[Jesus\u2019 cures for medical illnesses] are all miraculous, and the same power was granted to the apostles\u2014”power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.” And more than this, not only the blind received their sight, the lame walked, the lepers were cleansed, the deaf heard, but even the dead were raised up. No question of the mandate. He who went about doing good was a physician of the body as well as of the soul, and could the rich promises of the Gospel have been fulfilled, there would have been no need of a new dispensation of science.<\/p>\n
-William Osler, The Evolution of Modern Medicine<\/em><\/p>\n When I speak of “drawing valid inferences” or “making legal moves” in a language game, you should not automatically think that these inferences and moves could simply be made by anyone in the linguistic community. For example, in Foucault’s scenario, the patient’s submission to the psychiatrist’s authority is by no means enhanced by his ability to reason exactly as the psychiatrist would about his condition. On the contrary, such “simulations” of rational discourse would tend to underscore the depth and complexity of the patient’s mental disorder. Thus, not only must a psychiatric diagnosis be articulated according to a fixed set of rules, but it must also be articulated by someone who has been authorized to issue a diagnosis of that kind. And so, it is crucial to the patient’s having submitted to the psychiatrist’s authority that he remain silent while the psychiatrist speaks on his behalf.<\/p>\n -Steve Fuller, Social Epistemology<\/em><\/p>\n The first passage above illustrates the historical, zero-sum displacement of religious authority by science with regards to how we ought to behave and to whom we ought to look for such instruction. \u00a0The second passage above illustrates the asymmetrical nature of scientific authority as it exists within society today.\u00a0 Before continuing I first must say that 1) I think and hope that we all treat modern medicine with the amount of respect that it has clearly earned and 2) I have no intention of pitting medical science against scriptural religion.\u00a0 I do, however, want to use our modern deference to the authority of medical science to illustrate the nature of priesthood authority.<\/p>\n For starters, I would like to emphasize the modern nature of medical science, it being a very recent product of the 19th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 While there have been moderate exceptions to the following claim, the pre-modern responsibility for healthcare has by and large been primarily \u2013 often exclusively – a religious one.\u00a0 Before being appropriated by the modern, secular state, medicine and healthcare within the western world revolved very much around Catholic Church and the protestant churches that grew out of it.\u00a0 This tradition of church taking primary responsibility for the health of its people survives in the typically religious names of hospitals (St. Judes, etc.) as well as the humanitarian approach to missionary work (that is notably absent within the 19th<\/sup> Century religion of Mormonism).<\/p>\n Even prior to the Catholic Church, however, responsibility for the general health of the community was a religious one, especially within the Hebraic tradition.\u00a0 While the Bible does not explicitly refer to witchdoctors or shamans, the same elements are all to be found within both the Old and New Testaments.\u00a0 There was no important distinction between ritual and hygienic washings; between cooking and eating Kosher, dietary guidelines, fasting and other such \u201cwords of wisdom\u201d; between illness, insanity, possession by evil spirits and evil-doing.\u00a0 The prophet\/priest\/shaman was *the* authority regarding a communities \u201cwell-being\u201d in the broadest sense of that term.<\/p>\n We can get a further feel for the authority of these priesthood leaders by taking a brief look at the medical aspects of that same authority that medical professionals wield within our own secular community today.\u00a0 The main point I wish to make here is that the differences between the authority of secular medical professionals and the prophets of old is much more a difference in the scope of their authoritative domains\/stewardships than it is a difference in kind.\u00a0 Contrary to what much of our intuitions might tell us, medical professionals today are not solely, or even primarily charged with helping isolated individuals by giving them \u201cmedical advice\u201d which we are free to head at our own discretion.\u00a0 Rather, the authority of a medical doctor very much revolves around what he or she says about the sanity, physical capacity, contagiosity, etc. of an individual or some course of action to others people within the community, including but not limited to employers, social services, juries, legislators, society in general, etc. \u00a0Physicians are thus authorized to \u201crepresent\u201d and speak in the place of their patients to the rest of the community in an asymmetric and unilateral sense such that, to some degree, the patient no longer has any legitimate voice of their own. \u00a0If the patient says that they were in no state of mind, or were not physically capable of committing some act or performing some task, but their physician says that they were, the relevant community believes the latter rather than the former.<\/p>\n This is the exact authority that priesthood leaders wield over their own religious communities within the scriptures.\u00a0 In the same way that graduation and the bestowal of a title of \u201cPh.D.\u201d sets a doctor apart from the rest of society and authorizes him or her to trump the words of his or her patient within some vaguely defined limits, the calling and ordination also sets apart a priesthood leader from the rest of their congregation as a \u201cshepherd\u201d and allows them to trump the words of his \u201csheep\u201d within some vaguely defined limits.\u00a0 What is absolutely crucial within both cases is that merely following the proper rules within some relevant case is entirely insufficient to authoritative speaking on the case.\u00a0 No amount of searching through Web M.D. or the Bible will, in and of itself, ever authorize somebody in the relevant sense: the actual ceremony by which the authority is set apart is absolutely indispensable.<\/p>\n There is, however, a crucial difference between the two cases that is very much worth pointing out \u2013 other than the previously mentioned scope of their stewardship.\u00a0 While there is a strong connection between a rigorous and well-articulated familiarity with the rules of medicine and the graduation to the status of doctor, the same cannot be said for the ordination priesthood leaders.\u00a0 This is especially true within the Mormon tradition.\u00a0 A prophet or priest is called by God through the spirit of prophecy that is very often totally beyond articulation or rational defense.\u00a0 It is precisely this strong disconnect between publicly articulable reasons and authoritative stewardship that places the pre-modern faith of traditional religious values at irreconcilable odds with the modern reason modern reason of secular values.