Aaron Davis

Is disability a natural evil destined to be eliminated by God? What does it mean to be disabled, anyway? Can being disabled prevent you from being a flourishing person, or even a person at all? Could God actually be disabled somehow? Questions like these have occupied the minds of disability theologians since the field’s inauguration in the mid-1990s. The intersection of theological concepts and ideas with those related to notions of disability, disabled identity, and disability justice make up disability theology’s core. However, until now there has been no single volume introduction to disability theology to which interested persons could turn to learn more about this dynamic area of study. "Disability Theology: An Introduction" changes this by offering a first-of-its-kind primer on the subject. Here you’ll find considerations of disability’s nature, the presentation of disability in Christian scripture, the relationship between disability and concepts of salvation, resurrection, and Church, and much more. Distilling insights from across the field’s breadth, "Disability Theology: An Introduction" is an all-in-one primer for students of theology approaching this subject for the first time. And yet, it also offers constructive insights for those already familiar with disability theology who seek clarity on key terms, concise models of complex topics, and critical appraisals of what can be found across the field’s diverse landscape. As such, "Disability Theology: An Introduction" can be a welcome addition to reading lists and libraries of all sorts.

In this paper, I suggest that a distinctly Protestant reclamation of the concept that confirmation can be a component of Christian sanctification could help clarify its place and present form in the Book of Common Prayer 1979 (BCP). More specifically, I synthesize an Anglican account of baptismal regeneration with Andrew Torrance’s recent work to describe accountability as a theological virtue in order to suggest that baptism pertains to justification, as understood according to the classical Protestant ordo salutis, while confirmation pertains to sanctification. In this way, the two rites can be teased apart as they are in the BCP without denigrating or sacrificing either for the sake of the other.

In this paper I contend that a rapprochement between Eleonore Stump and William Lane Craig’s views of the atonement is possible. In fact, such a union of the two can ameliorate difficulties each faces on its own. Particularly, Stump’s work faces difficulties regarding her “Anselmian” conceptual category, the role of divine justice in atonement, and the “stain on the soul” while Craig seems to overly bifurcate justification from sanctification and neglect divine love. These problems can be addressed using the resources each can provide the other, resulting in a synthetic account that benefits from what Stump and Craig respectively offer. Moreover, this account can engage common concerns from both Catholic and Protestant views of the atonement in turn, thereby offering a distinctively ecumenical position as well. In light of both of these aspects of its construction, this model is here called “the moderated ecumenical interpretation of the atonement” or “MEI.”

In this brief paper I suggest that felony murder might be helpfully added to William Lane Craig’s ensemble of legal analogies for penal substitutionary atonement (PSA). The upshot of including it is that Craig becomes enabled to dodge a worry raised by Oliver Crisp about imputing serious crimes to personally innocent individuals. However, I also point out that there could be issues with this move which are more trouble than they are worth. So, I conclude by proposing that Craig might be best served by either revising his view of retributivism or becoming a nonnecessitarian about the atonement.

Is hopeful universalism a coherent belief for a Christian to hold? Recent criticism of the view has suggested it may not be. Most incisively, Michael Rea has highlighted how hopeful universalism seems to require a Christian to desire a state of affairs “that conflicts with what she believes to be the perfectly good will of God.” While there are versions of the view which are guilty of exactly what Rea alleges, it is not necessary for the hopeful universalist to hold to them. Particularly, hopeful universalism can be understood to consist in a fittingness claim about one’s understanding of God’s will which requires no desires in conflict with said will. So, in this paper I argue for such a position, here termed “fittingness hopeful universalism” (FHU). I begin by sketching Rea’s critique to outline what we aim to avoid here. Next, I offer a brief survey of universalism’s place in theological history to highlight why Christians might prefer hopeful universalism to a more dogmatic version of the view. I then construct FHU to demonstrate one way Christians can avoid the problem Rea highlights while heeding historical theological norms. Finally, I anticipate and respond to two potential objections. Namely, that universalism and non-universalism cannot be co-equal goods, and that the co-equality of universalism and non-universalism would undermine divine goodness.

Christian theology looks forward to a consummation of all things in which hope, justice, and flourishing will finally prevail. All creation will be perfectly united to God as its Creator, and all shall be well. But what does this mean for disabled people? The typical Christian answer through history has been that disability will not exist in the world to come. The advent of disability theology has given us reasons to doubt this answer, but until now no extended treatment of disability and eschatology has existed. In response, this book gathers together essays from established and emerging scholars alike to provide an extensive look at what it might mean to imagine disability as a part of humanity’s ultimate ends. Across its pages we aim to advance conversations in disability theology through rigorously creative work, including on the much neglected topic of psychiatric disability. As such, our contributors ask and answer questions like “how can one’s well-being be high if they are disabled?,” “how do our beauty standards limit our eschatological thinking?,” “what does dissociative identity disorder mean for the afterlife?,” and more. Contributors include Eleonore Stump (Saint Louis), Harvey Cawdron (St Andrews), Jessica Coblentz (Saint Mary's College), Erin Raffety and Emma Worrall (Princeton Seminary), Derek Estes (Pepperdine), Samuel Youngs (Bryan College), Maja Whitaker (Laidlaw College), and the editors.

Could desires for everyday things like food or companionship have anything to do with Christian salvation? Desire and Divinization answers this question with a firm "yes." Human desires--from the mundane to the profound--are given to us by a desiring God, and though they may be fallen they can be used by God as signposts guiding us to richer union between us and our Creator. Work from Sarah Coakley on the theological character of desire is combined with a novel, Protestant understanding of participation in God's being; sometimes called theosis or deification, here called "divinization" to emphasize the way in which our imperfect, finite desires can be refashioned into things more like God's perfect, infinite desire for our love and flourishing. Bringing these two ideas together, Desire and Divinization proposes that this renewal of our lives comes in the form of a kind of ascetic practice. Not one of harsh denial, cold shame, or distant isolation, but rather one that embraces the God-given character of our desires and God's call for them to return to their Maker. Desire and Divinization is a call to have life, and have it abundantly, as Jesus teaches (John 10:10).

James Turner has argued that views of purgatorial post-mortem salvation face a dilemma givenhowtheir motivating intuitionsseem to intersect with the concept of Jesus’s second coming(i.e., the parousia). Namely, they can accept that some persons experience “abrupt purgation” (undermining a key reason for affirming purgation), they can posit all who are not already saved at the second coming are damned (a view which is highly distasteful to purgatory advocates), or they can deny the parousia(a position which is unorthodox). I offer a way of defusing this problem by constructing a second-chance soteriology on which persons in post-mortem purgation experience a state of psychological time dilation. In so doing, I first articulate the problem at hand before turning to relevant examples from fictional media and the neuropsychology of dreaming to support my constructive efforts. Finally, I apply this solution to a pre-existing soteriological model which already uses such resources so as to demonstrate its usefulness: namely, mycompassionate exclusivist view.

In this paper I propose a model of disability which synthesizes Amos Yong’s disability theology with Elizabeth Barnes’s “value-neutral model” of disability and then draws Sarah Coakley’s account of ante-mortem/post-mortem bodily fluidity in with both. To construct this model, I first outline Yong’s thought and then introduce Barnes’s work to it as a pivot point around which its eschatological imagery can turn. I then address Coakley’s work on bodily fluidity regarding gender and apply it to disability to reveal the model’s capacity to hold theological clarity and mystery in tension successfully.

Analytic theology is often described as something like the application of analytic philosophy's tools to theological studies, but what this means can be unclear. In this paper, I offer a primer on analytic theology which clarifies this common description of the field. Particularly, following Sarah Coakley, I sketch an account of analytic theology on which it consists of a relation of familial resemblance. That is, analytic theologians are those who investigate theological loci in ways akin to those seen in contemporary analytic philosophy. In so doing, I also briefly describe how analytic theology is conceptually distinct from both philosophical theology and analytic philosophy of religion. I then provide a threefold typology for understanding analytic theology's literary landscape whereby its practitioners can generally be understood to produce works which are either philosophically-inclined, theologically-inclined, or mixed in their inclination. Finally, I offer a brief survey of new frontiers being explored by analytic theologians.

In this article I propose an erotic theosis as a fruitful possibility for conceptualising our final participation in union with God in the beatific vision and for imaging said participation on earth. Particularly, I propose a synthesis of recent work from Oliver Crisp on theosis with that of Sarah Coakley on sexual desire as an especially helpful way in which to conceive of our ever-deepening participation in God's love. Further, this synthesis uses contributions from Erin Dufault-Hunter on the intersections of sexual desire and ethics as a catalyst for its recommendations.

Theological anthropology has tended to view human flourishing as consisting in the loving communion of ourselveswith God. Recently, Natalia Marandiuc has brought the tools of attachment theory to theological anthropology to argue that a self is not inherent to human persons but rather is co-created through our loving relationships with one another and with God. In this paper I argue for the introduction of narrative, particularly as understood through the work of Eleonore Stump, to Marandiuc’s account as a practical means by which healing love might be communicated, particularly through Scriptural narratives. In evidence of narrative’s usefulness, I offer a brief exegesis of the Gospel of John’s account of the Woman at the well. This synthesis fills a gap in our understanding of the self’s flourishing by not only adopting a model demonstrating its emergence but also by providing a method by which the model can be applied.

Faithful persons tend to relate to their religious beliefs as truth claims, particularly inasmuch as their beliefs have soteriological implications for those of different religions. For Christians the particular claims which matter most in this regard are those made by Jesus of Nazareth and his claims are primarily relational in nature. I propose a model in which we understand divine grace from Jesus as being mediated through relational knowledge of him on a compassionately exclusivist basis, including post-mortem. Supporting this model, I draw from Eleonore Stump’s hypothesis in her 2018 Atonement that the crucifixion of Jesus opens the divine psyche to all human psyches sufficiently for salvific mutual indwelling to occur, and from Gavin D’Costa’s conception of the descensus Christi ad inferos as the mechanism for grace’s accessibility post-mortem presented in his 2009 Christianity and World Religions. This model seeks to address ongoing, justified pastoral concern for the soteriological status of non-Christians while still treating Christianity as objectively true.