeated with thesamebread and wine.
(The presence of the congregation is not needed for a mass to be valid.) If one
considers the distribution of the elements as the main focus of the ritual, in
turn, it can be conceived of as a special-instrument ritual: the priest gives the
elements to the congregation. This interpretation poses the question of how
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