Although many of us love Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and watch a version of the famous tale each winter, the story includes a flawed, stereotypical depiction of a person with a disability: Tiny Tim.
Pivotal to Ebenezer Scrooge’s conversion from greed to generosity is the poverty of the Cratchit family, particularly the saintly spirit of Tiny Tim, his “God bless us, everyone,” and his predicted premature death if the family does not acquire better food and living conditions. Tiny Tim, as a disabled child, is a way to elicit pity from the wealthy, nondisabled Scrooge – and presumably from the reader – who responds with a change of heart that leads to charity.
Tiny Tim’s presence is like that of children wheeled onto the stage during a Jerry Lewis telethon to raise money for muscular dystrophy research. These children were not showcased as vibrant, flourishing members of families who had friends, passions and humor. They were mainly positioned to evoke viewers’ pity and charitable contributions. In literature and popular culture, people with disabilities are all too often depicted as people with pitiable lives, as victims of tragedy or as saintly examples of innocence. Strangely, the most common alternative for characters with disabilities is portrayal as a monstrous villain. Think of the Phantom of the Opera, his disfigured face reflecting a hideous soul that terrorized a town and abducted a woman. These tropes abound. Disability represents either innocence or sinfulness, but the full humanity of people with disabilities is rarely central or even considered in these stories.
All too often in literature and popular culture, people with disabilities are depicted as people with pitiable lives, as victims of tragedy or as saintly examples of innocence.
Disability theology raises concerns that are as ancient as the Scriptures themselves. Many figures in Scripture are described as being impaired: Isaac, who becomes blind; Jacob, whose hip is displaced after wrestling with God; Moses, who has a stutter; Mephibosheth, Jonathan’s son, who is crippled in an accident at a young age; Isaiah’s suffering servant, whose disfigurement leads to his rejection; the women who are described as barren; and Job, who famously suffers physical affliction among other pains. And those examples don’t begin to cover the many people Jesus encounters who are described as ill, impaired or demon-possessed (which may refer to mental illness).
Biblical scholars engage many aspects of Jesus’ healing ministry. One significant encounter is found in the Gospel of John when Jesus and his disciples meet a man who was born blind. The disciples question Jesus: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (9:2). The question highlights a central concern of much disability theology: namely, the ways disability has traditionally been linked with the Fall, when sin entered God’s creation. Here the disciples assume that blindness is a punishment for someone’s sin. Disability theology traces this assumption into traditional theology to challenge the proposed connection between impairment and sin. And Jesus’ response to the disciples supports such work. He denies the link between sin and disability, at least in this case, saying the man’s blindness existed so that God’s glory could be revealed in his healing.
Disability theology raises concerns that are as ancient as the Scriptures themselves.
For most disability theologians, Jesus’ response – though preferable to linking disability to sin – still reflects the priority of healing all impairments. His response suggests that people with disabilities hold a special gift that allows them to display something about God to the able-bodied community. Both assumptions are rejected by disability theologians, who instead observe that not all people with disabilities are desperate for healing or feel that their way of being must change for them to experience wholeness.
Disability theologians also point out that people with disabilities (such as Tiny Tim) have historically been put forth as tales of inspiration, often as examples of innocence evoking pity. Such abstraction from lived reality positions people with disabilities as saints or as objects of charity, neither of which offers full recognition of their humanity in the image of God. Disability theologians insist that people with impairments do suffer the same desires, struggles and heartbreaks as the rest of humanity. They have the same sins, ambitions and relationships that go along with human life. But too often, people with disabilities are set apart as an object lesson. In this passage in John, Jesus claims the man is blind as a way to reveal God’s glory when he is given sight.
… not all people with disabilities are desperate for healing or feel that their way of being must change for them to experience wholeness.
In contrast, biblical scholars of disability often see the healing ministry of Jesus as a work that restores those who are isolated to their place in the community. The emphasis is not on fixing a broken body but on healing a broken community, to offer someone outcast or stigmatized a fulfilling and loving religious, familial or communal life.
Full inclusion in the church
Biblical scholars were among the first to incorporate insights from disability studies into their critical textual readings, as biblical literature has often portrayed impairment as something to be fixed in order to manifest Jesus’ power or glorify God. In addition to updating such biblical interpretations, disability theology focuses on the church’s full inclusion of people with disabilities — and thus on both architectural and attitudinal barriers.
The concern centers not only on access to all church spaces – the choir loft, the chancel, the altar rail or other elevated features in the church building. Concern also extends to full participation in the church’s life and leadership by people with a range of disabilities, not only physical impairment. How does the church make worship and community available, for example, for people with sensory disabilities, intellectual disabilities, chronic illness, mental health struggles and neurodivergence? Further, how does the church incorporate the gifts these individuals bring to serve the community in various capacities, including leadership roles and ordained ministry? Changes require physical, structural alterations, yes, but also a shift in language and attitudes.
…too often, people with disabilities are set apart as an object lesson.
Thus, disability theology often confronts the impairment metaphors that run throughout liturgical practice and theological discourse, such as references to sin as disease, to the human condition as crippled or broken, and to salvation as healing. Common expressions such as “I was blind but now I see!” present blindness as a state of sin or alienation from God, and they present sight as salvation. Disability perspectives challenge the church to consider how it represents disability in all aspects of church life, practice and theology.
The work of Nancy Eiesland is noteworthy because of its far-reaching impact on the field. But since the 1994 publication of her groundbreaking book The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability, disability theology has expanded in all subdisciplines, including practical and pastoral theology, theological and biomedical ethics, church history, biblical studies and systematic theology.
Disability perspectives challenge the church to consider how it represents disability in all aspects of church life, practice and theology.
Eiesland’s book made significant theological claims that continue to provoke discussion in the field.
- She argued that Jesus reveals true humanity and that, as one who was physically impaired in his crucifixion, he thereby discloses “the reality that full personhood is fully compatible with the experience of disability” and demonstrates that persons with disabilities are created in the imago Dei, or image of God.
- Jesus as God incarnate retains the wounds of his crucifixion in the resurrected life. That means God is disabled, a point that simultaneously reinforces Eiesland’s argument that people with disabilities are created in the image of God.
- Our central symbol and sacrament, the bodily practice of the Eucharist, relies on the impairment of Jesus’ flesh. In the Eucharist, the body of Christ remains broken; in some traditions, it is perpetually broken anew at the table with his words, “This is my body, which is given [or broken] for you” (Luke 22:19). Jesus, the disabled God, remains bodily present in the church, particularly in this sacrament of his impaired flesh. Eiesland focuses on the physical nature of the Eucharist by emphasizing the bodily nature of communion: both our physical participation in the rite (taking the bread and eating, sometimes processing and kneeling) and also the reality of Jesus’ broken body we receive. She offers an important indictment of exclusionary practices pertaining to this sacrament by critiquing ways of administering the sacrament that encourage people with particular disabilities to remain in their seats. That is, they are sometimes prevented from partaking with the rest of the congregation at the front of the church, which too often features steps up to the altar and an expectation of kneeling. Eiesland calls out the hypocrisy in which a church gathers at this table while refusing to dismantle barriers to disabled inclusion: “The dissonance raised by the nonacceptance of persons with disabilities and the acceptance of grace through Christ’s broken body necessitates that the church find new ways of interpreting disability.” The Eucharist, a sacrament around which the body of Christ gathers, remembers the impaired body of Christ; that is, he remains disabled. This practice further supports Eiesland’s insistence that impaired bodies are perfectly acceptable to God and welcomed by God without needing a fix or cure. Eiesland also identifies the church itself, also called the body of Christ, as an impaired body or, as she calls it, a “community of struggle.”
- Jesus is the “first fruits” of the resurrected life. Because his impairments remain, we can expect the resurrected life to include disabled bodies. Eiesland explains that the “resurrection is not about the negation or erasure of our disabled bodies in hopes of perfect images, untouched by physical disability; rather Christ’s resurrection offers hope that our nonconventional, and sometimes difficult, bodies participate fully in the imago Dei and that God is … touched by our experience.”
Disability, the Fall and redemption
Disability theology confronts the Augustinian legacy related to the Fall and our redemption. The tradition of Augustine often depicts a perfection where, theologians assume, no impairment exists. That is, the sin of Eve and Adam, as it rippled through the created order, is responsible for the potential impairment of the human body or mind. In this legacy, disabilities often appear in the context of punishment for sin, thought to usher in sickness, pain and impairment that mar the perfection of original creation.
Theologian Debra Creamer highlights this tension within disability theology. Some theologians identify disability as simply a regular part of the created order, which seems right — disability is a part of human diversity. However, this argument can obscure how social structures and attitudes create disabling conditions. So yes, limits are a natural part of the created order as God intended it. Still, many disabilities result from sinful structures and violence, such as war, malnourishment, neglect and trauma. Social and structural sins can further make an impairment disabling by perpetuating barriers and stigma. A lack of ramps, elevators and curb cuts, for example, makes spaces inaccessible to people who move with wheelchairs. That lack of access results from social structures that don’t prioritize different modalities.
In traditional accounts of sin and redemption, where the impairment itself is linked to the entrance of sin into the created order, eternal salvation is also assumed to include the erasure of such impairment, or its impossibility.
In this way, the relationship between sin and disability is actually found in the sin of ableism and violence that maims human bodies and traumatizes the human mind. It can also be found in the sin of ecological harm that creates impairments by polluting the ground, water and air. So, although most disability theologians challenge the Augustinian presumptions that impairment enters creation alongside sin, don’t overlook the ways sin directly harms people with disabilities and, in some instances, creates additional impairment through sinful violence, deprivation and pollution.
Traditional accounts of sin and redemption – which link impairment itself to sin’s entrance into the created order – also assume that eternal salvation erases such impairment or makes it impossible. Eternal salvation becomes a return to perfection, a state better than one experienced before, one without the possibility of impairment through another Fall. This narrative of heaven reflects a belief that all body-minds will revert to how God originally intended them: that is, perfect in beauty, symmetry and intelligence. Thus, the traditional argument assumes that disabled bodies and minds will not be found in heaven, but that every resurrected body will fit the cultural norm of the time and place when the theologian is writing. For example, Augustine speculated that men would be resurrected with beards because in his time, this appearance was considered the most handsome.
At least since Eiesland wrote The Disabled God, people have debated whether we will retain disabilities in the resurrected life. Eiesland argued our resurrected bodies will continue as they are, impairments included, just without pain — because Jesus was resurrected and presumably ascended into heaven with his wounds still visible, returning his impaired body to the eternal life of God.
Eiesland’s work protests eschatologies that feed conceptions of heaven that utterly erase her lived reality, objectify her body and deny her abundant life with her wheelchair. Eiesland finds some support in this idea even from Augustine, who claimed that the limbs of martyrs that had been violently cut off under persecution would be restored to their body — but that the reattachment would be reflected in a visible, beautiful and glorified scar as a testament to their faith. Similarly, Gregory of Nyssa described a scar that remained on the chest of his sister Macrina after she was cured miraculously of a tumor, which he claimed she would retain in the resurrection to demonstrate for eternity God’s power in healing her. So at least some scars are thought to remain; not every theologian has assumed a fully restored or aesthetically beautiful body in a typical sense.
How eschatology affects current opportunities
Disability theologians call attention to eschatological speculation about how bodies and minds will be welcomed into resurrected life: specifically, how such eschatology affects the opportunities afforded those with disabilities in this life and influences the value we assign to the present gifts of those with disabilities. Theologies that insist impairments will be erased in favor of “perfect” bodies reflect ableist values rather than kingdom values: namely, what Jesus teaches about how our bodies are valued in God’s life. These claims matter because theologies shape attitudes, which directly impact the social and ecclesial supports available for full human flourishing. These perspectives find their way into legislation and funding in a variety of contexts that determine access to public goods like health care, housing, education, transportation, third spaces and ecclesial communities.
… Jesus’ teaching, in addition to his own wounded and resurrected body, does not support the idea that so-called perfect or beautiful bodies are valued even in the Last Judgment.
But Jesus’ teaching, in addition to his own wounded and resurrected body, does not support the idea that so-called perfect or beautiful bodies are valued even in the Last Judgment. In Mark 9 (and Matthew 18), Jesus instructs his disciples that if their foot, hand or eye is causing them to sin, they should cut it off or pluck it out, because it is better to enter heaven with one of those than to keep both and be cast into hell. Based on this teaching from Jesus, one assumes that yes indeed, bodies enter the resurrected life with impairments: one arm, one foot or one eye, for example. Our bodies are not necessarily returned or restored in the kingdom of God, at least according to this account. Jesus’ kingdom parables offer another example. He does not give attention to individual bodies, beyond perhaps his banquet parable, describing “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” (Luke 14:13) present at the grand feast.
A communal kingdom
What is clear is that the kingdom of God is communal. It is a city, a banquet feast, a party with a vast diversity of people present together. The resurrected life is about how we live together in God’s presence. These parables describe a different social order and transformed relationships, not perfected bodies or minds.
What is clear is that the kingdom of God is communal. It is a city, a banquet feast, a party with a vast diversity of people present together.
For this reason, some disability theologians push beyond this speculation about individual bodies in heaven. Instead, they call the church to attend to the kingdom of God inaugurated in Christ’s ministry and to what this kingdom tells us about how we are called together in community through Christ in the present. For example, in my 2023 book The Disabled God Revisited: Trinity, Christology, and Liberation, I argue that believers receive the identity of Christ in their baptism. Thus, the Christian life extended in the resurrection is a process of growing ever more interdependent in communal life. I base this argument on understanding Christ’s identity as one of vulnerability and interdependency. Through the transformation of salvation and the resurrected life, we reflect the nature of Christ ever more profoundly. This understanding focuses less on how bodies and minds will look, move or think and instead emphasizes a dissolution of identities rooted in ability as independence and self-sufficiency.
Christology is essential to these arguments. In Jesus, we learn just how seriously God has taken embodiment, embracing creaturely life with a depth reaching into the very being of Godself. God truly identifies with the entire life, ministry and suffering of Jesus: the humanity, including the embodiment of Jesus, as God’s own. We can understand the humanity of Jesus as one of interdependent life: not only between the human and divine unity that constitutes his person, but also on Mary’s will to receive the conception and to raise him, as well as his reliance on the many people who cared for and supported Jesus throughout his ministry. This is God’s own experience of communal life. The experience lies not only within the Trinity but also outside that inner divine life: a truly human experience of dependency from birth to death. Humanity is baptized into this life. So let us put off illusions of independence and self-sufficiency and instead embrace the interconnected and interdependent life, even vulnerable life, together in Christian community.
