Imago Dei og kroppsliggjort væren: En funksjonshemmingsteologi i lys av Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

Theologians and philosophers have historically privileged the faculty of rationality in their exegesis of what it means to be created in the image of God. They have argued that we were made in God’s image when we were endowed with a rational soul. This argument is contested by contemporary disability theologians. They argue that by equating the imago Dei with the faculty of rationality Christian theology effectively strips people with cognitive disabilities of their human rights. It justifies elevating the cognitively able over the cognitively disabled in the same way that it justifies elevating the human species over other species. In this article, I will first show that the contemporary Western conviction that ability and independence are normal while disability and dependence are deviant owes much to definitions of the human first proposed by Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, and Immanuel Kant. I will then propose that Aquinas himself offers us a way out of these destructive binarisms. He defines the imago Dei as an embodied soul, an imperfectly intelligent substance that can fulfill its destiny only if it receives the support of society and the intervention of God’s grace. Aquinas’s theology of embodiment does not merely expose false assumptions about ability and disability; it compels us to appreciate the radical dependency and vulnerability of human nature.