Knight

The Minister as Healer, the Healer as Minister
Author(s): James A. Knight

Source: Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Summer, 1982), pp. 100-114
Published by: Springer
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Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 21, No. 2, Summer 1982
The Minister as Healer, the

Healer as Minister
JAMES A. KNIGHT
ABSTRACT: A major task of the minister is that of healer, and with the healing task come some
special opportunities. These relate to the therapy of the word, awakening in all the tragic sense of
life, an identity with the wounded healer, distinguishing between healing and curing, and
accepting the medical education enterprise as a patient. The healer as minister broadens the
healing community into a priesthood of all believers. Further, our rich heritage of healing is
anchored in the biblical tradition, and a study of this will show a similarity between ancient and
modern healing.
The term ministry comes from the Latin word for service. Thus, minister is
defined as servant?one who waits upon or ministers to the needs of another.
As the New Testament word for "servant" (diakonos), it has its origin in
Jesus' work, expressed in the statement: "The Son of man came not to be
ministered unto but to minister" (Mark 10:45).
Although the facets of ministry are many and varied,1 the minister as healer
has seldom been better described than in Thomas Fuller's tribute to William
Perkins in 1642: "An excellent surgeon at the jointing of a broken soul and at
easing a doubtful conscience."2
In speaking as a healer, we emphasize
of the minister the minister's vocation
as a healing one. A healing vocation may encompass, but it also extends
beyond, scientific technology to include a quality of mystery?the gift of
healing. This quality is tied to charismatic authority.
To comprehend the full dimension of charismatic authority, one should
reflect on the definition of charisma: spiritual power and virtue attributed to a
person who is regarded as set apart from the ordinary?set apart by reason of
a special relation to that which is considered of ultimate value.
The minister and the doctor are the two professionals who have managed to
keep their charismatic authority, although other professionals have sought it
and perhaps held it briefly in history. Many in our society fear that as both
minister and doctor become more closely associated with governmental
agencies and institutions, they will become civil servants and lose their
James A. Knight, B.D., M.D., is Professor of Psychiatry, LSU School of Medicine, New
Orleans, Louisiana, and Director of the Liaison-Consultation Service in Psychiatry at Charity
Hospital of New Orleans.
This article is based on a paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Ministers in Medical
Education of the Society for Health and Human Values, D.C., October 23-26, 1980.
Washington,
0022-4197/82/1400-0100802.75 100 ?1982 Institutes of Religion and Health
James A. Knight 101
charismatic authority. In other words, the minister and doctor w?l endure not
as mediators of the mysteries of Ufe and death, but as civil service technicians
in the health enterprise.
Such a prediction is partly nonsense because of the priestly dimension of
both the minister's and doctor's roles. In our culture, especiaUy in matters of
health, charismatic authority has to do with the possib?ity of death in any
iUness, which accounts for the seriousness of the heaUng endeavor. Also, too
many unknown or unknowable factors exist in ?lness to depend entirely on
technical skiU for the restoration of wholeness. In heaUng, technical skiU is
accompanied by factors not easUy assessed, such as timing, quality, blending,
intuitive insights, and exquisite awareness of the right moment for
intervention. Thus, heaUng deals with powerful and mysterious forces that are
not completely amenable to reason. In the heaUng endeavor, then, ministers
function in their priestly role and doctors retain a great deal of their original
priestly role.
The human condition that led to charismatic authority is stiU with us.
Because of the fra?ty of mortal flesh, we ascribe to the minister, as weU as the
doctor, a special more-than-human authority, in the hope that he or she w?l
intervene successfully on our behalf should we faU iU.
No matter what changes occur in society, ministers and doctors need not
fear the loss of charismatic authority, as long as they hold to the source of
their authority: the conscientious concern for the weU-being of those for whom
they care; a receptivity to their silent "Don't let me die"; and the
plea,
unbroken promise that they w?l wage an unrelenting battle against death or
crippUng in the patient's behalf. With such a commitment, one's charismatic
authority cannot be interfered with, but w?l be vaUdated and renewed da?y
throughout one's Ufe.
Minister as healer
A major task of the minister is that of healer, and with the heaUng task come
some special opportunities. These relate to the
special opportunities therapy of
the word, awakening in aU an awareness of the tragic sense of Ufe, an identity
with the wounded healer, distinguishing between healing and curing, and
accepting the medical education enterprise as a patient.
The therapy of the word. Such terms as "the therapy of the word" and "the
alchemy of the word" are rich in meaning and also lead us to ask about the
"word" in the bibUcal tradition. Proverbs states the issue clearly: "The tongue
that brings heaUng is a tree of Ufe." The minister as healer cannot be
understood fully apart from the therapy of the word.
In a recent address, Daniel C. Tosteson, Dean of the Harvard Medical
School, stated that as technology in medicine becomes more refined, the
character of the tongue [word] of those who care for the sick w?l play a greater
role in heaUng.3
French poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) has given us a powerful term,
"Alchemy of the Word." Rimbaud saw language as a sacred value, a set of
102 Journal of Religion and Health
magical spells, aimed at changing life. He spoke of transcending Christianity

through more charity and through acceptance of the body, as well as of the
soul, as vessels of the new truth.4
The Persians distinguished the "word-doctor" from the "herb-doctor" and
the "knife-doctor." About the "word-doctor" the Persians said, "This one is
the best of all healers who deal with the Holy Word, and he will best drive
away sickness from the body of the faithful."6
In a learned book, The Therapy of the Word in Classical Antiquity, Pedro
Lain Entralgo traces the gradual refinement of the ideas of the Greeks
concerning the use of the word for therapy.6 Early attempts at logotherapy
included not only the incantations of magic but also the more acceptable
"cheering speech" of Homer. In the Homeric epic, one can collect data on the
use of the word for curative purposes. A careful reading of the Iliad and the
Odyssey reveals that the uttering of words on the occasion of human illness
takes three forms, each different from the others: the prayer, the magic charm,
and the suggestive, cheering speech. It is not surprising, then, that some
conceived the idea of applying the persuasive word "technically" to the curing
of certain maladies.
Plato states that the suggestive or persuasive word can be called a charm
whenever it is a beautiful speech (logos kalos) and when, as a result of being
such, it produces in the soul sophrosyne?a. beautiful, harmonious, and rightful
ordering of all the ingredients of the psychic life (beliefs, feelings, impulses,
knowledge, thoughts, and value judgments). How is this achieved? By organ
izing the contents of the soul around the axis of its beliefs or by eliciting in it
new beliefs and persuasions more noble than the old.7 Plato designates this re
organizing and enlightening process of the persuasive word as katharsis.
The harmonious and rightful ordering of all the ingredients of the psychic
life (sophrosyne) is of medical importance from a twofold point of view: it pro
duces beneficial somatic effects and it is a contingent condition for efficacy of
medications. Accordingly, the knowledge of physicians would not be "techni
cally" complete if physicians were unable to produce this harmony and inte
gration in the souls (sophrosyne) of their patients. Thereby, the therapy of the
word acquires intellectual justification in the healing of the sick.
The therapeutic power of the word was understood by physicians, philoso
phers, poets, and dramatists of ancient Greece, from Homer through Hippoc
rates, Plato, and Aristotle. Yet a dominant trait of Western medicine has been
its strongly somatic orientation. Western medicine, throughout most of its
history, has disregarded the power of the word in the treatment of human
illness and placed its faith in treatments such as surgical procedures, drugs,
and diets.
This dominant trait in Western medicine had its origin in the naturalistic
medicine of classical Greece, roughly speaking in the fifth century B.C.
Healers in preclassical Greece employed alone, or in combination with other
forms of treatment, the therapeutic power of the word. The outlines of Greek
natural science became discernible, and in the fifth century Hippocratic medi
cine appeared. To achieve its scientific naturalism, Hippocratic medicine had
first to reject the old verbal therapy. Medicine or healing for the Hippocratic
James A. Knight 103
physicians became the "mute art," as Virgil was later to call it. Acts, not
words, were used to treat ?lness. Hippocratic physicians were concerned with
the nature of the body (soma), and not with divine or daemonic powers or with
the soul of the patient.
The question has been asked, "Was a flaw already discernible in the weU-laid
foundations of Greek medicine as early as the fifth century B.C.?" Probably
so, for in the Charmides of Plato the physicians of Greece are said to be
wanting in an appreciation of the significance of the whole and deficient in the
treatment of those ailments brought on the body by the soul.8 A young man,
Charmides, in one of Plato's dialogues, complains about a headache. He wants
a particular drug, but Socrates explains to him at length that this simple treat
ment is not adequate. "To treat the head by itself, apart from the body as a
whole," he says, "is utter folly." The ideal approach had been described to him
(Socrates) by a Thracian physician:
You ought not to attempt to cure eyes

Without head,
Or head without body,
So you should not treat body
without soul.
As Lain Entralgo shows clearly, Hippocratic physicians were acquainted

with thefar-reaching changes in the body that might be produced by emo
tional disturbances. At the same time, while aware of the emotional factors,
they used treatments that were somatic.9 Although they knew that words
could and should be used on occasion to suggest, cheer, exhort, and persuade,
they had no technique of verbal therapy.
In general, it can be stated that Western physicians recognized clearly that
disturbances of the mind or soul could and did cause many kinds of bod?y dis
turbances, alone or in combination with other factors. Yet they held that their
business was to treat the body, and that the mind or soul was not within their
province. Thus, for centuries, the canon of medical studies that became
estabUshed in the universities of Europe was essentially that laid down by
Galen, who reUed mainly on Hippocratic sources. Unt? the introduction of
psychiatry into the medical curriculum within the past century, it remained in
principle unchanged.
The tragic sense of life. This task relates to awakening, in all the tragic sense
of Ufe, to the inevitab?ity of death. In helping us to be better at this task, we
can learn something from the way of the ancient Greeks. In their sense of the
tragic, the Greeks did show us that pain could exalt, and, in tragedy for a
moment, people a
could have sight of meaning beyond their grasp. Euripides
makes the old Trojan queen say, in her extremity: "Yet had God not turned us
in his hand and cast to earth our greatness, we would have passed away giving
nothing to men. They would have no theme for song in us nor made great
poems from our sorrows."
Edith Hamilton states that in Greek tragedy the figures are simply seen
from afar, parts of a whole that have no beginning and no end, and yet their re
moteness does not diminish their profoundly tragic and individual appeal.10
She goes on to say that there is a masterpiece that can help us understand this
method, the life of Christ, a tragedy after the Greek model. The figure of Christ
is outlined with simplicity, and yet he could not be thought of as a type. The
Gospel writers never let us know what went on within when the words then
recorded were spoken and the deeds they tell of were done. For example, "And
Peter said, man, I know not what thou sayest. And immediately, while he yet
spoke, the cock crew. And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter" (Luke
22:61-62).
The sense of the tragic is described by Hamilton in these moving words:
Our sense of the tragedy of the Gospels does not come from our identifying ourselves
with Christ nor from any sense of deep personal knowledge. He is given to us more
simply drawn than any other character anywhere, and more unmistakable in His indi
viduality than any other. He stands upon the tremendous stage of the conflict of good
and evil for mankind, and we are far removed; we can only watch. This agony is of
another sort from ours. Yet never, by no other spectacle, has the human heart been so
moved to pity and to awe. And after some such fashion the Greek dramatists worked.11
Something here relates to the minister as healer, who in healing does embrace
the tragic sense of life, who in each human being sees humanity, who in each
person sees an individual but one connected with something universal. Thus,
with feeling, acceptance, and suffering, a special dimension is brought to the
life of the patient. Possibly Nietzsche had this dimension in mind when he
spoke of the "reaffirmation of the will to live in the face of death and the joy of
its inexhaustibility when so reaffirmed."
The wounded healer. The minister as healer can be more fully understood when
the archetype of the wounded healer is considered. Healers sometimes give the
impression that weakness, illness, and wounds have nothing to do with them.
The only wounds are those of patients, while they themselves are secure
against them. Patients live in a world completely different from their own.
They then develop into healers without wounds and can no longer constellate
or release the inner healing factor in their patients.
Chiron, the Centaur who taught Aesculapius the healing arts, suffered him
self from incurable wounds. In Babylon a dog-goddess had two names: as Gula
she was death, and as Labartu she was healing. In India, Kali is the goddess of
the pox, as well as its curer. The mythological image of the wounded healer is
widespread and tells us that the patient has a healer within, and the healer a
patient within.12
Henri Nouwen, in The Wounded Healer, reminds us of an old Talmudic
legend that communicates a profound message of what is called for inministry
today.13 The story is of a rabbi who asked the prophet Elijah when the Messiah
would come. Elijah replied that the rabbi should ask the Messiah and
directly
that he would find him sitting at the gates of the city. "How will I know him?"
the rabbi asked. Elijah replied, "He is sitting among the poor covered with
wounds. The others unbind all their wounds at the same time and then bind
them up again. But he unbinds one at a time and binds it up again, to
saying
James A. Knight 105
himself, 'Perhaps I shaU be needed: If so I must always be ready so as not to

delay for a moment.'"
One can find in uterature two fine examples of wounded healers that illumi
nate our discussion at this point. One is Thornton W?der's short story, "The
Angel That Troubled the Waters,"14 and the other is Miguel de Unamuno's
"Don Emmanuel the Good, Martyr."15
W?der's beautiful one-act play is based on the bibUcal story of John 5:1-4.
The play deals with a physician who comes periodicaUy and waits for the
angel, hoping to be the first in the pool of Bethesda and to be healed of his
remorse. The angel appears but blocks the physician just as he is ready to step
into the water and be healed.
Angel' Draw back, physician, this moment is not for you.

Physician: Angehe visitor, I pray thee, Usten to my prayer.
Angel' HeaUng is not for you.
Physician: Surely, surely, the angels are wise. Surely, O Prince, you are not deceived
by my apparent wholeness. Your eyes can see the nets in which my wings are caught;
the sin into which aU my endeavors sink half-performed cannot be concealed from you.
Angel I know....
Physician: Oh, in such an hour was I born, and doubly fearful to me is the flaw inmy
heart. Must I drag my shame, Prince and Singer, aU my days more bowed than my
neighbor?
AngeL Without your wound where would your power be? It is your very remorse that
makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men. The very angels themselves can
not persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being
broken on the wheels of Uving. In Love's service only the wounded soldiers can serve.
Draw back.
[Note: The person who was healed rejoiced in his good fortune and turned to
the physician before and said: ". . .But come with me first, an hour
leaving
only, to my home. My son is lost in dark thoughts. I?I do not understand him,
and only you have ever Ufted his mood. Only an hour. . . since
my daughter,
her child has died, sits in the shadow. She w?l not Usten to us... "]
Unamuno teUs the story of a priest living in a smaU Spanish v?lage, who is
adored by aU the people for his piety and kindness and the majesty with which
he celebrates the mass. To the people, he is already a saint, and they speak of
him as Saint Don Emmanuel. He helps them with their plowing and planting,
tends them when they are sick, hears their confessions, comforts them in
death, and every Sunday, in his rich, thrilUng voice, transports them to para
dise with his chanting. ActuaUy, Don Emmanuel is not so much a saint as he is
a martyr. Long ago his own faith left him. He is an atheist, a good man doomed
to suffer the Ufe of a hypocrite, pretending to a faith he does not reaUy have.
As he raises the chaUce of wine, his hands tremble. A cold sweat pours from
him. He cannot stop, for he knows that the people need this of him and that
their need is greater than his sacrifice. Yet can it not be said that Don
Emmanuel's whole Ufe is a kind of prayer, a song of joy to God? He preserved
hope in those whom he served, when there was no hope within himelf. Could
there be a greater ministry of heaUng?
Unamuno's story of the priest touches the lives of all of us in healing who are
confronted daily with uncertainties and unknowns, with helplessness and
hopelessness, with absurdity and ambiguity. W? can be called absurd
healers?absurd in the existential sense that Albert Camus uses it in The
Myth of Sisyphus, the confrontation of this irrational world with the wild
longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.
Healing is more than curing. To be effective in their work, ministers as healers
must not lose sight of a distinction that priestly forebears made between cur
ing and healing. This distinction was certainly recognized in ancient Greece,
especially at the Temple of Aesculapius.16 Curing involved removing the cause
of disease. Healing involved something more, for it was a treatment of the
whole person, not merely the symptoms. Thus, it involved psychological, re
ligious, physical, and social factors, and the patient could go out from the
temple feeling restored in health. Supervising the process created in the healer
or priest a deep sense of humility. Humility was a part of the tradition,
priestly
of one who was an intermediary between the person and God. The healer was
only an instrument?one who could promise neither cure nor healing.17
The minister as healer has as patient the medical education enterprise. While
this patient needs attention in many areas, two deserve special attention:
(a)medical ethics teaching and (b) the balancing of technology with humanity.
Help in these two areas will contribute greatly to renewal in the medical
education enterprise.
Those coming out of a ministry background have an authentic voice in teach
ing medical ethics. Their biblical knowledge will encourage or lead them to
anchor their teaching and clinical observations regarding ethical issues in
biblical principles. These principles will strike a responsive chord in the
thinking of most medical students and furnish the building blocks for a
reasonable approach to ethical decision making. Students are excited in
finding that principles about which they have some familiarity underlie most
of the codes and oaths in medicine from the time of Hippocrates to the present.
Further, they generally find it easier to learn how to apply the biblical
principles of "whatsoever ye would that others should do to you" than a
modified form of Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative. Ministers' work
has always held them close to the clinical situation. Thus, are more
they likely
to lead the students in addressing the ethical issues directly and seldom in
dulge themselves in the privilege of the philosopher of splitting hairs lovingly.
The minister as healer can help the medical education understand
enterprise
why too much technology and too little humanity has been a recurring theme
in the criticism of medicine for 150 years.
Two philosophical positions, themselves derived from historical forces in
Western European culture, may explain how attitudes toward
discrepant
medicine and physicians have come about:18 (a)mind-body dualism, the doc
trine that separates the psychological and somatic and (b) reductionism, the
view that complex phenomena are derivative from a
ultimately single primary
principle. These two philosophical attitudes have been decisive in determining
that scientific medicine in the West concentrated on the body and not on the
James A. Knight 107
mind, and that disease became conceptuaUzed in somatic and not in psycholog
ical or social terms. They fostered the notion of the body as a machine, of
disease as the consequence of breakdown of the machine, and the doctor's task
as repair of the machine. This view is essentiaUy today's biom?dical model,
which holds that disease ultimately can be reduced to physicochemical events
and treatment to correction of underlying biochemical
derangements.
The emphasis all along has been more on
the technological chaUenges of
treating disease than on the consideration of psychological and social dimen
sions of illness and patienthood. Within the biom?dical estabUshment, the ap
pUcabiUty of the scientific method to the study of psychosocial processes is
viewed with skepticism. The psychosocial is relegated to the category of art
and is deemed neither approachable by scientific study nor capable of being
taught or learned.19
Medical schools have done a poor job in showing or convincing students that
the outcome of their interventions with patients may depend less on their
technical skills than on the quaUty of their relationships with patients and
their knowledge of the patient's Ufe situation.
The healer as minister
The healer as minister is more difficult to address than the minister as healer.
Yet in a religious context meaningful terms rush to mind, such as "Vocatio
Dei" and "priesthood of aU beUevers." We see a divine perspective in our
work. SibUng problems among healers are forgotten when we accept the beUef
that aU heaUng comes from God. ReUgious awe and reverence our
undergird
Ufe and work, and acceptance and forgiveness attend the doctor-patient rela
tionship. Further, we seek and find meaning behind pain and suffering.
Priesthood of all believers and Vocatio Dei. In the concept of healer as
minister, the impUcation is that one functions in this role as a special kind of
servant. In heaUng one is truly a minister, one is set apart because the task is
more than human.
At the same time, such a role is distinctly a part of the bibUcal concept of the
priesthood of
aU beUevers?what certain medieval preachers and mystics
characterized by the impressive term Vocatio Dei, "divine calUng." This af
firmation declared that certain experiences cannot be caUed secular and others
reUgious but that reUgion can and should pervade aU of Ufe. The Vocatio Dei is
a caUing forth of aU of one's capacities and skiUs into worship and work for the
common good, by a power greater than oneself or the world in which one Uves.
It is a reassertion of the ancient premise that worship and work belong
together, that the adoration of God should be integral to everyday Ufe. Thus,
the healer's vocation implies a call. CaUed by whom and to what? The caU is
from God and is a caU to Ufe, to a Ufe of faith and obedience. Whoever we are
and whatever we do, we are ministers of God. As David Maitland has said: "It
is to rescue men, to return them to that Ufe of wholeness in relationship to
Himself, that God extends His call of judgment and mercy."20
A young woman chaplain, Nina Herrmann, on the staff of a children's hospi

tal, has written of a surgeon at her hospital, in a book entitled Go Out in Joy.21
While on a European trip, the surgeon had met the parents of a young child
with a serious brain problem involving a complicated aneurysm. He told the
parents that if they brought the child to his hospital in the United States there
was a chance he could operate successfully on him. The parents accepted the
suggestion, brought their son to this country, and had the surgeon operate.
After the operation, the chaplain met the surgeon as he came out of the oper
ating room, still in his scrub suit. He asked her to walk with him to his office so
she could receive his gift to her from Paris. She told how at that moment she
was more fascinated by the doctor's face than with the gift he gave her. He had
just stood for a good part of twelve hours performing an operation that could
make medical history. His face reflected every moment of the fear and exhila
ration that had gone into it. She could barely carry on the amenities because
she wanted to remember his face. She then went back to her office and wrote of
what she had seen. Maybe she overstates what she saw or describes it too
dramatically, but I believe that her words give us a message, a message of
what real healing is all about, of what is meant by healer as minister. These are
her words:
. . But
. in the vacuum of moments after that
just surgery,
I saw what the journals could not see;
What the textbooks will not record;
What the surgeon himself cannot understand.
For I glimpsed the mystery of what LIFE costs another human being.
I saw in his eyes,
In his face,
In his body,
The terrible price he pays.
And suddenly, for a moment,
I touched the reason for the transcendent mystery of God.
Because, for a moment,
I touched the transcendent mystery of a man's soul.
Divine framework. Healers as ministers bring within the scope of their work a
divine framework and perspective. Into the healing God is implied
relationship
or introduced as a third party. This dimension is expressed succinctly by a
well-known maxim that guided psychiatrist Carl Jung's work: Vocatus atque
non vocatus Deus aberit (Invited, even not invited, God is present).
All healing comes from God. Underlying our work is the premise that all heal
ing comes from God, whether God is called by that name or another, such as
nature or homeostasis. It is the recognition and acknowledgment of such a
power that leads to the attitude of reverence in our work and relationship with
human life. This recognition gives us a fixed point of reference, a final cause
and a final answer, by which to orient our human efforts. Further, there is no
hierarchy of healing. Each of us brings to bear professional skills (one's
training), one's gift of self (the person as an instrument of healing), and one's
organization (for example, the sacramental and group life of the church) in the
James A. Knight 109
healing of the sick person. Since aU heaUng comes from God, as persons in
volved in a heaUng ministry, we are involved mostly in helping remove the ob
stacles to healing or strengthening the heaUng dimension in the patient. Six
teenth-century French surgeon Ambrose Par? described the situation clearly:
"God heals the wound; I merely dress it."
Religious awe and reverence. If reUgious awe and reverence undergird the min
ister'sUfe, then the healer as minister is heir to this heritage. For example,
think of the confrontation with the holy in our care of patients. One of the most
deeply moving reUgious experiences I have ever had took place in the deUvery
room of the Duke University Hospital, during my internship. I had deUvered a
baby and was waiting for the placenta to separate from the uterus and be ex
peUed by it. Everything had gone weU with both mother and infant. One could
now see and hear the trickle of blood from the uterus, indicating the placental
separation. Shortly thereafter the placenta was expeUed and the uterus
contracted to shut off the flow of blood. Wh?e marveling at the mystery and
miracle of each step in the birth process, I looked out of the window and saw
the rays of the early morning sun iUuminating the tower of the Duke Univer
sity Chapel. A most profound sense of the awareness and presence of the holy
overwhelmed me. My mind's ear seemed to hear a voice: "Put off your shoes
from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."
Acceptance and divine forgiveness. The healer as minister recognizes that aU
kinds of moral issues emerge during treatment and healing, for no treatment is
purely technical. We participate in heaUng with what we ourselves are, as weU
as with our studied arts. No science dea?ng with humans can be divorced from
problems of philosophy and ethics. Within the structure of human personaUty
and of society, moral values have a reaUty of their own. These moral values are
as real as sexual drives, aggression, and love.
A task that looms large for the healer as minister is the priestly work of
bringing acceptance and divine forgiveness to those who may be described as
having "overburdened consciences and despairing souls." In other words, the
healer functions as a minister of the grace of God by receiving the sick into fel
lowship and declaring God's mercy to them as much by attitude as by speech
or action. Years ago I read a story of a person's part in priestly absolution that
I have remembered through the years.
A young woman was brought to a hospital after she had been stabbed in a
drunken brawl in a disreputable section of the city. AU medical care possible
was given her, but the case was hopeless. A nurse was asked to sit by the un
conscious woman unt? death came. As the nurse sat looking at the coarse lines
on a face so young, the woman opened her eyes and spoke, "I want you to teU
me something and teU me straight. Do you think God cares about people like
me? Do you think he could forgive anyone as bad as me?" The nurse was hesi
tant to reply until she had reached out to God for a kind of authorization and
reached out toward the injured woman with a feeUng of oneness with her.
Then, knowing that she spoke in truth, she said, "I am teUing you straight.
God cares about you, and he forgives you." The woman gave a sigh of re?ef
and sUpped back into unconsciousness, and, as she died, the coarse Unes
disappeared from her face. Something momentous happened between God and
that woman through the nurse.22
The healer as minister reemphasizes the profound relevance of the message

of acceptance. Nonjudging, nondirecting acceptance has a salutary influence
on all treatment. This does not mean the suspension of judgment. The ancient
biblical principle that the law condemns and destroys if it is not preceded by
forgiveness must be at the heart of any healing ministry. The doctrine of "jus
tification by grace through faith" communicates the good news that one who
feels unworthy of being accepted by God can be certain of acceptance.
Meaning behind pain and suffering. Probably the healer as minister has a
better chance than many others of understanding the meaning behind pain
and suffering. Painand suffering are essential to life, for without them human
kind would be destroyed. Pain and suffering may take the form of anxiety and
guilt. St. Augustine's view is that anxiety and guilt can be overcome only by
God's grace, which is freely given, as stated in his best-known text: Tu excitas
ut laudare te delectet, quia fecisti nos ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum
donee requiescat in te?"Thou movest man to praise Thee, for Thou has made
us for Thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee."23 The
message is even clearer in Outler's translation of Augustine's text: "You
provide man with the stimulus that makes him want to praise you, because
you have made us to be related to you and our inner existence ' '24
is out of balance
until it recovers its balance in right relation with you. Similar to Augustine's
view is the existential position that there can be no important thinking without
self-comprehension. Only by passing through the pain of anxiety and hopeless
ness can one find a way to faith and truth.
Suffering is a common thread running through the lives of all. Many theolo
gians and philosophers have made it the central problem of their thought and
have sought to reorient the individual toward the meaning of life as
understood in the meaning of his or her own suffering.
The sensation of pain is generally considered a liability and a burden to phy
sical existence. Although one recognizes the protection pain affords through
functioning as a sentinel or watchman for the living organism, questions arise.
Why is pain often disproportionately severe or mild? Why is the type and
degree of pain often a hindrance and inhibitor, when reality needs indicate that
the danger or peril is not as great as the pain reaction pretends? Pain by most
of us is feared next to death, and the awareness of pain begins early in life.
Pain is usually considered as synonymous with evil and, if persistent, is
compared to a living hell. People usually perceive pain as being a physical
phenomenon instead of a mental one, and the psychological component is
rarely appreciated.
A major task in the patient with chronic pain is to find some meaning in his
or her suffering. You must be clear in your own feelings about pain before you
can help a suffering patient. If you believe there is meaning, despite not being
able to find it, you are in a better position to help. Out of long experience with
pain, Viktor Frankl has written: "If there is a meaning in life at all, then there
is a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate
and death."25 In Tolstoi's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, it was only when Ivan
realized the total meaninglessness of his life that he was overwhelmed by the
James A. Knight 111
pain of his cancer. As long as there seemed to be a vaUd meaning to his exis
tence, he could resist the pain and retain both his control and dignity. When he
lost the sense of the meaning of his Ufe, he could only scream. Thus, the
emotional state determines in large measure the perception of pain and its
power over a person.
KahUl Gibran in The Prophet has written: "Your pain is the breaking of the
sheU that encloses your understanding."26 Pain does have the capacity to
bring us fuUy face to face with ourselves and our universe. Dostoevski ex
pressed a basic human concern when he said, "There is only one thing I dread,
not to be worthy of my suffering."
The alchemists had a special image for the transformation of suffering and
symptom into a value of the soul: the pearl of great price. The pearl begins as a
bit of grit, an irritant in one's inside flesh. The grit is coated over day after day
untU one day it becomes a pearl. Yet it must be fished up from the depths and
pried loose. The pearl then is exposed, worn, and open to pubUc view as a
virtue. As James HUlman describes the situation: "To get rid of the symptom
means to get rid of the chance to gain what may one day be of greatest value,
even if at first an unbearable irritant, lowly, and disguised."27
Our heritage of healing
Whether thinking in terms of the minister as healer or the healer as minister,

we must look at our heritage of healing that is anchored in the bibUcal tradi
tion. In the Gospels of the New Testament one finds more attention devoted to
the heaUng ministry of Jesus than any other subject except the passion story
of the last week of Jesus' earthly Ufe. In studying the bibUcal heaUng stories,
one discovers certain basic conditions operative in almost aU of the cases
described. An examination of these conditions wiU iUuminate the guideUnes
used in a heaUng ministry and show a similarity between ancient and modern
heaUng.
First, the heaUng takes place through the activity of an individual or group
perceived as having the authority and power to heal. In most cases both the
healer and the one being healed share this conviction as to the authority and
power of the healer. In those cases in which the one being healed is skeptical or
agnostic, there are significant other persons in his or her environment who do
credit the heaUng person or persons with authority and power.
Second, the act of healing often includes the recital of previous healings or
other divine events that manifest power for wholeness and transformation.
Mircea EUade, in The Sacred and the Profane, emphasizes that primitive hu
mans, in heaUng rites, sought heaUng through the regeneration of the sources
of their Ufe with which they made contact through the ritual recitation of the
story of creation.28 The sick one symboUcally became contemporary with the
"creation" and became weU because one began Ufe over again with one's
reserve of vital forces intact, as it was at the moment of birth. Healings in the
early church were done in the name of Jesus, who was worshiped as the new
creation, the second Adam. Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus about the
second birth of the spirit (John 3:1-8), and the sacramental healing power
ascribed to the action of baptism and the Eucharist, are examples of the theme
of return to some primordial state from which anew creation may emerge.
Third, in the New Testament healing stories the healing action came in re
sponse to the initiative and request of the sick person, or friends, or relatives.
Active desire and expectancy permeated the healing situation. By the pool of
Bethesda before the healing took place, Jesus asked the man if he truly wanted
to be healed (John 5:1-16).
Leslie Weatherhead maintains that a fundamental element in all the healing
stories is the quality of "expectant trust."29 Jerome Frank, in Persuasion and
Healing, shows expectant trust to be the central thread woven through all the
healing practices, both ancient and modern.30 The many occasions on which
Jesus states that the faith or expectancy of the sick person had been the
fundamental instrumentality of the healing do serve to underline how
absolutely essential this element seems to have been for the healings of the
New Testament and the early church.
Fourth, healing seems to have taken place almost invariably in some
corporate context. Jesus in his ministry was almost always surrounded by
crowds. An example of this is the story of the sick man who had to be let down
through the roof into the room where Jesus was because the door was blocked
by a large number of people (Mark 2:1-5). This story is especially significant
because it appears to have been the friends and not the patient himself who
sought the healing and had the expectant trust. The group atmosphere in the
New Testament healing episodes was a most significant factor in the prepara
tion and support of the healing process. In the life of the early church, where
healing became more and more associated with the corporate worship and the
sacramental life of the believing community, the element of group atmosphere
became a factor of major importance.
Fifth, in many of the instances of biblical healing, the healer employs sug
gestion and authoritative verbal direction as an important part of the method.
Jesus used this approach. Often this suggestive element was simply the com
munication of the firm assumption that the ill person would be healed of the
illness.
Sixth, inmany of the biblical stories physical materials and means were used
as an instrumental aspect of the healing action. These included saliva for the
stammering tongue, clay for the eyes, the laying on of the hands, the anointing
with oil, or the symbolic cleansing with water?all used to effect healing. In
the early church, the Eucharist, anointing with oil, and baptism were the three
major occasions of healing, according to Origen and others.
This heritage of healing is worthy of serious study. It reminds us that there
is more than one factor operating in healing. As William Watty has said:
"Why healing should take place in one case and why deterioration and death
should result in a seemingly identical case are questions that take medical
science to the boundaries of its competence. No two cases are identical, of
course, and each new patient is capable of surprising his or her physician, for
good or ill."31
James A. Knight 113
Conclusion
Martin Buber spoken of visiting

has BerUn, his former home. He went into the
cathedral and felt an overwhelming sense of beauty and awe in the music,
stained glass windows, majestic arches, symmetry, and soUtude. Then he left
the cathedral and stopped briefly at the nearby Jewish cemetery. The hinges
on the gates had almost rusted away. Some of the headstones had been broken,
and others had faUen down. Among neglected graves were a few well-tended
ones. A bird had bu?t her nest in a tree and was watching over her young.
Wh?e standing by the roadside and looking into the cemetery, he noted that he
felt more at home there than he had felt in the cathedral. The cemetery and its
symbols spoke to him of the real world?its losses, its broken relationships,
the continuity of Ufe, and the sense of enduring community. The cemetery's
symbols and atmosphere spoke more about Ufe as it is lived and the human
condition than did the cathedral. He realized that he was at home by the
roadside and in the presence of the cemetery, for that was the situation in
which he Uved and worked.
The minister as healer and the healer as minister may experience brief visits
to the cathedral, but they Uve and do their work outside of the cathedral, at the
roadside near the cemetery.
References
1. Nouwen, H.J., Creative Ministry. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1971.
2. Niebuhr, H.R., and Williams, D.D., eds., The Ministry inHistorical Perspective. New York,
Harper and Brothers, 1956.
3. Tosteson, D.C., "Instructions." Presentation at the Tenth Annual Meeting, American Osier
Society, Countway Library of Medicine, Boston, April 29, 1980.
4. Rimbaud, A., A Season in Hell?The ?lluminations. A new translation by Enid Rhodes
Peschel. New York, Oxford Press, 1973.
5. Tillich, P., "The Relation of Religion and Health." In Doniger, S., ed., HeaUng: Human and
Divjne.
New York, Association Press, 1957, pp. 185-205.
6. Lain Entralgo, P., The Therapy of the Word in Classical Antiquity. Rather, L.J., and Sharp,
J.M., eds. and trans. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1970.
7. ?bid, pp. 108-131.
8. Plato, Charmides, 155-156/LB 15-21.
9. Lain Entralgo, op. cit, pp. 154-170.
10. Hamilton, E? The Greek Way to Western Civilization. New York, New American Library,
1942, pp. 238-242.
11. ?bid, p. 241.
12. Guggenbuhl-Craig, A., Power in the Helping Professions. New York, Spring Publications,
1971.
13. Nouwen, H.J., The Wounded Healer?Ministry in Contemporary Society. Garden City, N.Y.,
Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1972.
14. Wilder, T.N., The Angel That Troubled the Waters and Other Plays. New York, Coward
McCann, 1928, pp. 145-149.
15. Unamuno, M. de, Abel Sanchez and Other Stories, trans. Kerrigan, A. Chicago, Henry
Regnery Co., 1956.
16. Machovec, F.J., "The Cult of Asklipios," Am J. Clinical Hypnosis, 1979, 22, 85-90.
17. Williams, L.P., "History and Modern Medicine." In McCullough, L.B., and Morris, J.P.,
eds., ?mplications of History and Ethics to Medicine. College Station, Texas, Texas A&M
Press, 1978, pp. 38-52.
18. Engel, G.L., "Too Little Science: the Paradox of Modern Medicine's Crisis," Pharos, 1976,
39, 127-131.
19. Ibid., pp. 127-131.
20. Maitland, D.J.,"Vocation.*' In A Handbook of Christian Theology. Cleveland, World Pub
lishing Company, 1958, pp. 371-372.
21. Herrmann, N., Go Out in Joy. Atlanta, John Knox Press, 1977, pp. 119-124.
22. Horton, W.M., Our Eternal Contemporary. New York, Harper and Brothers, 1942, pp. 82-84.
23. Outler, A.C., "Anxiety and Grace: an Augustinian Perspective." In H?tner, S., and
Menninger, K., eds.. Constructive Aspects of Anxiety. New York, Abingdon Press, 1963, pp.
87-102.
24. Ibid.
25. Frankl, V., From Death Camp to Existentialism. Boston, Beacon Press, 1959, p. 67.
26. Gibran, K., The Prophet. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1923.
27. Hillman, J., Insearch: Psychology and Religion. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967.
28. Eliade, M., The Sacred and the Profane. New York, Harcourt Brace, 1949.
29. Weatherhead, L.D., Psychology, Religion and Healing. New York, Abingdon Press, 1952.
30. Frank, J., Persuasion and Healing. New York, Schocken Books, 1974.
31. Watty, W., "Man and Healing?A Biblical and Theological View," Contact, December 1979,
54, 1-9.

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The Minister as Healer, the Healer as Minister

Author(s): James A. Knight

The Minister as Healer, the

0022-4197/82/1400-0100802.75 100 ?1982 Institutes of Religion and Health

magical spells, aimed at changing life. He spoke of transcending Christianity

You ought not to attempt to cure eyes

As Lain Entralgo shows clearly, Hippocratic physicians were acquainted

himself, 'Perhaps I shaU be needed: If so I must always be ready so as not to

Angel' Draw back, physician, this moment is not for you.

The healer as minister

A young woman chaplain, Nina Herrmann, on the staff of a children's hospi

The healer as minister reemphasizes the profound relevance of the message

Our heritage of healing

Whether thinking in terms of the minister as healer or the healer as minister,

Martin Buber spoken of visiting

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