Tyranny of the Expert

Christian teaching for the denominator population is a powerful force for health. If Churches were more obedient, it would be an even more powerful force. The medical profession needs the input from the Church to clean up its act, to put its powerful tools into the right perspective, to make sure that our methods are harnessed to the right questions. While science pretends to abhor the method of authority, and tells tales about the bad old days in which medicine kow-towed to authorities who did not do experiments, we still live in an authoritarian system. The authorities tell us not only that the only method of any real use is the "scientific method," they also insist on casting the questions in materialistic terms only, throwing revelational epistemology off the playing field.

They are applying their epistemology where it does not legitimately apply, to normative issues. We have a "tyranny of the expert," who knows much more than we do, yet who does not see that the depth of vision has been gained at the substantial cost of a breadth of vision. The Church can restore the breadth of view to illness and health, can reclaim the validity of the method of revelation, and pitch out the method of natural science from its stolen territory.

Medicine has become somewhat like the man who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. There is a need for a generalist -- not speaking here of a medical generalist, which I am, though that is true, -- but of someone who has the whole person in view, -- in the context of the family, church and society, as well as a time span that extends beyond a six year follow-up study. We need someone to have a view all the way to the deathbed and to eternity beyond. Medicine demands now an illegitimate thing of its practitioners -- that we give up our general office of believer and priest in order to become a body mechanic. The body mechanic image is a very dangerous one for medicine.


Excerpts from Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers