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The body's availability: Ezekiel 37, Robert Jenson and disabled flesh

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2022

Luke Zerra
Luke Zerra*
Affiliation:
Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ, USA
*
Corresponding author. Email: luke.zerra@ptsem.edu
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Abstract

This paper puts Ezekiel 37 in conversation with Robert W. Jenson's theological anthropology. It claims that a theological reading of scripture can clarify moral reflection on personhood in general, and the personhood of humans with disabilities in particular. Ezekiel 37:1–14, read through Jenson's exegesis and theology, offers a theological anthropology in which human personhood is given by God's address. To be a person is to be available to God's address. Such an understanding does not rely on capacities inherent to the person, but extrinsically in God's word and freedom to be available to human flesh.

Keywords

disabilityEzekielRobert W. Jensontheological anthropology
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 75 , Issue 2 , May 2022 , pp. 117 - 122
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 For example, see Romero, Miguel J., ‘Profound Cognitive Impairment, Moral Virtue, and Our Life in Christ: Can my Brother Live a Happy and Holy Life?’, Church Life 34/4 (2015), pp. 80–94Google Scholar.

2 Swinton, John, Dementia: Living in the Memories of God (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2012), pp. 10–13Google Scholar; Reinders, Hans S., Receiving the Gift of Friendship: Profound Disability, Theological Anthropology, and Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2008), pp. 88–122Google Scholar.

3 See Stanley Hauerwas, ‘Are Human Rights Founded in Hebrew and Christian Scriptures?’, ABC Religion and Ethics, 30 January 2012, https://www.abc.net.au/religion/are-human-rights-founded-in-hebrew-and-christian-scriptures/10100830.

4 Wolterstorff, Nicholas, Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), pp. 342–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Zerra, Luke, ‘Reformed Aesthetics and Disability Ethics: The Potential Contribution of Nicholas Wolterstorff’, Studies in Christian Ethics 34/1 (February 2021), pp. 76–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 In defining disability I am convinced by Elizabeth Barnes’ defence of disability as ‘mere difference’ rather than ‘bad difference’. Disability is a value-neutral category stating that one has a minority body, not a defective body. This is not to say that the disabled do not suffer because of their disability. Disabled bodies, like any other body, will sustain ‘local bads’, but this does not mean that the person counts their life as a ‘global bad’. See Barnes, Elizabeth, The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability (Oxford and New York: OUP, 2016), pp. 54–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Eichrodt, Walther, Ezekiel, trans. Quin, Cosslett (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1970), pp. 509–10Google Scholar.

7 Strong, John T., ‘Egypt's Shameful Death and the House of Israel's Exodus from Sheol (Ezekiel 32.17–32 and 37.1–14)’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 34/4 (June 2010), pp. 475–504CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Seitz, Christopher R., ‘Ezekiel 37:1–14’, Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 46/1 (January 1992), p. 53Google Scholar.

9 Jenson, Robert W., Ezekiel (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2009), pp. 281–2Google Scholar.

10 Ibid.

11 Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology [hereafter ST], 2 vols (Oxford and New York: OUP, 1997–9), vol. 1, p. 203.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 204.

14 See 1 Cor 10:16–17, 11:17–34; Eph 1:22–3; 5:23; Col 1:18, 24.

15 Jenson, ST, vol. 1, p. 205.

16 Jenson, ST, vol. 2, pp. 58–9.

17 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 59.

18 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 60.

19 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 55.

20 Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., ‘The Blood of Christ and the Christology of All Things: Or, Why Things Became Human’, in Stephen John Wright and Chris E.W. Green (eds), The Promise of Robert W. Jenson's Theology: Constructive Engagements (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017), p. 160; Jenson, ST, vol. 2, p. 59.

21 See Stanley Hauerwas, Suffering Presence: Theological Reflections on Medicine, the Mentally Handicapped, and the Church (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), pp. 159–217.

22 Jenson, ST, vol. 2, p. 49.

23 Jenson, ST, vol. 2, pp. 59–60.

24 Jenson, Ezekiel, pp. 281–2.

25 Ibid., p. 282.

26 Ibid.

27 I would like to thank Nicola Whyte and Andrew Peterson for the invitation to present the earliest draft of this paper at the 2018 Princeton Seminary Graduate Student Conference, my co-panellists Kevin Vollrath and Andrew Kimmitt for helpful conversation, and Miguel Romero for his role as respondent. I am particularly grateful to Eugene Rogers for his enthusiasm for this project and encouragement to seek publication of this essay and Morgan Bell for similar encouragement. Gratitude is also due to Ephraim Radner, who offered feedback on this essay as part of Wycliffe College's 2021 Scripture and Theology Essay Competition. Finally, thank you to the anonymous reviewers for the Scottish Journal of Theology for the time and care with which they read this paper.