Experiencing Christ’s Presence in Pentecostal Praxis and the Performance of the Lord’s Supper
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This dissertation investigates the Pentecostal praxis of the Lord’s Supper. The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada’s “Statements” identify the Lord’s Supper as an ordinance, but I contend that the Lord’s Supper is more than an ordinance. I argue that the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada should define the Lord’s Supper in sacramental terms for at least two reasons: first, it reflects a return to nascent Canadian Pentecostalism, and second, it better reflects essential Pentecostal praxis. The term sacrament has been lost from traditional Pentecostal theology until recently, but sacramentality better represents a Pentecostal sense of Christ’s presence at the Lord’s Supper. There are six components to this practice-led, practical theology study: First, the reflexive examination of my experience of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper performance. Second, a reception history of the Lord’s Supper praxis that uncovers the founders’ belief that the Lord’s Supper was an exceptional occasion to encounter Jesus––a supernatural occasion par excellence worthy of weekly adherence. Third, a phenomenological analysis of the contemporary Canadian Pentecostal praxis. My textural description of the phenomenon is that the clergy participants experience the Lord’s Supper as a momentary, sacred, and mysterious meeting with Christ. At the same time, laypersons understand it as a serious, lingering that connects Pentecostals to Christ supernaturally. Fourth, I bring my reception history and phenomenological analysis into a mutually enriching dialogue. Fifth, I examine the liturgical text most often used by contemporary Pentecostals, attending to three realms of interpretation for the “body of Christ,” the bread and wine, the partaker’s body, and the church body. Sixth, I suggest how the theological implications of steps one to five can better inform Pentecostal praxis. The Lord’s Supper performance would better reflect, contribute to, and perpetuate essential Pentecostal spirituality if, when curating and performing the rite, the presiding minister integrated within the liturgy a well-crafted unambiguous eucharistic epiclesis in connection with reading the words of institution, such that its performance occurs in a manner that reflects the familiar Pentecostal practice-orientation of abiding and waiting. Adding the eucharistic epiclesis shaped by this Pentecostal ethos would be a recognizable way to meaningfully orient participants toward a rich pneumatological experience of the sacrament, an experiential encounter with Christ mediated by the Holy Spirit.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.017 | 0.032 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".