The Corpus (Google Meet)-sticum
Embodiment, Disembodiment, and the Future of Online Church
After two long years of attending church virtually, two things have become painfully clear to me:
(1) I absolutely hate online church
(2) It is absolutely critical that online church continues
It is in this space of antinomy and aporia that I have apathetically dwelt, as aspects of my faith and practice have languished and lessened. Yet, in this space of stillness, where the church walls lay subdued in the absence of corporate worship, the cracking of the host and streaming of the chalice lay silent, and the pulpit was mounted each week by a singular figure speaking to an unmanned camera, there emerged other voices – voices that had been too often overlooked – who attested to the value of virtual church. Indeed, after the voices that we are so used to normally hearing came to the end of their words, faced with seemingly endless lockdowns and exhausted from their detest of the disembodied virtual church, there emerged other voices out of the silence who testified to how indispensable the virtual format was for their ability to hear the Word and commune with the people of God. These individuals, who are embodied in the world in different ways from those we typically think of (and attend to), spoke of how features of their embodiment which previously kept them from being able to participate fully in the church services, were now (because of the virtual format) finally able to participate more fully. The infirm, who for years could not travel to the church, suddenly found themselves in the same boat with everyone else. Those who risked overstimulation by the sounds or sights or smells of the church setting found themselves able to participate in church from the safety of their home environment. Those who struggled to hear the words of the service each week found themselves benefitting from real-time speech-to-text software that automatically generated captioning that they could follow. And those who risked deep psychic injury or dis-integration from entering places that had been the source of profound personal trauma, found themselves able to attend church for the first time in years.
The pandemic, while a source of unfathomable loss, has gifted us with the opportunity to hear these voices – and learn from them. As many churches are now moving more of their activities back into their buildings, we risk losing one of the profound gifts of the pandemic if this move back into physical spaces means eliminating the digital spaces – and with them, our brothers and sisters who depend on them. In fact, many of you may even be well acquainted with words of admonition from your pulpits, rebuking the sparse number of bodies in the pews, and proclaiming that the pandemic has made us “lazy” – and for that reason virtual church needs to end to get everyone back into church. My fear is that the bustle of joyful voices of those who can return to church buildings will crowd out the voices of those who cannot, and who we finally started hearing during the pandemic.
In what follows, I aim to offer a framework for beginning to approach how we can utilize virtual and hybrid spaces to make them as accessible and conducive to flourishing and faithful worship as is possible. I started this article by mentioning the various antinomies with which virtual church has presented me, and in what follows I aim to ‘flesh out’ these antinomies – the ways that the disembodied, virtual church is simultaneously beneficial and damaging – and then suggest how they might be better navigated.
Antinomy 1: Accessibility vs Control
The physical spaces in which we worship are almost exclusively designed for those without physical, cognitive, or emotional limitations – although some churches and denominations have made efforts to make their spaces more accessible with things like wheelchair ramps, hearing and translation devices, and so on. Nevertheless, the limits of how the vast majority of physical spaces have been designed (and the limits of the physical world) simply fail to afford a good number of individuals the opportunity to attend services or participate fully. This ranges from immunocompromised individuals who cannot attend church services without contracting a lethal infection, to some individuals on the Autism spectrum who cannot attend physical services because they will be overstimulated, to individuals with crippling social anxiety who cannot be around large groups of people, and so on. It also includes those for whom church buildings are sites of trauma, and having the ability to attend services from the security of their own homes provides them with a level of control that allows them to participate.
All of these kinds of examples speak to how digital technologies enable levels of accessibility, empowerment, and control that ensure that more members of the Body of Christ are able to participate. It also speaks to the diversity of ways in which people encounter God, fellowship, and worship – a beautiful picture of the different functions we all serve in the Body of Christ and of our individual uniqueness. The scholastics called this property that individuates us and makes us unique, haecceity. The philosophical theologian, John E. Hare, associates this unique-making or individuating property of haecceity with the promise in Revelation 2:17 that God will give each person a white stone upon which is written “a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it” (NRSV). A recognition of another’s haecceity, then, involves an appreciation of how a particular individual is loved by God in all of their uniqueness.[1] Since “God’s call to us is to grow into this individual character”,[2] the soteriological upshot is that our work is also to help one another grow into their individual character – and this involves leveraging all of the resources at our disposal (including digital technologies), to help others grow into their individual character.
Those who benefit from physical interactions and physical worship services ought not impose their way of being in the world upon those who are differently embodied in the world, such as by refusing hybrid church formats that enable people to attend virtually as well as in person. Consider the picture painted in 1 Corinthians 12, where we are told that “…as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as He chose…” (v 18), and that within this arrangement, we all have need of one another. Those who are in positions of power and worldly honor may think that they are self-subsistent, but actually “…the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable” (v 22). Indeed, “…God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another” (v 24-5). 1 Corinthians 12 clearly paints a picture in which we are to care for everyone equally. We already care for those who are embodied in the world in ways that benefit from our normal church services and activities; consequently, in order to care for all members equally, we must “give the greater honor” to those members who have different needs.
While digital spaces give levels of much needed accessibility, empowerment, and control to some members, it can afford an undesirable level of control for others. Familiar to many of us are the Zoom calls in which individuals have carefully curated their presentation – meticulously arranged backgrounds (even virtual backgrounds) of heavily stocked and perfectly organized bookshelves, three-piece suits (while wearing pajama bottoms, just out of the video frame), or ‘beautification’ video filters that smooth out facial blemishes. This level of control over our own presentation to the world completely removes the kind of vulnerability and messiness that is required for true Christian communion.
To illustrate what I mean, I am reminded of one Sunday in particular in the pre-pandemic world, in October 2019. It was two days before my PhD dissertation was due, and I was a complete mess because I was rushing to meet the deadline. I slipped into St. Edward King and Martyr very late – only just in time for the sermon. Amidst the usual tweed and clerical collars of the congregation, I sported the black Golden State Warriors hoodie and dirty shorts that I’d been wearing for the past week straight (it had been about that long since last I’d showered). I was a complete mess – and to top it off, I was limping because I’d broken my leg two weeks beforehand. If I had been attending church virtually that week, I undoubtedly would have had my camera off or at least curated a video representation that was much less alarming. But that Sunday, in person, the church had me at my worst (and smelliest) – a complete and utter wreck.
The important thing is that I couldn’t hide where I was really at – and everyone else couldn’t help but notice. Many people checked on me, offered help, or assured me of their prayers. Proverbs 12:25 observes that, “Anxiety weighs down the human heart, but a good word cheers it up.” Inhabiting that space physically made my anxiety physically present to everyone else there – it was embodied in how I looked, smelled, walked (or tried to), talked, and gesticulated – which offered them the chance to recognize it and offer the support that they could. When virtual spaces are used to give us a level of control that crowds out vulnerability, we prevent our brothers and sisters from seeing our messiness, and consequently crowd out opportunities for grace – for God to meet us through them.
This points at the resolution to the first antinomy: caring for the “weakest” members means that we must figure out how to make our worship and togetherness as accessible as possible for everyone – this will require all of our time, resources, financing, technological know-how, flexibility, and our creativity. But what could possibly be more worthwhile than spending all of ourselves to ensure that our brothers and sisters are able to worship with us? At the same time, we need to ensure that we do not avail ourselves of digital technology merely for the sake of control or convenience – we need to create space for vulnerability and for others to see us in all of our messiness.
Antinomy 2: Social Connection vs Abuse
Virtual spaces hold tremendous possibilities for social connection – individuals dispersed around the world are able to worship, pray, and study Scripture together. Some of my friends and I have benefitted enormously from this amidst the explosion of violent hate crimes and racism against Asians since the pandemic,[3] as many of us found ourselves cut off from communities with whom we could process our anger and anxiety, and our own more banal, quotidian experiences of racism. Through virtual conferences, online prayer groups, and digital resources – such as those offered by the Center for Asian American Christianity and the Asian American Christian Collaborative – I found space to learn, listen, process, and pray with an Asian American community from which I was cut off (due to my living abroad). Some of the events brought in over a thousand people from around the world, and included prominent pastors and some of the top scholars working in Asian American theology. These digital spaces connected a community that was able to create and find space together to grieve, rage, forgive, heal, and safeguard the motivation to keep working for the repair of the world.
Relatedly, virtual spaces also provide opportunities for marginalized and oppressed communities to worship together with churches in more privileged locations. This allows for a very real sense of the believers around the globe praying and working for one’s liberation, and can also serve to inform and encourage those churches in more privileged locations. Such spaces allow for a powerful sense of solidarity between very different and dispersed communities, and facilitates the process by which “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it” (1 Cor. 12:26). In this way, such virtual spaces can facilitate a kind of shadow or pre-figuring of the eschaton, in which all tribes and peoples and languages worship together at the feet of the Lamb (Rev. 7:9).
Virtual spaces have also provided new opportunities for (literally) getting ‘plugged into’ church. One of the major challenges of moving to a new place is the challenges of having to shop around with attending different churches until one finds the right one. Virtual services and virtual meet-and-greets much streamlined the process when I moved to Oxford, as I was able to more easily fit in attending services and events at churches to figure out which would be a good fit. This was especially helpful, as it also meant that we were able to suss out a few of the red flags of some of these churches, from the safety of our own home.[4] It also afforded the opportunity to ‘church shop’ on behalf of others: the ability to attend virtual services allowed me to help my sister find a church, quickly settling on Redeemer Community Church, which has been called “the best kept secret in all of San Francisco.”[5]
Additionally, many individuals find that it is easier for them to interact with others when they interact in digitally mediated ways. We’ve already discussed how digital mediation provides a level of control and separation that some with certain types of social anxiety find makes it easier to connect with others. As another example, sentiment analysis software can help those with impairments in their emotional processing abilities to better connect with those around them.
Amidst the many recent investigations and reports that have brought to light large-scale patterns of abuse in most major denominations,[6] it seems that one potential advantage of virtual spaces would be that they could be leveraged to safeguard vulnerable individuals from the kind of abuse that so frequently happens in physical spaces. While certain digital tools may be leveraged to make digital spaces safer (e.g. algorithms that scan for key phrases or pornography), there are also a host of ways in which virtual spaces can open up new opportunities for abuse. The opportunities for abuse include both abuse within the digital world (e.g. simulations of sexual assault of a child’s avatar,[7] online verbal abuse) and abuse online that facilitates abuse in the offline world, such as the many examples of individuals who have been groomed or radicalized online. These latter kinds of cases attest to the ways in which vulnerable individuals’ connection to their smart devices provide opportunities for abusers to insert themselves into more and more areas of their victims’ lives.
Consequently, alongside leveraging digital spaces to connect believers around the globe, creating spaces for grieving communities to come together, facilitating finding the right church, and helping believers for whom it is crucial to be able to interact with others in digitally mediated ways, we must also ensure that our digital spaces safeguard against abuse. This will involve utilizing and developing digital technologies and processes that can protect the vulnerable in these spaces (e.g. algorithms that trigger alerts when certain words are used, parents limiting who their children can connect with and talk to online), but much of it will simply involve doing all of the hard work of which the church has been negligent – greater accountability for (and oversight of) those in positions of power, accountability for those who have committed abuse in the past (rather than simply moving them on to other communities),[8] and so on. Of all of the antinomies in this article, this is the one that worries me the most – the church has a horrific track record of safeguarding people in physical spaces, and it will take a high level of vigilance and commitment to ensure their safety in virtual spaces, as well.
Antinomy 3: Spirit vs Embodiment
I mentioned in the last section that I started virtually attending services at Redeemer Community Church SF because I was looking for a church for my sister; however, my wife and I have continued to worship there because of their radical approach to social justice, vocation, and community. Being able to participate in their services (and however peripherally in their community) has been an indispensable supplement to our Oxford church experience, for the season we are in. Being able to be somewhat ‘embedded’ in aspects of their life, through their hybrid worship services, has brought us challenge, encouragement, and deep joy in the work God is doing through them on the other side of the world.[9] This ‘embedding,’ though, involves a kind of absence in body, yet presence in spirit (not unlike Paul’s description of his relationship to the Churches in Colossae and Corinth, in Col. 2:5 and 1 Cor. 5:3, respectively).
Nevertheless, despite the joy of being present with others “in spirit,” there is still an irreducible longing to be present in body as well (Paul attests to his desire to be physically present to the churches in Rom 1:13 and 1 Thess 2:18). The desire to be only present in spirit would involve a kind of misguided gnosticism – we are made embodied and made to be embodied; consequently, the goods that God has made available to us are most fully received through our bodies. Indeed, Aquinas observes that “...there is such a natural love between the soul and the body that the soul never desires to be separated from the body, nor the body from the soul: not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed (2 Cor 5:4).”[10] Because of this “natural love” between soul and body, when we are present in spirit with others, we long to be present in body, as well – and the goods accessible through communal fellowship and worship reach their fullest form when we are present in both body and spirit.
Consequently, while virtual church does allow new opportunities and possibilities for being present “in spirit,” our bodies still long to be physically present, as well. For this reason, virtual church cannot (all other things being equal) be a replacement for embodied interactions. Of course, there will be certain mitigating situations (such as those I have mentioned earlier), but this is why it is crucial that we curate hybrid spaces in which those who are able to attend physically can be with one another in spirit and body, and those unable to attend in body can attend in spirit. In these hybrid spaces, the Body of Christ can include and connect everyone in ways sensitive to how they are differently embodied in the world – and so that those present in body can in their being together hold space for those who cannot be.
Antinomy 4: Aesthetic Imagination vs Idolatrous Engineering of Experience
Imagery and sensory experiences have been used throughout the history of the church to engage our imaginations and bodies into deeper worship, understanding, and experience. Consider how Israelite and Jewish families read the narrative of the Exodus as part of the Passover observance, to engage their imaginations about the story of the flight from Egypt – and through reading it, find themselves within the story. Similarly, the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises instruct in how to imaginatively read the Gospels so that one feels as if they are actually experiencing the events being described. Art and other enhancers of spiritual experience are also widely used, and range from stained glass windows and artwork depicting Bible stories, to incense that represents (or instantiates) the prayers of the faithful rising to the Father.
The virtual world, in not following the physical limitations of the real world, provides novel opportunities for engaging the imagination and inducing experiences. With the recent shift by many tech companies to focus on the ‘metaverse,’ many tech companies are looking to leverage virtual spaces for religious practice, worship, and experience. Indeed, one of Facebook (Meta)’s post-pandemic aims is to encourage “churches, mosques, synagogues and others to embed their religious life into its platform.”[11] There are already virtual reality experiences that allow you to experience the life of Christ in first-person.[12] While some might decry the commercialization or ‘video-gamification’ of the central events of the Christian faith, it is worth reflecting first on whether such experiences are, in principle, different from the ways the church has traditionally engaged imaginatively with Scripture, such as through storytelling, the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, and art.
Consider how many traditions hold that icons can mediate our experience of Christ (or of the saints). They hold that the physical material of the icon (the signifier) mediates the experience of Christ or the saint that is signified by it (the signified). Consider, then, a virtual reality experience of the crucifixion (see fn viii): there is still the physical material of the screen (the signifier) which mediates the experience of the crucifixion that is signified by it (the signified). It seems that the difference is that while the representation depicted by the icon remains fixed (e.g. in depicting the crucifixion), the screen is capable of displaying anything. It seems that our reticence to grant the VR experience the same iconographical status as the painting of the crucifixion is largely that the painting’s representation remains fixed, while the screen’s representation does not. This reticence, to me, seems well founded as the screen could also be used to display pretty much anything else – there is nothing about the screen that fixes its meaning, and this seems to be a problem for an account that would place it on the kind of level as more traditional, physical icons.
But perhaps I’ve identified the wrong locus of analysis – perhaps even though the screen remains unfixed, the program that makes it up (which is stored on the hard drive) does remain fixed. This introduces, however, a second level of mediation: the physical chips on the drive mediate the VR experience (they are the signifiers of the VR experience), which itself mediates the crucifixion (the event signified by the VR experience, which is the signified). The physical hard drive, therefore, mediates the thing that mediates the thing signified; icons, however, only mediate the thing signified. Perhaps this second level of mediation does not provide an issue for iconography, though. On the one hand, we might think that each additional layer of mediation gets one further from the thing signified; but on the other hand, one might also think that the divine agency is able to work through these layers of mediation in a way that means that additional mediation does not equate to additional spiritual distance. Indeed, consider how someone could take a photo of Michelangelo’s Pietà and then pray before that photo – this would also involve two levels of mediation, as the photo signifies the sculpture in the Vatican, which signifies the thing represented (Christ crucified). The problem is that it would also make sense to speak of the photo as signifying Christ crucified – thereby cutting out the intervening level of mediation. I take it, however, that it would not make sense to make the same move for the hard drive and directly speak of it as signifying the crucifixion (but perhaps others have differing intuitions here). In any case, I leave open the thorny metaphysical issues at work here – perhaps it is possible that digital representations and experiences can serve the same function iconographically as paintings and statues do.
My bigger goal in raising these iconographical issues, rather than solving these metaphysical questions, is to point to how we ought to approach digital representations and experiences. Just as icons, as signifiers, cannot replace the signified that they represent, so too is it the case that our digital technologies cannot replace the experiences and encounters they are meant to supplement. If one so loves one’s icons that they are praying to the icons themselves, rather than to the Christ that is represented by them, then one has inverted the relationship of signified and signifier – this is idolatry. Similarly, if one finds that one is praying to the digital representation or experience, they are likewise committing idolatry.
Relatedly, there are also issues of dependence: while art and sensory experiences can enhance our religious practice and worship, we cannot become dependent on them. If one can only commune with Christ through an icon, or pray with incense, or celebrate the Eucharist with a particular wine, then this indicates that one has become too dependent on the signifiers. This is not necessarily idolatry; however, it has given the signifier too much power.
My deep concern here is that a host of well-funded and resourced user-experience researchers and psychologists are being given reams of funding, personal data, and the opportunity to run countless experiments in our digital spaces.[13] This provides them with the ability to curate digital spaces that maximize our individual engagement through leveraging insights about general human psychology and about our individual psychologies (through profiling, based off of our individual personal data). The issue is that our worship in digital spaces may be so tailored to engage our attention and emotions, that they may easily divert us from deeper, spiritual engagement – or we may become dependent upon these digital experiences. Consider how some individuals worship in mega-churches whose services feature lasers, large rock bands, and fog machines, but then the individuals find that they struggle to worship in the absence of these things. How much of their religious experience was enhanced through these features, and how much of it was engineered by these features? Where the engineering is particularly effective, at which point were they no longer there for Jesus, but for the rock concert? My concern is that UX researchers, with all of these psychological insights and with our personal data, may be able to so effectively engineer our religious experiences, that the experiences may become largely divorced from what is ostensibly signified in these experience. There will, of course, be ways in which digital spaces can enhance rather than engineer religious worship, practice, and experiences, but this will involve developing and curating these spaces through a much different process than is used in typical UX research, as there are other considerations at play (e.g. making space for vulnerability, for the Spirit to move, etc.).
Conclusion
I hope that these four antinomies provide a helpful starting point for a framework for thinking about why hybrid spaces are the future of the church – and why we ought not get rid of them. At the very least, I think that they show how one of the few (or only) gifts of the pandemic was that it brought new voices to the fore – the voices of those who are differently embodied in our world, and aren’t as well served by the ways in which we typically inhabit and worship in physical spaces. It is imperative that we continue to figure out how to leverage digital technology to empower these individuals – it is crucial for their ability to flourish, worship, and grow into their haecceity, but it is also critical for the rest of us, since we are diminished as we fail to serve, support, and learn from those members of the Body of Christ who are called “indispensable.”
There is a final note of caution worth mentioning, for those who are sympathetic to the overall argument provided here. If one’s church is moving toward offering hybrid forms of worship on a more permanent basis, it will require vigilance to ensure that those who are not attending in person are still included in embodied ways. It may well be easy to overlook those who are only able to participate in digitally-mediated ways, or to assume that they are finding virtual participation sufficient and need or desire nothing further. Indeed, while those who must use the virtual mode of hybrid corporate worship may have some different embodied needs from others, they still need embodied interactions and worship in some form, because they are embodied beings. Consequently, hybrid formats necessitate a deeper sensitivity to the needs of those who are attending corporate worship virtually, and pathways must be set up that are responsive to their needs and that provide additional modes of embodied interaction. For instance, even if someone is immunocompromised or suffers from trauma that keeps them from being able to participate in full-congregation worship, there may be ways in which members of the congregation or the pastors/priests may be able to offer them smaller (even individual) in-person spaces for support, worship, prayer, counsel, and celebration of the Eucharist. The critical practice of believers and priests visiting and supporting shut-ins and those who cannot physically attend large corporate gatherings must continue and not be overlooked as we move to hybrid formats. Matthew 25 puts this particularly starkly, when Jesus explains how at the Final Judgment, part of the criteria for determining one’s consignment to “eternal life” or to “eternal punishment” (v 46) will involve whether one has visited the sick and taken care of them, and visited those in prison (v 36, 43).[14] Finding ways to be sensitive to and meet the embodied needs and desires of such individuals is a critical task for the hybrid church – and indeed, of working out our own salvation.
In closing, it is worth recalling the healing of the paralytic, which is depicted in all three of the synoptic Gospels (Mt 9:1-8, Mk 2:1-12, Lk 5:17-26). In this story, the paralytic’s friends desire to bring him before Jesus, and yet they are constrained by both features of the way that he is differently embodied in the world (his paralysis) and by features of the situation (the house that Jesus is in is crowded). The men respond to both of these constraints creatively, by dismantling the roof and lowering the man through the roof to Jesus. These men would stop at nothing to bring their friend before Christ – and we are told in all three Gospels that Christ honors the faith that they display (Mt 9:2, Mk 2:5, Lk 5:20) by forgiving the man’s sins and healing him. This story shows the kind of love and faith that we ought to emulate – one that stops at nothing to enable those who are differently embodied in the world to come before Christ (even if we have to do some structural engineering to lower a man through a roof or install some video cameras for a hybrid service), one that is creative in using all of the resources at our disposal (whether it’s using someone’s bed to lower them through a roof or using new digital technologies to make services more accessible), and one which Christ will honor by using it to sanctify us and our beloved brothers and sisters.
About the Author
Dr Matthew Kuan Johnson is a philosopher at the University of Oxford who works on empathy & moral imagination, AI ethics, virtue theory, embodiment & philosophy of mind, and Asian Multiracial Theology. In 2020, the Journal of Positive Psychology dedicated a special issue to his work on joy. He holds a PhD in Philosophy and an MPhil in Social & Developmental Psychology from the University of Cambridge (where he was a Gates Cambridge Scholar) and a BA in Cognitive Science from Yale University. Previously, he has consulted for Google AI, was a contributing scholar at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, was an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University, and has taught at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge.
Notes
[1] J. E. Hare, God’s Command (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 145-6.
[2] J. E. Hare, God’s Call: Moral Realism, God’s Commands, & Human Autonomy (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001), 77.
[3] Asian American hate crimes increased by 339% in 2021 compared to the previous year; NAPAWF found that in 2021, 74% of AAPI women reported experiencing racism or discrimination, 1 in 10 AAPI women reported experiencing physical violence due to their gender and/or race, and 38% reported experiencing sexual harassment that year.
[4] For example, during one of the virtual meet-and-greets, one of the audience members asked which leadership roles women were barred from holding in the church. The pastor answered in a way that obfuscated the fact that women could not serve in a particular leadership position. When I later emailed him to ask why his answer seemed to suggest that women could hold any position of leadership, when that would conflict with the official line of the denomination to which his church belonged, he conceded that I was correct. Even though my wife and I were looking for a non-complementarian church, the red flag here was not so much their doctrinal position as the fact that the pastor’s answer was so misleading that it revealed a concerning level of pastoral insensitivity.
[5] Jonathan Tran, Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 158.
[6] See e.g. Baptist Church; Catholic Church; Church of England; Methodist.
[8] The practice is widespread in many denominations including the Catholic Church, Church of England, and Southern Baptist Churches.
[9] For more information about Redeemer’s unique approach, you can watch this short documentary or read Jonathan Tran’s Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism, which contains an ethnography about their community.
[10] Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John 9-21 (Latin-English Opera Omnia), (ed.) The Aquinas Institute & (trans.) Fr. Fabian R. Larcher (Lander, WY: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2013), 509.
[13] These are known as ‘A-Not-B tests,’ and UX researchers are running them constantly without our knowledge – if you look closely, you may sometimes notice small changes in the interface for a digital platform you are using, but that the changes later disappear. This probably meant you were in an A-Not-B test, and UX researchers were measuring how the changes affected your use of the platform.
[14] I am grateful for the peer reviewers who suggested that this paragraph be added and who noted the relevance of the Matthew 25 verse.