Disability, Providence, and Ethics: Bridging Gaps, Transforming Lives

Description

Human disability raises the hardest questions of human existence and leads directly to the problem of causalityathe underlying intuition that someone, divine or human, must have been at fault. Christian theology has responded with almost singular attention to Providence, the expression of divine will in the world as the cause of all things. This preoccupation holds captive the Christian imagination, leaving the Church ill equipped to engage the human reality of disability. Theological reflection, argues Hans Reinders, can arise only as a second-order activity that follows after real attention to the experience of disability. Disability, Providence, and Ethics offers a more excellent way to address this difficult subject. Reinders guides readers away from an identification of disability with tragedyavia lamentato the possibility of theological hope and its expression of God's presence. In particular, Reinders reconsiders two of the main traditional sources in Christian thought about Providence, the biblical text of Job and the theological work of John Calvin. Throughout the book, first-person accounts of disability open up biblical texts and Christian theologyarather than the other way around. In the end, a theology of Providence begins with the presence of the Spirit, not with the problem of causality. Cover ......Page 1 Half title page, About the Series, Title Page, copyright, frontispiece ......Page 2 Contents ......Page 10 Foreword ......Page 12 1. Disability and Divine Providence......Page 18 2. Cosmic Fairness?......Page 48 3. Providence: Intervention and Transformation......Page 70 4. Does the Cosmos Contain Keys?......Page 90 5. A Man Named Job......Page 114 6. Fons Omnium Bonorum......Page 142 7. Providence in Christ......Page 162 8. Stories We Live By......Page 184 Notes......Page 208 Bibliography......Page 238 Index......Page 246