Disability and the Love of Wisdom: De-forming, Re-forming, and Per-forming Philosophy of Religion

Introduction to Disability Studies and Philosophy of Religion

Goal of the Essay: To interrogate traditional approaches to philosophy of religion and philosophical theology from a disability studies perspective.
Key Areas of Rethinking: Theodicy, religious epistemology, and questions of death and the afterlife.
Novelty of the Approach: Disability perspectives have been largely absent from discussions in the philosophy of religion, making this a long-overdue conversation.
Resulting Framework: A 'performative philosophy of religion', where philosophical reflection is an activity that shapes human dispositions, activities, and political life, rather than solely a speculative enterprise.
Distinction from Theological Engagements: While theologians have addressed philosophy of religion issues from disability perspectives, this essay focuses on a philosophy of religion framework.
Definition of Disability: Broadly defined to include both intellectual and physical impairments.
- WHO Definition: "any restriction or lack (resulting from an impairment) of ability to perform an activity in a manner or within the range considered normal for a human being. $^3$ "
- Social Component: The WHO definition incorporates a social dimension, as 'normal' performance is measured by social conventions. This social dimension is central to the engagement between disability studies and philosophy.
Author's Motivation: Written as a brother of a man with Down syndrome.

Disability and the Problem of Evil: Destabilizing Traditional Theodicies

Central Problem: Traditional philosophy of religion texts address the problem of evil: Why does a good and all-powerful God allow bad things to happen to innocent people?
Lack of Consensus: No single viable theodicy; rather, a plurality of theodicies exists, each with strengths and weaknesses.
Author's Stance: The task of constructing theodicies should not be abandoned, but existing models have problems intensified by a disability perspective.

Four General Theistic Responses (and Disability Critiques)

Ontological and/or Theological Models:
- Definition: Evil is understood as either intrinsically woven into the universe or as a result of God's (permissive) will.
- Cosmic Dualist Models (e.g., Manicheanism) or Primordial Chaos Models (e.g., Brightman, Keller):
  - Alleviates God's Responsibility: God is not responsible for evil.
  - Disability Concern: Uncritically associates disability with evil, historically leading to people with disabilities being seen as deserving evil or personifying feared evils.
  - Primordial Chaos (Better Fit): More palatable if disabilities are statistically distributed/random (e.g., congenital disabilities due to genetic mutations, or accidental later-life disabilities). Issues arise if cosmic chaos implies disability in the afterlife.
- Privation Models (Augustine):
  - Definition: Evil is the lack of goodness, not an ontological status of its own. Everything existent is good insofar as it exists.
  - Affirmation: Affirms the humanity, dignity, and goodness of people with disabilities, without insisting disabilities are good.
  - Disability Critique: For many people with disabilities, their conditions are palpable realities, not merely a lack. The notion of evil as lack is neither phenomenologically nor existentially satisfying for them.
- Robust Theological Models (e.g., Calvin):
  - Definition: Evil is allowed or even decreed by God for God's greater glory.
  - Challenge for People with Disabilities: Highly challenging, especially when non-disabled people tell individuals their disability is part of God's plan. While some accept it personally, external imposition can lead to God being seen as arbitrarily wrecking lives, rather than being trustworthy.
Freewill Theodicy:
- Definition: Evil results from creaturely freedom (human fall, angelic fall) or, for process theodicies, intrinsic freedom of all creatures.
- Focus: God is not ultimately responsible; a world with free creatures is better than one without, even with the possibility of evil.
- Moral Evil: Creaturely responsibility.
- Natural Evil: Result of a fallen world (rebellious spiritual beings) or unavoidable outcome of the world's structure (process theodicies).
- Disability Interaction:
  - May gravitate away from spirit being explanations (speculative, unhelpful for engagement with disability) and toward human freedom.
  - Caution: Wary of the traditional association of freedom and evil justifying disabilities as punishment for sin, carelessness, or irresponsibility, or leading to resignation.
  - Social Dimension: Emphasizes that suffering from disability is often aggravated or fully derived from social, economic, and political structures (ableism). Evil originates systemically and structurally.
  - Action-Oriented: Focuses on identifying and dismantling sources of evil in society through collaborative work (disabled and non-disabled).
Soul-Making Theodicy (Irenaeus/Hick):
- Definition: Evil is allowed by God for its formative capacity to develop moral virtues, producing virtuous character through perseverance in suffering.
- Disability Critiques:
  - Whose Souls?: Presumes people with disabilities' souls need shaping, or instrumentalizes their lives for the betterment of non-disabled souls.
  - Instrumentalization: Cautions against using the pain and suffering of a select group for others' gains, as this is how it's interpreted by people with disabilities.
  - Gratuitous Evil: Questions if all disability experiences (and evil in general) are soul-making. Some evils seem gratuitous and defy efforts to render them meaningful.
Christological Response ('Suffering God' View):
- Definition: God enters into the suffering of the world, especially through the cross of Jesus Christ. God is not removed from suffering but embraces it.
- Attraction: Admits the intractability of evil, yet insists God is present in suffering.
- Disability Welcome: Welcomes this theodicy for neither stigmatizing suffering nor marginalizing people with disabilities.
- Critique: Some question if this motif is sufficiently consoling amidst intense pain and tragedy, similar to primordial chaos theodicies (even with the insistence that the 'suffering God' is a strong survivor, not weak).

### The Problem of Evil and the Social Context (Summary Comments)
- Categorization Difficulty: Disability suffering is hard to categorize.
  - Sometimes 'natural evil' (workings of nature).
  - Often 'moral evil' (social character of disability).
  - Unique Case: Congenital disabilities (e.g., trisomy $21$ /Down syndrome) are neither purely natural nor moral evils in etiology.
  - Theodicy Question: How can an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God allow such evils?
  - Identity Challenge: Simple 'healing' in the afterlife is problematic for identity-constitutive conditions; eradicating the disability might mean eliminating the person (e.g., trisomy $21$ ).
- Social and Political Character of Evil: Disability scholarship insists on defining disability experience in social terms. Evil is not just a spiritual or individual problem.
  - Irreducible Social Aspect: All human experience has an irreducible social and relational aspect, including disability.
  - Theodicy Requirement: Any convincing theodicy must account for this social and relational dimension.
  - Eschatological Resolution: Disability perspectives might point to an eschatological resolution for unresolved theodicy challenges, necessitating revision of traditional philosophy of religion questions and categories.

Disability and Religious Epistemology: Retrieving/Redeeming Subjugated Knowledges

Epistemological Question: How and why do disability perspectives make a difference in philosophy of religion?
Contribution: Significant contribution to postmodern resistance against Enlightenment and Eurocentric hegemony in traditional philosophy of religion.
Shift in Focus: From 'if, how, or what' of religious experience to 'so what and so that' questions.
Three Core Arguments:
1. Call into Question Conventional Categories and Assumptions: The experiences of people with sensory or mental limitations challenge existing frameworks.
  - Nancy Eiesland's Work (The Disabled God):
    - Drawing from lifelong degenerative bone disease.
    - Need: Not miraculous cure, but a just, inclusive, hospitable world.
    - Identity with Disability: "having been disabled from birth, I came to believe that in heaven I would be absolutely unknown to myself and perhaps to God. My disability has taught me who I am and who God is. $^19$ "
    - Critique of Omnipotence: Focus shifts from divine omnipotence to a 'disabled God' – a survivor, unpitying, forthright, incarnate Christ in the image of those judged 'not feasible' or having 'questionable quality of life'. She saw God in a sip-puff wheelchair. ( $Eiesland, The Disabled God, 89$
      ).
    - Philosophy of Beauty (Aesthetics): Reintroduces beauty through the disabled body: "Most people with disabilities see our bodies not as signs of deviance or deformity, but as images of beauty and wholeness. We discern in our bodies, not only the ravages of injustice and pain, but also the reality of surviving with dignity. $^21$ "
    - Treasures: Reintroduces justice, liberation, and beauty to philosophy of religion.
2. Supplement Religious Knowledge through Unavailable Insights: Insights gained by disabled individuals are often inaccessible to non-disabled epistemic viewpoints.
  - John Hull's Work (Blind Theologian):
    - Became totally blind; reread the Bible from a non-sighted perspective.
    - Sighted Bias: Identified that the Bible is written by sighted persons, leading to metaphors equating blindness with ignorance or despair.
    - Reappropriation: Retrieved biblical blind characters, focusing on their full humanity rather than reducing them to their blindness.
    - Jesus' Approach: Recognized Jesus' tactile ('hands-on') approach and his willingness to undergo blindness (blindfolded during passion) in solidarity.
    - God Beyond Sightedness: Concluded God is beyond sightedness or blindness, active in darkness.
3. Engage Other Modes of Knowing: Beyond cognitive and rational modes dominant in traditional philosophy.
  - Severe/Profound Intellectual Disabilities: Challenges of determining what they know and who speaks for them.
  - Non-Cognitive Knowing: Reveals modes of knowing that precede or transcend intellect.
    - Pascal's Insight: "The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing. $^24$ "
    - Modes: Affective, embodied, and relational forms of knowing, which may be the only forms of knowing for those with severe disabilities.
  - Shift from Mysticism: Not traditionally understood mysticism, but foregrounding basic affective, embodied, relational knowing previously overlooked.
  - Religious Knowing: When cognitive modes are not primary, religious knowing is similarly independent, mediated through 'ordinary' affective, embodied, and relational experiences.
  - Different Focus: Less on evidential reliability/justification of truth claims, more on affective and embodied aspects of what is good, beautiful, and true.
### Disability Perspectives (Summary Remarks)
- Marginalization: Religious knowledge of people with disabilities has been marginalized due to their exclusion from discussions.
  - Need for Inclusion: Strong case for securing, not marginalizing, disability perspectives.
  - Challenging Ableism: Ableist resistance dismissing disability voices as 'political correctness' ignores that all knowledge is political. Ableist assumptions must be questioned from within the experience of disability.
  - Plurality: Emphasis on 'disability perspectives' (plural) because there is no single, essential disability experience.
- Shift in Focus (Epistemology): From merits of religious beliefs and evidential reliability to hope, attitudes, and affections related to religious life.
  - Wider Spectrum: Faith understood not just as cognitively held beliefs, but pervasive across human experience.
  - Third Way: Beyond pre-theoretical (mystical) or linguistically/textually mediated religious experience.
  - Alternative Engagement: True, good, and beautiful can be embodied through non-cognitively dependent forms of engagement.

Disability, Death, and the Afterlife: Reappropriating Visions of Eternity

Impact: Disability viewpoints upset traditional formulations and encourage alternative eschatological scenarios that are more inclusive.
Problems with Traditional Discussions:
- Western discussions on afterlife possibility/mode.
- Eastern views of karmic reincarnation.
- Philosophical debates on personal identity in afterlife (especially complex with wide range of disabilities).
- Individualistic notions of heaven/hell, salvation/damnation.

Three Major Questions Regarding the Afterlife

Is there an afterlife?
- Mixed Responses:
  - For materialists/naturalists (disabled or non-disabled), it's incoherent.
  - Some with disabilities cannot bear the thought of "more of the same $^30$ " (eternally living with their condition).
  - Many, especially religious, hope for an afterlife free from disability, seeing it as ultimate justice for injustices in this life (bad luck, moral irresponsibility).
- Reincarnation: Less attractive. If karma-driven, disability might imply bad karma from a previous life or disadvantage for generating good karma in this life.
- Dominant Hope: Visions of an afterlife free from challenges associated with their conditions.
Relationship between soul and body?
Nature of the body in the afterlife? (Christian doctrine of resurrection of the body)
- Personal Identity Concerns (Disability Perspective):
  - Physical Disabilities: Belief in resurrection means a fully capable and whole body for some.
  - Sensory/Physical Disabilities (Complexity):
    - Deaf Culture: "when we get to heaven, the signing will be tremendous $^31$ " – implications for hearing members?
    - Congenitally Blind: How will they experience the beatific vision, having 'seen' with hands and ears?
    - Prostheses: Will those with prostheses be resurrected with what has become an integral part of their identity?
    - Jesus' Wounds: Jesus' resurrected body retained impairments (hands, side, feet), suggesting resurrected bodies of people with disabilities might retain signs of impairments. Some see this as a way to recognize patron saints.
  - Continuity/Discontinuity: Too much discontinuity threatens personal identity; too much continuity undermines the concept of a new, resurrected body.
- Intellectual Disabilities (Parallel to Infant Death):
  - What bodies and personal identities for those resurrected with adult bodies but undeveloped minds?
  - Brain damage/memory loss survivors: How are memories/identity preserved?
  - Identity-Constitutive Conditions (e.g., Trisomy $21$ /Down Syndrome): "Could someone imagine their daughter with Down's syndrome as being her true self in the new heaven and new earth without some manifestation of her condition? $^37$ "
  - Expanded Identity: Personal identity includes not only cognitive self-consciousness, but bodily structures, affective dispositions, and interpersonal relations.

### Interpersonal and Inter-relational Aspects of Identity
- Bonds with Caregivers: Deep interpersonal bonds between people with severe/profound disabilities and caregivers (parents, spouses, professionals) are identity-shaping. Severing these in the afterlife threatens continuity for both parties.
- Socially Constructed Suffering: Beyond social injustice, discrimination, marginalization, and exclusion occur at the interpersonal level.
  - Eschatological Vindication: Does not necessitate punitive assessments against tormentors, but experiences of persecution cannot be overlooked.
  - Reconciliation: Final reconciliation must include a social dimension where disabled people are reconciled with non-disabled oppressors.
  - Inclusion: Jesus' parable of the eschatological banquet includes the blind, lame, and crippled (Lk. $14:13, 21$ ) just as they were, not only after healing. Justice, at least as inclusion, must prevail.
- Implications for Present Life: How we envision the afterlife shapes our vision for the present.
  - Avoidance of 'Magical Fix': Thinking the afterlife is a 'magical fix' encourages resignation and assumes God alone is responsible for disability issues (and that disability is merely individual).
  - Social Dimension: An intractable social dimension to disability means eschatological vision (divine/cosmic justice, inclusion) should guide present efforts toward justice and inclusion.
## Conclusion: Enabling a Performative Philosophy of Religion
- Core Argument Recapped: Interrogating traditional philosophy of religion from a disability studies perspective, focusing on theodicy, epistemology, and afterlife.
- Absence of Disability Voices: "One of the 'evils' of theodicy has been the ignorance, neglect, and marginalization of disability voices." The inclusion of these perspectives is the first step to a viable theodicy.
- Mantra: "Nothing about us without us! $^40$ " applies to philosophy of religion.
- Praxis-Oriented Philosophy of Religion: Integrating disability perspectives redirects discussion toward practical application.
  - Beyond Speculation: Even while granting the speculative moment, disability perspectives insist that philosophical moments must invigorate moral, social, and political practices that heal human life.
  - Goal of Philosophy/Religion: Healing, love, wisdom ( $ext{philosophia}$ ).
  - Non-Neutrality: Love of wisdom ( $ext{philosophia}$ ) in disability perspective cannot be neutral regarding goodness, truth, beauty, and justice.
  - Love as Realization: Philosophical reflection sustained by religion's pursuit of love (of God, for God, for human beings).
  - Transformation: When wisdom and love are brought together in a disability perspective, they become the means to transform philosophical reflection and change the world.
- Ultimate Outcome: Disability perspectives not only destabilize traditional philosophy of religion formulations but can rehabilitate it, enabling the proper performance of wisdom to manifest the good, true, and beautiful of authentic spirituality and piety.