SOME ANSWERS TO THEOLOGICAL QUESTIONS ABOUT ORDEALS.

SOME ANSWERS TO THEOLOGICAL QUESTIONS ABOUT ORDEALS. Professor Leeson argues that trial by ordeal cost a lot less than other ways of determining guilt or innocence. He takes up a question that you may have asked yourself: if God were going to intervene, why go to the trouble of staging the ordeal? Why not just flip a coin? It would be an even less expensive way to permit God to intervene. Leeson’s answer is that there was some scriptural basis for the importance of fire and water (and of course there was none for flipping a coin). Leeson also addresses a problem raised by his claim that only the innocent would chance an ordeal and that, knowing that, the clerics would rig the trial. The problem is that a 100% acquittal rate would raise suspicions. Leeson constructs a formula for minimizing the number of innocents to preserve the credibility of the ordeal process. ( In other words, as I posted here, “In this wicked world, we do the best we can.”) ) Finally, you will have noticed that Leeson’s model assumes that the populace have complete faith in the ordeal process and the priests are completely skeptical, choosing to free the innocent rather than wait for God’s judgment. One answer to the seeming contradiction comes from history. The Church (and presumably many priests) never liked ordeals, and in 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council banned priests from participating in ordeals. There was a theological reason. As Professor Leeson puts it, “Judicial ordeals required priests to command God to perform miracles at their whim, which the Bible forbids.”