The Disabled God Revisited: Trinity, Christology, and Liberation

Lisa D. Powell strengthens and amplifies the claim that God is disabled, made by Nancy Eiesland in her ground breaking book The Disabled God (1994). She offers an alternative understanding of the doctrine of God and the Trinity, resulting in a God who is not autonomous and utterly independent. According to this view, God’s triune identity is established in God’s decision for covenant, and thus creation is a requirement for the fulfillment of God’s nature - not only is the Son always anticipating full embodiment and human nature, but more specifically is eternally anticipating an impaired body. Powell argues that God is not only interdependent within the immanent Trinity, but God experiences real dependency, risk and vulnerability from God’s “original” self-determination. Powell revisits Eiesland’s claim about Christ’s resurrected body and her conclusions about eschatological embodiment, arguing that it is the able-body that does not persist eschatologically, but all humanity journeys toward ever more transparency, vulnerability and interdependency as the Body of Christ.

Table of Contents:
Dedication Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: Nancy Eiesland and the Disabled God Chapter 2: Covenant Ontology and The Impaired Body of the Son Chapter 3: The Vulnerability and Need of God Chapter 4: The Receptivity of God Chapter 5: Disability and Resurrection Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Lisa D. Powell is Professor of Theology and Women and Gender Studies at St. Ambrose University, USA.

Review :
This book will be of interest not only to disability theologians, but also to those engaged in debates in trinitarian theology and theological anthropology. The brevity and clarity with which it is written make the book accessible to undergraduate students and refreshing to more advanced readers as well. The Disabled God Revisited is a thought-provoking and welcome addition to the growing literature on disability in Christian systematic theology. Nancy Eiesland’s Disabled God has shaped several generations of disability theologians, despite leaving some important theological questions unasked. Gathering together various criticisms in an extremely helpful way, Lisa D. Powell constructively and sympathetically extends Eisland’s liberation theology, and shows why the doctrine of God remains generative for a liberative theology today. Do not let yourself be fooled by the modest title claim! Powell’s magnificent book is much more than a mere “revisiting” of Eiesland’s landmark Disabled God. Masterfully combining crip theory, queer critique, and Barth’s doctrine of election, Powell offers nothing short of a theological ontology of God as disabled, while at the same time pulling the rug out of disability as a human identity category. Finding the triune God constituted in the eternal election of the (impaired body of the) Son, she reclaims receptivity for a kenotic Christology from its feminist critics, develops the ensuing covenantal solidarity with creation, and develops an eschatological vision of deepening mutual interdependence rather than the retention of abled/disabled individuality. The result is a doctrinally sound, critically sourced, and constructively liberationist Christology that will have repercussions across a variety of fields in the years to come. If Barth’s Romans commentary was said to have dropped like a bomb on the playground of theologians, then Powell’s The Disabled God Revisited picks up the pieces left by Nancy Eiesland’s The Disability God deploying the Barthian shards. Barth studies gets reconfigured and extended, disability theology is fortified, and our understanding of God and ourselves is transformed in the process. The Disabled God Revisited is a creative and timely intervention into debates about the Trinity, Christology, theological anthropology, and liberation. Skillfully gathering insights from cutting-edge studies of Karl Barth, theologies of disability, and feminist and queer thinkers, while also advancing a powerful constructive perspective of her own, Powell’s book will repay close study and inspire valuable conversations. Powell has provided readers with a rich exploration in The Disabled God Revisited. Of course, in re-envisioning God, our sense of self is also reframed, insofar as disability is seen as received in the broken body of Christ in the Eucharist. This can be profoundly liberating for people with disabilities.