Hauerwas’s Theology of Weakness

Hauerwas’s thought on disabilities is fundamentally shaped by the conviction that salvation is based on Christ’s suffering in the weakness of the cross. God does not mean for people to be self-sufficient. Engaging in a theological “transvaluation of values” that sees weakness positively, Hauerwas devotes much attention to people with intellectual disabilities, whom he considers overtly limited and weak. For Hauerwas, people with disabilities even manifest God’s own being as revealed on the cross:

Hauerwas also highlights God’s own weakness: “The God we Christians worship is the God of the sacrifice, the God of weakness and suffering, who draws us to his table not by coercive power but by sacrificial love … the weakness of God is no sham; this is fully manifest in the absolute commitment which leads him to become a man and to suffer, even to dying on a cross.”^{Footnote 9}

For Hauerwas, people with disabilities disclose what human life is ultimately about before God and illustrate how everybody needs the community of the church.^{Footnote 10} Everybody needs assistance; those who are not disabled, however, also require assistance in unmasking the illusion of self-sufficiency and strength.^{Footnote 11} “Prophetlike, the retarded only remind us of the insecurity hidden in our false sense of self-possession.”^{Footnote 12} “It is almost as if they have been given a natural grace to be free from the regret most of us feel for our neediness.”^{Footnote 13} Hauerwas sees persons with disabilities as “gifts” since they confront others with the good news that they are also weak and that God embraces them in their weakness.

For Hauerwas, accepting one’s own neediness and dependence is possible because the church is the communion in which members share their pain before God and engage in painful openness when confessing their sin.^{Footnote 14} This embrace of weakness contrasts with the pursuit of autonomy characterizing wider society. Hauerwas’s view does not engage with the questioning of unbridled autonomy that has also taken place in secular discourse, however, but assumes that autonomy remains the societal ideal.^{Footnote 15} Hauerwas also asks whether those who manifest their human limitations openly suffer from those limitations. Although he sometimes disputes that, he sometimes assumes that they do.

According to Hauerwas, people with disabilities manifest God’s grace in the way they slow down those who do not have disabilities. They helpfully obstruct the quest to “save” the world, forcing others to see that the world has already been saved.^{Footnote 16} Imposing their slowness on those with a messiah complex, people with disabilities make them see that “we have all the time we need to do what needs to be done,”^{Footnote 17} and no extraordinary achievements are necessary.

In Hauerwas’s writings on disability, the theme of God’s vulnerability on the cross is more prominent than, for example, the themes of creation or inspiration by the Spirit.^{Footnote 18} Sometimes Hauerwas speaks of Christ’s resurrection in addition to the cross. However, in the resurrection Christ did not simply leave suffering behind; rather, God took sides with the suffering Christ. Hauerwas supplements John H. Yoder’s theology of “cruciform” discipleship^{Footnote 19} by arguing that the appreciation of people with disabilities is a criterion of whether the church is faithful to the crucified and risen lord. Occasionally, Hauerwas draws on the theme of creation to argue that humans, not having created themselves, are needy and not self-sufficient; yet, what starts in these cases as an argument about the theology of creation ends as an argument about Christ’s cross and resurrection.^{Footnote 20} Moreover, it is the theology of the cross that brings out his more radical claim that even God is not self-sufficient.^{Footnote 21}

When Hauerwas addresses disabilities, hubris appears as the primary form of sin, although in another context he identifies another form of sin.^{Footnote 22} The problem is not that people act in contradiction to the created order or do too little, but that they tend to overestimate their strength and take on responsibilities that are not theirs. This has also been a classic position in a particular interpretation of Paul’s theology of the cross that was influential in twentieth-century German Protestantism, which sees Christ’s redeeming suffering on our behalf as countering the hubris of self-justification. Christ’s gift exposes people as sinners in need of mercy.^{Footnote 23} This particular theology of the cross reinforces Hauerwas’s view that worship of the crucified Christ must include a rebuttal of all striving for rational autonomy. Ernst Käsemann’s summary of this theology of the cross addresses Hauerwas’s themes of weakness and rational autonomy with the terms strength and wisdom (see 1 Cor 1–2): the theology of the cross “exposes man’s illusion that he can transcend himself and effect his own salvation, that he can all by himself maintain his own strength, his own wisdom, his own piety and his own self-praise even towards God.”^{Footnote 24} While this particular theology of the cross starts with the premise of salvation in Christ, two practical implications are to protest against the hubris of special achievements and to inculcate the patience that is required of Christians if salvation is not dependent on any baseline IQ. For Hauerwas, “woundedness” is the abiding characterization of the Christian life going forward,^{Footnote 25} and that defines the special theological value of people with disabilities.

Hauerwas’s Theology of Disability and the “Narrative Prosthesis”

Hauerwas writes candidly that he has wondered if he instrumentalizes people with disabilities: “the handicapped” were “the crack I desperately needed to give concreteness to my critique of modernity.”^{Footnote 26} Hauerwas’s response is that to use people with disabilities as theological object lessons may infringe on the respect for human autonomy that is fundamental to modernity; yet he argues that in the story in which the church sees all human lives embedded—creation, the cross, the resurrection, and the church—autonomy does not feature nearly as prominently. In Christian ethics, he argues, everyone is meant to live the story God has chosen for them, rather than to create their own story autonomously. An instrumentalization of others in service to that story may well be legitimate in his eyes.^{Footnote 27}

Hauerwas is not alone in singling out people with disabilities for sustained attention in pursuit of a wider point. Disability theorists Mitchell and Snyder observe the near ubiquity of disabilities in literature. The most varied authors, from Sophocles’s Oedipus the King to Montaigne’s essays and Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and beyond, negotiate cultural norms by discussing disability. Mitchell and Snyder argue that for the authors and their readers, the trope of disability functions as a “narrative prosthesis.”

A prosthesis helps to compensate for some lack. Disability functions as a prosthesis in Sophocles’s literary craft, for example, as Oedipus’s lameness lends narrative plausibility to his solving the sphinx’s riddle, which literally features a crutch. However, Oedipus’s disabilities remain “inconsequential for the myth’s plot.”^{Footnote 28} Sophocles has no interest in a lame person’s experience of life. There is nothing inherently wrong with using a prosthesis, literally or a figuratively, but too often the narrative prosthesis does not live up to literary standards: depictions of disability are “overdetermined” and stereotypical, rather than “open-ended,”^{Footnote 29} realistic, and involving a plausible character development.

Disability can also function as a literary foothold for an author’s subversive message, as is the case with Montaigne and Nietzsche.^{Footnote 30} Even the subversive use of the trope of disability, where the impairment is not presented as in need of a cure, often ends up preserving the ideological order of society. Nondisabled society displays “representational power,”^{Footnote 31} but, ironically, it makes people with disabilities do someone else’s bidding because it perceives disability as a challenge that must be integrated based on the terms of nondisabled society.

Hauerwas’s theology of disability helps his critique of modern autonomy flesh out how meaningful lives can be lived in weakness and acknowledged dependence. Is Hauerwas’s theology of disability a legitimate prosthesis? An evaluation of Hauerwas’s discussion of disability should not depend merely on whether he respects personal autonomy; he disputes, after all, that respect for autonomy is a valid theological norm. Rather than valuing autonomy, he suggests, Christians should see their lives as embedded in a story not of their own making. For this reason, the following section will examine the way Hauerwas incorporates people with disabilities into the theological story. He interprets this story by drawing a parallel between the cross and life with disabilities, assuming that people with disabilities embrace this perspective. Yet does he do justice to people with disabilities: is their situation roughly what he thinks it is in locating them in the Christian story?

Hauerwas on Disabilities: The Question of Suffering

The way Hauerwas perceives people with disabilities in offering them a story is important for whether they may identify with that story.^{Footnote 32} What kinds of disabilities does Hauerwas chiefly have in mind? John Swinton asserts that Hauerwas’s focus is on “severe” or “profound” intellectual disabilities.^{Footnote 33} However, what he usually has in mind are people with Down syndrome.^{Footnote 34} In one article Hauerwas virtually equates “retardation” with Down syndrome.^{Footnote 35} Further, when he suggests that “God’s face” is that of “the retarded,” he appears to envision the characteristic features of someone with Down syndrome. In only one article each does he focus on those with “severe” intellectual disabilities or speaks of multiple disabilities.^{Footnote 36} A later article discusses autism.^{Footnote 37}

Down syndrome typically varies in the forms it takes. Together with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), it is the most common cause of congenital intellectual disability, and, like the majority of intellectual disabilities, typically it is not severe. Children with Down syndrome develop more slowly and do not reach the same level of standard skills as others.^{Footnote 38} Yet, already in 1989 a specialist wrote in a popular guidebook that, during the previous twenty years, children with Down syndrome had received increasing social support, living relatively active lives.^{Footnote 39}

The question of whether theologians portray disability essentially as weakness and dependence is also a powerful diagnostic tool beyond Hauerwas’s work. As part of a care ethics, Rosemary Garland-Thomson has portrayed disabilities as highlighting the fundamental value of life, which imbues the basic nursing work of bodily care with profound meaning. She emphasizes that the need for nursing care in people with disabilities illustrates universal human vulnerabilities. Both are significant points, yet here one problem is that Garland-Thomson makes dependence on basic bodily care the dominant feature of disability.^{Footnote 40}

A significant question raised by Hauerwas is that of whether the “weakness” of the mentally disabled causes them to suffer. A stereotypical view of people with disabilities as weak might include the stereotypical assumption of suffering, yet that would contradict the experience of many people with disabilities, who report a good quality of life.^{Footnote 41} Here Hauerwas’s views on disabilities and suffering are ambiguous. Occasionally he speaks of the “joys and sufferings” of people with disabilities,^{Footnote 42} while he sometimes speaks only of suffering and not of joy.^{Footnote 43} Sometimes he argues that the social environment causes people with disabilities to suffer or even disputes that disabilities themselves cause suffering (see below). Nevertheless, he sometimes assumes that disabilities themselves are in fact the source of suffering. For example, he argues against the idea that disabilities justify abortions, writing that “such suffering should not tempt us to think our task is to eliminate those whose suffering seems pointless.”^{Footnote 44} In these instances, Hauerwas seems indebted to a medical model of disability, which understands disabilities as deviations from a medical norm.^{Footnote 45} Like a broken leg, such deviations then appear to cause suffering inherently.

Suffering also figures prominently in Hauerwas’s interpretation of Michael Bérubé’s account of his son James, who has Down syndrome and other disabilities. Hauerwas cites Michael Bérubé to make his crucial point: if the Bérubés “had known that their child’s life ‘would be suffering and misery for all concerned’ they might have chosen to have an abortion.”^{Footnote 46} Michael Bérubé indeed thinks that an abortion could be justified if there is a realistic prospect of severe suffering. Bérubé also writes that he finds it difficult to discuss that “now that he [i.e., James] is here”^{Footnote 47}—a statement that Hauerwas considers “the nub of the matter.”^{Footnote 48} Hauerwas deplores that, seemingly, for Michael Bérubé the argument about abortion is rendered moot only by the fact that he cannot turn back time—even though he loves James with his disabilities.

Here the assumption that disabilities cause suffering is a misrepresentation of Michael Bérubé’s account. Bérubé only speaks of “suffering and misery” to characterize a harmful, misleading stereotype. Hauerwas suggests that James suffers in direct contradiction to Michael’s portrayal.

The Bérubés declined prenatal tests during the pregnancy with James; yet Bérubé argues that, had they chosen prenatal testing, chances are the test would not only have detected Down syndrome but would also have been interpreted incorrectly as indicating “suffering and misery for all concerned,” in keeping with older, erroneous medical views. Bérubé does not write, as Hauerwas suggests, “if we had known that our child’s life would be suffering and misery.” Bérubé writes instead, “if we had been as seriously misinformed about Jamie’s prospects in the spring of 1991 as were most previous generations of parents … and if we were persuaded that our child’s life would be nothing but suffering and misery for all concerned, James included, then it’s quite possible that we would have chosen to have an abortion instead.” Crucially, the abortion scenario rests not solely on the counterfactual condition of prenatal testing but also on the additional hypothetical of an erroneous interpretation of a positive test result, which such tests were often given.

Hauerwas’s independent choice of the word to know suggests that he considers a highly negative interpretation of a test (“suffering and misery”) accurate, in contrast to Bérubé’s account. For Bérubé, a realistic prospect of severe suffering could make an abortion moral, but he suggests that “it’s preposterous to speak as if you know someone is ‘suffering’ from his or her disability.”^{Footnote 49} Erroneously assuming that “suffering and misery” is a reality for James, Hauerwas describes James’s life in his own words as “nothing but dependence.”^{Footnote 50} By contrast, Bérubé portrays his son as “a loving, self-aware, irreplaceable” child^{Footnote 51} who plays imaginatively, dances, laughs, attends day care, learns to speak and eventually to write.^{Footnote 52}

Elsewhere, Hauerwas suggests that people with disabilities suffer at the hands of the medical system and from injustices more generally.^{Footnote 53} Such statements do not attribute suffering inherently to disabilities, although they still highlight suffering especially.^{Footnote 54} Further, in an article alluded to above, Hauerwas disputes explicitly that Down syndrome inherently increases the amount of suffering a person experiences. Here he follows the social model of disability by arguing that society is often unwilling to accommodate the needs of people with intellectual disabilities. In addition, Hauerwas suggests that, fearing suffering, people rashly project suffering on people with disabilities, which makes the nondisabled suffer in misplaced empathy.^{Footnote 55}

In its more thoroughly theological arguments, however, the same article goes on to suggest that an impairment inherently increases suffering after all. Hauerwas argues that to affirm disabilities, and suffering along with it, makes people more moral: suffering is an important antidote to a misguided striving for achievements. He suggests that the motivation of preventing suffering through abortions is ultimately wrong because it is likely to result in more harm than good.^{Footnote 56} Further, Hauerwas appeals to a theology of the cross when suggesting in this article that “we have come to know [God] through the cross of Christ,” and, in the same breath, that “God’s body is the body of the retarded.”^{Footnote 57} Yet to treat people with disabilities as representations of the crucified Christ means to assert a connection between disability and suffering that is more drastic than the moral injury of the social model of disability. On the cross, Christ suffered extreme physical torture. Both Hauerwas’s more general antiabortion argument and his strong reliance on the theology of the cross result in a misleading portrayal of people with disabilities as suffering.

Although Hauerwas’s account includes some nuance, his views on disabilities repeatedly contrast with the experience of many people by highlighting suffering especially. Hauerwas’s proposal that people with disabilities suffer in parallel with Christ is thoroughly theological; it can also seem profound compared to his more pedestrian, nontheological view that the attribution of suffering to people with disabilities is merely a misunderstanding. However, that christological suggestion overdetermines their portrayal. Disputing that people should create the stories of their own lives autonomously, he imposes a stereotypical, distorting identity of co-suffering in weakness on people with disabilities.

The story that results as people with disabilities embed their lives in God’s story may not be their own free creation, but it needs to be a narrative in which they recognize themselves. Hauerwas’s narrative prosthesis is not a legitimate one. His highly influential interpretation of disability illustrates how a theology of disability as weakness imposes on people with disabilities the view that they reflect Christ’s weakness on the cross, foregrounding the experience of suffering too much. Such a position is among those Garland-Thomson critiques: she describes certain theological views of disability as “a projection across a vast social and existential chasm” that she sees as “a colonizing move that turns the disabled subject into a sacred version of the noble savage figure.”^{Footnote 58}

Further problems can result from the praise of weakness that recommends humility, contrasting with the attempt to minimize weakness in sinful pride. Feminist theologians have argued against pitting humility and pride against each other so prominently, which cements the acquiescent or submissive roles that society often reserves for women.^{Footnote 59} However, people with disabilities may profit more from support in discovering talents that they may have than from encouragement to claim their weakness as exemplars of humility.^{Footnote 60}

Paul’s Theology of the Cross: Power in Weakness

In a jointly written book, Hauerwas and Jean Vanier spoke of the “prophetic witness of weakness.”^{Footnote 61} It was later discovered that Vanier exploited numerous non-disabled women sexually who were in a position of weakness in relation to his perceived spiritual authority. Vanier’s account of people with disabilities cannot be simply summarized with the notion of weakness: he also emphasizes that spending time with people with disabilities is fun and often makes him laugh.^{Footnote 62} Nevertheless, Vanier avoids calling this a strength.^{Footnote 63} In dialogue with Hauerwas, Vanier asks how the strengths and weaknesses of people with disabilities are related^{Footnote 64} and, on another occasion, cites Paul’s statements from 1 Corinthians about God’s election of the weak and foolish in Christ, which shames the strong (1:25, 27; 2:3).^{Footnote 65} Weakness and foolishness were also keywords in Käsemann’s theology of the cross. However, Vanier stops short of mentioning Paul’s repeated point that Christ’s weakness is “the power of God” (1:17, 18, 24; 2:5), which is “stronger than human strength” (1:25).

Grant Macaskill likewise addresses 1 Cor 1–2 in his discussions of the Bible and ASD.^{Footnote 66} Paul articulates a contrast between his message and dominant values of strength and wisdom, which can fund a countercultural interpretation of the cross still today. In Macaskill’s comments, however, neither Paul’s affirmation of weakness nor that of strength plays a role. Speaking from experience, Macaskill does not consider autism a “deficit.”^{Footnote 67} He affirms autism as a “difference” that does not align with binaries like weakness and strength.^{Footnote 68} For him, that is insufficiently reflected in cultural evaluations of ASD that cluster around psychological descriptions—not least theological ones that see ASD in misleading proximity to psychopathy^{Footnote 69}—yet, at best, these do not warrant more than preliminary indications. While Macaskill affirms distinctive mental trends among autistic people, they are not as straightforward as people assume.^{Footnote 70} By consequence, medical descriptions, social practices, and cultural symbols reinforce each other in marginalizing autistic people.^{Footnote 71} A more helpful interplay of preliminary scientific descriptions, inclusive social practices, and cultural symbols is conceivable.

There are traits that are conventionally regarded as disabilities, although disabled people do not experience them as weakness. I do not have such traits in mind. Rather, my concern is with those theologies that portray disability as weakness in appealing to Paul distinctly as a “theologian of weakness”^{Footnote 72} while ignoring the aspect of power in weakness. For example, Hans Reinders contrasts a certain theology of the cross with an appreciation of human agency. Focusing on agency, we too easily ignore the fundamental significance of God’s radical love expressed in the cross, he suggests, and that would be at odds with the value of profoundly disabled people. Highlighting weakness alone, Reinders argues that in the shadow of the cross, humans are recipients of God’s love and not agents. “When God sees humans, he sees woundedness in need of redemption.”^{Footnote 73}

Such attention to the cross necessitates comments on Paul’s theology of the cross. First Corinthians 1–2 is among its foundational texts.^{Footnote 74} Paul even speaks of “God’s weakness” (1:25). Käsemann’s presentation of the theology of the cross interprets Paul’s affirmation of weakness as an acknowledgment that humans lack achievements before God.^{Footnote 75} Michael Wolter’s more recent discussion of Paul’s theology of the cross is less concerned with human achievement. His analysis draws on 1 Corinthians especially, where Paul emphasizes that the appreciation of God’s weakness and foolishness in the cross is true “wisdom.” This wisdom brings people from opposing sides of society together as one congregation.^{Footnote 76} Yet when Wolter compiles the signal contrasts in 1 Cor 1:18–25 (God/world, wisdom/ foolishness, perishing/salvation), he overlooks the recurring theme of power and weakness. Often a theology of the cross focuses on weakness, but Paul repeatedly calls the word of the cross a “power” that is active in the congregation (1:17, 18, 24, 25; 2:4.5).

If disability meant weakness chiefly, one might be skeptical as to whether Paul himself had a disability, given his intensive missionary activities. While 2 Cor 12:7 suggests that Paul indeed had a disability,^{Footnote 77} Isaac T. Soon suggests that the skills required for Paul’s ministry do not rule out a disability that compromised only skills not required for the mission specifically.^{Footnote 78} However, since 12:9 sees Christ’s power perfected precisely in Paul’s weakness, Paul’s disability may not simply have been a burden on his mission but also a benefit.

Martin Albl even argues that for Paul, weakness and the related concept of disability meant a “life of power and glory.”^{Footnote 79} This perspective contrasts with Paul’s own lament (2 Cor 12:7–9).^{Footnote 80} Indeed, Albl focuses especially on life and healing after death.^{Footnote 81} However, Paul sees himself participating in Christ’s power in weakness already in this life (e.g., 2 Cor 13:4).

Speaking of weakness in 1 Cor 1–2, Paul contrasts Christ’s cross with “the wisdom of the world.” If there is any power inherent in the cross, it does not lie in some worldly ideal that Christ exemplifies. That does not mean, however, that the positive aspect of power should be ignored. By identifying Christ’s cross with power, Paul “wrests” from listeners “one of their most cherished terms” and gives it new meaning:^{Footnote 82} a power that is differently powerful. This is a crucial move. It goes beyond an inversion that would see power in weakness to the extent that weakness reminds us of the universality of weakness. Instead, Paul differentiates between different kinds of power and places one kind in a complementary relationship with weakness. I will portray Paul’s power in weakness as a “community-forming power.”^{Footnote 83}

Jennifer Glancy describes the suffering that Paul endured in persecution as bolstering his claim to authority, and hence to power: “because his experiences of physical abuse unite him with Jesus, Paul presents his abject body as evidence of his authority.”^{Footnote 84} Glancy focuses on Paul’s statement that Christ’s power is perfected in Paul’s weakness (2 Cor 12:9), which echoes Paul’s contention that “God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Cor 1:25). Second Corinthians 12 includes Paul’s reference to his “thorn in the flesh,” a source of physical pain that appears to have resulted from the abuse he suffered during his missionary work.^{Footnote 85} This impairment seems to be involved when rival “super-apostles” in Corinth charge him with being “weak” (2 Cor 10:10).

“Always carrying around in the body Jesus’s dying” (2 Cor 4:10), Paul sees his violated body in parallel to Jesus’s crucified body. Christ’s body is also the bearer of supreme power, and so Paul presents his own disability as “a source of improbable power.”^{Footnote 86} Glancy further argues that Paul claims the power of his abused body in contrast to the martial values of his time. His wounds and hardships do not establish his power in the way that a soldier’s battle scars attest to his hardiness in duress. In Greco-Roman culture, wounds received on the chest were a sign of honor; but on the back, they attested to cowardice and shame.^{Footnote 87} Paul’s wounds resulted from beatings and deprivation (1 Cor 4:11, 2 Cor 11:16–33), and it was emasculating to be “flogged” and “beaten” (2 Cor 11:23–25). Whatever Paul’s impairment, context suggests (12:10) that the wounds received at the hands of his persecutors are part of the “thorn in the flesh” and the “weakness” mentioned in 2 Cor 12:7–9.

Candida R. Moss likewise sees Paul arguing in 2 Cor 12:7–10 that “he more readily houses the power of Christ”^{Footnote 88} than rival apostles. In addition to the parallel between Paul’s impairment and Christ’s cross, Paul’s bodily weakness offers an opportunity for Christ to invade Paul’s body, as spirits were thought to do with weak people. Moss’s evaluation of the passage appears ambivalent: she seems to appreciate weakness as a strength that is “better” than the “masculine” value of rational clarity, but her portrayal of Paul also detects a jockeying for influence: “Throughout his epistles, Paul is accustomed to utilizing the discourse of persecution and suffering in order to legitimize his own authority and position himself as a mediator between Christ and the Pauline communities.”^{Footnote 89}

So far, Paul’s interpretation of his weakness amounts to greater authority, but commentators also remark critically on Paul’s competitive inclination.^{Footnote 90} The aspect of communion with Christ in his wounds can appear as strongly focused on Paul’s person for his own sake. Is Paul’s power in weakness essentially a piece of one-upmanship?

Here, I add two points to the interpretation of Christ’s power in Paul’s weakness to emphasize Paul’s orientation toward community. First, in the light of the cross, Paul finds deeper meaning in the fact that his own rhetoric is less than stellar (1 Cor 1:17, 2:2–3; 2 Cor 11:6). If the word of the cross were proclaimed by all-around brilliant geniuses, the result would be a performative self-contradiction (1 Cor 1:17). Yet Paul’s proclamation had an effect in Corinth. Second, the Corinthians were themselves not of the respectable classes (1 Cor 1:26–27, 6:9–11). Apparently, Paul’s unpretentious rhetoric was what it took to win over the dubious Corinthians for Christ. The unassuming preaching was the appropriate link between the message of the cross, the weak apostle, and the disreputable congregation. God’s election of the foolish, manifest in the cross, reflected in Paul’s lowliness and proclaimed in his suboptimal rhetoric, also means the election of the disreputable Corinthians. God’s power is tangible in the very existence of the congregation: of all people in Corinth, it is these unsavory figures who have been sanctified and justified (6:11). So Paul’s weakness played out as a strength in the upbuilding of the community. Paul “boasts” in the congregation (2 Cor 1:14, 7:14, 9:2), just as he “boasts” about his Christ-like suffering (11:16–30). In the face of the social stigma of the Corinthians,^{Footnote 91} he calls the congregation a letter of reference in his favor (3:1–4).^{Footnote 92} The Corinthian charge of weakness against Paul is self-defeating; the power of weakness is a “community-forming power” that was at work among the Corinthians themselves. Both Paul’s flawed rhetoric and the disrespected but inclusive communities that do not present polished worship performances harbor a power that creates community. This way, people with disabilities may claim the power of weakness without placing their disabilities in parallel to Paul’s or Jesus’s violated bodies.

Paul appreciates those of a weak social standing also in 1 Cor 12. In the middle section of the chapter, Paul portrays the congregation as a body with various members (12:12–26) and argues that the contributions of the seemingly weaker members matter especially (vv. 22–23). It would contradict the organismic nature of the body if it were to disregard the feet or treat the genitalia with contempt. Without exception, the Spirit is at work for the community in everybody. Commentators have suggested that the contributions that people with disabilities make to congregations must be honored especially.^{Footnote 93}

Paul’s parable of the body speaks of “weaker,” less honored members of the body (vv. 22–23). However, greater attention to the aspect of power (dynamis) can alert to difficulties in 1 Cor 12 from a disabilities perspective that the English-speaking disability discourse has overlooked.^{Footnote 94} Paul sandwiches the inclusive body parable by first introducing “the spiritual things” (vv. 1–11: activities that the Spirit brings about) and, at the end of the chapter, by situating these activities in the context of the church as the body of Christ (vv. 27–31). In the enclosing sections, Paul has more conspicuous demonstrations of “power” in mind, with repeated mention of acts of power (dynameis, miracles: vv. 10, 28, 29), but not of weakness. One term that stands out here is charisma (gift of the Spirit). Commentators have appealed to this term to appreciate contributions that people with disabilities make in congregations. Yet, of the five times that Paul uses charisma, he speaks of “gifts of healing” three times (vv. 9, 28, 30), not combining the noun with any particular “gift” elsewhere. Further, when Paul says that “through the Spirit,” some are given “faith” (12:9), apparently he thinks of the variety that “moves mountains” (13:2).^{Footnote 95}

Paul’s focus on powerful deeds and healing calls to mind how the disability scholar Sharon Betcher has described New Testament passages that feature healing as “texts of terror.”^{Footnote 96} Too easily they take for granted that health is obviously desirable and disability a deficit. Moreover, in 11:30, Paul attributes weakness and illness to religious transgressions. When Paul speaks positively of acts of power but not of weakness (12:1–11, 27–31), a tension with his earlier praise of weakness and his criticism of the pursuit of strength (1:22–25) seems to result. It is only later on that Paul relativizes the flashier forms of power that he asserted in chapter 12 and gives them an inflection of weakness by highlighting love (13:1–3) and less spectacular gifts of the Spirit, such as acts of “upbuilding and encouragement and consolation” (14:1–4).

Paul’s more virile and ostentatious understanding of the “gifts of the Spirit” in 1 Cor 12 can contribute to a marginalization of people with disabilities. However, there is no need to highlight a theology of weakness in response, in which the contributions of people with disabilities consist especially in wearing weakness openly. Paul also asserts the significant role of the “weaker” members in his image of the body, in contrast to his praise of acts of power, and here he does not assert that everybody is weak by deploying a theology of the cross that would contrast the contempt of others by the “strong” with their lack of achievements before God. The contributions of “weak” members deserve respect, but, as Macaskill notes, the examples of the ears, the nose, the feet, and the private parts show that these contributions do not consist in weakness.^{Footnote 97}

What did Paul have in mind with the contributions of the “weaker” members? Amos Yong suggests that the contributions of the “strong” are “mediated through those” of the weak,^{Footnote 98} but he does not go as far as to attribute strength to people with disabilities. Notably, Yong does not comment on “power” in 1 Cor 1–2. Rather, he continues to highlight a “theology of weakness,” although the contributions of the “weak” members (1 Cor 12) are not necessarily “weak.” By contrast, in an extended discussion of 1 Cor 12, Brian Brock helpfully illustrates the gifts that people with disabilities give to congregations with experiences he had with his son Adam, who has Down syndrome and other disabilities. Brian Brock sees Adam display a remarkable social sensitivity and solicitude, commenting, “it is easy to imagine that the intellectually disabled in a community may be the first to register the distress or spiritual state of those around them.”^{Footnote 99} Another illustration involves the way Adam sometimes frustrated his father’s expectations by showing no interest in material gifts. Adam appreciates embodied personal contact instead, which Brian suggests taught him a difficult but valuable lesson.^{Footnote 100} Further, Adam Brock contributes to an inclusive, albeit unconventional atmosphere at church, often sitting next to the priest and taking his socks off.^{Footnote 101} On the whole, Brian Brock emphasizes that Christians should not disregard the work of the Spirit in the gifts that people with intellectual disabilities in fact give. In addition, the contrast between weakness and strength is not their point.^{Footnote 102} Strengths come to the fore as Adam Brock engages in fellowship and helps include others in the community.

The Abilities and Achievements of People with Disabilities

The shift from an understanding of disability chiefly as weakness, which might imply strength in the sense that people with disabilities are a step ahead of others in accepting the vulnerabilities that characterize humanity in general, to an understanding of weakness that allows for distinctive strengths that are not themselves about weakness, resonates with a remark by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, even if that statement is one-sided in another way: “I should like to speak of God not at the boundaries but in the center, not in weakness but in strength; and therefore not in death and guilt but in man’s life and goodness”^{Footnote 103}—and, I would add: not solely in apparent ability deficits but also in the achievements of people with disabilities.

In a lecture from 2019, Hauerwas deviates from his typical theology of weakness. Although he maintains that “God comes to us not in our strengths but in our weaknesses and vulnerabilities,”^{Footnote 104} he appreciates in this case how people with disabilities display “agency.” He presents an article by cultural anthropologist Patrick McKearney who, looking back at the time he spent at a L’Arche community, argues that “people with cognitive disabilities can contribute to and actively affect the moral lives of others in valuable ways, even as they may lack full cognitive capacity.”^{Footnote 105} Among other things, these contributions may consist in the fact that carers learn about their own vulnerabilities. However, McKearney’s main point is that the contributions by L’Arche core members who have disabilities are by no means restricted to giving carers a deeper knowledge of their own weakness. McKearney speaks of the remarkable “agency,” the “distinctive characteristics, abilities and achievements” of core members.^{Footnote 106} It is not that their disabilities turned out to be less serious than assumed. McKearney’s contribution suggests that disability should no longer be conceived of chiefly as weakness; rather, the constraints imposed by disability can also contribute to distinct capabilities.

McKearney further argues that anthropologists, philosophers, and theologians have allowed thinkers like Peter Singer to reinforce the binary of dependence and independence, and greater and lesser rationality, as a framework within which to view intellectual disabilities. While Singer denigrates more dependent people as less deserving of human dignity, thinkers like Eva F. Kittay or Reinders have responded with a care ethics, arguing for an appreciation of people with disabilities as highly valuable precisely while they are utterly “dependent, passive and vulnerable.”^{Footnote 107} Yet, as stark as the difference in evaluation is, it is a secondary question that follows the binary of dependence and independence that guides the description of people.^{Footnote 108} Both sides agree about a zero-sum game: the less cognitively competent, strong, or independent people are, the weaker and more dependent they are, and vice-versa.

For McKearney, by contrast, weaknesses may enrich a community not only as weaknesses but also in allowing for distinct strengths. For example, three core members at L’Arche, Sarah, Rachel, and Martha, enjoy looking at themselves in the mirror, while their carers, who do not have what is called a disability, would not typically look at their reflection for an extended time.^{Footnote 109} McKearney describes the three as displaying agency in helpfully lacking a sensitivity to negative judgments by others based on conventional beauty standards or on conventional moral views about vanity. He affirms the common view that people considered intellectually disabled are less able to grasp “social norms and ethical ideals.”^{Footnote 110} While social norms are often important, here their reduced role has positive results, as the appreciation of one’s beauty is not undermined by conventional modesty, which also helps carers to question conventional beauty norms. In another example, Ensy, who has a strong speech impairment and other disabilities, addresses a carer called Priya after having observed how Priya was sad earlier. Once Priya understood, she was astonished, and McKearney considers Ensy’s behavior an achievement. As another example of similar strengths, some residents at L’Arche take fellowship to profound levels with a remarkable ability to share simple yet meaningful bodily activities like being present to others at the right moment in the right way.^{Footnote 111} Vanier, moreover, appreciates how at L’Arche, people with disabilities dance on tables, and shared laughter breaks down social barriers.^{Footnote 112} Here, a reduced awareness of social norms again results in surprising personal strengths.

McKearney appreciates the Christian ethos of L’Arche that encourages friendships. Mainstream institutions discourage carers from making friends with disabled residents, in order to preserve their autonomy.^{Footnote 113} By contrast, Vanier encouraged friendships due to his high theological regard for shared weakness. Alternatively, one can also interpret this policy in the sense that weaknesses shared in friendship allow for a sharing of strengths as well. Besides, an autonomy that would take place in the invulnerability of social isolation appears much less desirable by comparison.

Hauerwas implicitly acknowledges further distinct strengths of persons labeled disabled when he expresses great appreciation for his godson Adam Brock, who has autism and Down syndrome: “if the Kingdom brought by Jesus is shalom then Adam may be the healthiest person he [i.e., Adam’s father Brian] knows. Adam is able to live without worry about the future.”^{Footnote 114} To plan for the future is another powerful social norm. Similarly, Brian Brock suggests that Adam displays an almost uncanny sensitivity in making visible unspoken social dynamics that elude others: Adam sometimes chooses a seat in relation to someone where others, beholden to social tensions that are difficult to read, avoid doing so. In keeping with previous examples, Brock highlights his son’s defiance of “normal social convention.”^{Footnote 115} “Surely one cannot help but desire to have such a friend,” Hauerwas concludes.

In his 2019 lecture, Hauerwas also implicitly addresses philosophical approaches to disability that he criticized earlier. His earlier criticism was that philosophical approaches may persuade people to respect the rights of people with disabilities, but they cannot motivate people to make friends with them.^{Footnote 116} To do that, he argued, a positive Christian interpretation of weakness is required, which includes the testimony that people with disabilities give about universal human weakness before God. By contrast, when Hauerwas now says that friendships with people labeled disabled are so unconventional and enriching that one cannot but value them, he has modified that older account: a community consisting of people with and without disabilities can share both weaknesses and strengths, and here everybody has a valuable, attractive gift to give. It is not as if only Christians would value the positive traits of people with disabilities—which are no longer reduced to weakness—for reasons that would require distinct religious commitments. However, as long as stereotypes about disabilities circulate widely, such friendships should hopefully be a hallmark precisely of Christian communities.

An Anthropology of Intercorporeality

For McKearney, the deficits in linguistic competence and rationality among L’Arche residents are clear. Yet their disabilities also go together with different strengths than mainstream society would expect. McKearney recounts how carers at L’Arche were amazed at the ability of core members to read the emotional states of carers and to empathize.^{Footnote 117} McKearney calls the achievements by people with disabilities “distinct” and remarkable. He relates how people with intellectual disabilities do not have the cognitive abilities of their carers but often excel in matters of temperament, like “humour, generosity or assertiveness.”^{Footnote 118} I suggest such strengths reflect the power of the gospel with their “community-forming power.”

As remarked, Garland-Thomson criticized unwarranted, stereotypical generalizations about people with disabilities as “a colonizing move” vis-à-vis some putative “noble savage.” The same objection could be raised against examples of strengths in people with disabilities: there is no supernatural mystery that would endow people with disabilities with nebulous capabilities and strengths. For this reason, Mitchell and Snyder use the ironic term “supercrips,” warning that apparently “positive images” of people with disabilities may not be so positive after all.^{Footnote 119} To portray people with disabilities as supernaturally talented would again be a problematic “narrative prosthesis” that subjects people with disabilities to the discursive power of a theological scheme.

To defuse this concern, anthropological insights from the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) are helpful. Discussion of his work in disability studies is just beginning,^{Footnote 120} but occasionally authors emphasize how Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the fundamentally embodied condition of being in the world suggests that people with impairments have their own integrity, in resourcefully generating meaning in their own embodied ways. Swinton faults a “hypercognitive society” for discrimination against people with intellectual disabilities.^{Footnote 121} A philosophy of embodiment helps analyze with greater precision how the value society attaches to cognition is excessive.

Merleau-Ponty understands any experience of the world as the result of the subject’s embodied negotiation of the environment. There is no disembodied Cartesian mind that would provide an objective framework according to which the organism would understand and evaluate its situation in the world. For example, “number blind” people understand numbers only as parts of a sequence they say out loud, not as determinate amounts. They may not see that in the term 5 + 4 – 4 the fours cancel each other out. Nevertheless, they can carry out computations by counting and so should not be considered deficient with regard to some direct, mental awareness of numbers.^{Footnote 122} As philosopher Philipa Rothfield suggests, the way a person with an impairment experiences the world “is not to be thought of as ‘normal’ minus some capacity.”^{Footnote 123} For Merleau-Ponty, disability is not an original fact here but is experienced only when people with disabilities “see themselves through the eyes of others.”^{Footnote 124} Since originally, embodied life experiences the environment in relation to the self and significant others,^{Footnote 125} but not to some general, disembodied standard, Merleau-Ponty concludes that “disorders that are properly intellectual … will not be able to be considered as ultimate deficiencies.”^{Footnote 126}

The original fact is that of embodied sense perception, with which the lived body finds its way in the world, even before the person becomes aware of it. This contrasts with the common representationalist view that sees the subject fundamentally engaged with ideas, images, symbols, concepts, or propositions, which would then need to be brought into conformity with an objective “view from nowhere.” Representationalism has a powerful grasp on public discourse, for example in cognitive science,^{Footnote 127} but it has been influential in theology, too.^{Footnote 128} In that view, people with intellectual disabilities would be held back fundamentally by a basic deficit in their ability to process representations. Merleau-Ponty, by contrast, contends that at bottom, perception as a thoroughly bodily event does not depend on mental representation.^{Footnote 129} “When we say that the perceived thing is grasped ‘in person’ or ‘in the flesh’ (leibhaft), this is to be taken literally: the flesh of what is perceived, this compact particle which stops exploration, and this optimum which terminates it, аll reflect my own incarnation and are its counterpart.”^{Footnote 130}

Joshua St. Pierre is an example of a disability scholar who relies on Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of the mind as not operating in a Cartesian realm but as fundamentally intertwined with the bodily organism, in separation from which it cannot be conceptualized. This helps him understand stuttering as resulting from the body’s experience of time that differs from the dominant mainstream experience, rather than as a deficiency of “pure consciousness.”^{Footnote 131} St. Pierre then criticizes Merleau-Ponty for failing to take individual differences in the embodied experience of time into account, while, ironically, Merleau-Ponty’s rejection of a Cartesian standard time allows for precisely that.

Merleau-Ponty further argues that the recognition of a person as a person does not rest on induction: person A does not infer in a logical operation that person B is an intentional agent, in analogy to A’s own personhood, as evidenced in shared bodily movement. Both share their being in a pre-theoretical, “primordial We [On]”^{Footnote 132} that Merleau-Ponty calls intercorporeality. Already as newborns, babies are actively engaged with their caregivers, and their experience is not one of private individuals but of a joint exploration of the world from not yet differentiated perspectives.^{Footnote 133} Due to this shared condition, A perceives B at once as a body and a person, just as I perceive my left hand as a living organ when I touch it with my right hand.^{Footnote 134} Here, Merleau-Ponty also speaks of “Einfühlung”^{Footnote 135} (empathy). Einfühlung should not be misunderstood in the colloquial sense of a strong emotion that does not touch on the more basic perceptual constitution of the other as an intentional agent.^{Footnote 136} For Merleau-Ponty, the basic nature of bodily sociality defuses the philosophical problem of solipsism, but his observations also suggest that a fundamentally bodily, perceptual openness to others is not surprising, regardless of reduced rational capacities. Shaun Gallagher comments: “in encounters with others, pronoetically, before I know it, I seem to have a sense of how it is with them.”^{Footnote 137}

Merleau-Ponty’s notion of intercorporeality helps spell out the key concept that this article derived from Paul’s theology, which is the particular strengths of people with certain disabilities. For example, when McKearney recounts how Sarah, Rachel, and Martha appreciate seeing their own bodies in the mirror, such appreciation of their embodied existence may illustrate a prerequisite of intercorporeal competence. I would add to McKearney’s account that perhaps the glee the three display at what they see suggests that they take pleasure in their embodied agency as their specific strength. Methodologically, intercorporeality seems uniquely suited to spell out the strengths of people with intellectual disabilities. By contrast, to search for verbal accounts in which people with intellectual disabilities describe their achievements themselves may at times be self-defeating, given the intellectual prerequisites of such an effort.

McKearney comments on the remarkable competence with which people with disabilities console others by spending time with them in basic embodied ways. Priya’s astonishment about Ensy’s perception of her sadness likewise illustrates Ensy’s intercorporeal competence. Adam Brock’s preference for the embodied encounter with his father over lifeless material gifts shows a preference for the intercorporeal dimension, and that may be the factor that further prompts his father to attribute great sensitivity and solicitude to Adam. Intercorporeality does not mean that people with disabilities are especially empathic, in the colloquial sense of the term. Moreover, there may also be disabilities that reduce intercorporeal competence. Nevertheless, intellectual disabilities do not necessarily hamper a person’s awareness of the emotional state of another, which does not rest on processing representations. Merleau-Ponty’s concept of intercorporeality even helps us understand one strength of people with intellectual disabilities. Brock speaks of a “sympathetic connection with other Christians,” which he attributes to people with intellectual disabilities.^{Footnote 138}

Reduced Social Convention as an Intercorporeal Strength in Weakness

In keeping with the critique of representationalism, people often perceive, rather than infer, more elaborate aspects of how the other person experiences the world. Ludwig Wittgenstein observes that people do not read facial expressions through inductive reasoning.^{Footnote 139} Merleau-Ponty is aware that A’s perception may misunderstand B: A remains “on this side” of B’s experience, rather than encompassing it.^{Footnote 140} A person’s more elaborate experience, expressed in posture or facial expression, is not perceived directly; more precariously, it is perceived only as a “trace” left in that “original,” more fundamental reality of the other person.^{Footnote 141}

When Merleau-Ponty describes a person’s experience as a “trace” that we perceive, but not as a positive presence, he pursues an alternative both to the direct perception of their experience itself and a processing of representations. Yet his metaphor also draws attention to the fact that a person’s experience can well be missed. At this point, I suggest that people can overlook a person’s experience more easily the more they are shaped by social convention. Those with a clear sense of social norms may pay less attention to the person in front of them, more concerned not to arrive late somewhere else, focused on some practical task at hand, or worrying about the future. In the various accounts about people with intellectual disabilities, a reduced internalization of social norms has been a continuing theme. It can be conducive to greater attentiveness to other people. For example, Adam Brock’s taking his socks off at church shows a reduced sense of social norms, but his father also credits him with a remarkable sensitivity to the needs of others. Such sensitivity can be a sign specifically of intercorporeal competence. Here, reduced attention to social norms can imply greater intercorporeal competence, as attention to social norms may otherwise override the perception of a “trace” in the other person’s bodily expressivity.

Charles Taylor describes the modern ideal of the “buffered self,” which separates inner emotion from outer bodily expression.^{Footnote 142} As this modern habitus became a cultural norm, individuals have been discouraged not only from showing emotions themselves but also from becoming too personal by addressing others about the emotions that they display. The “flow of feeling” that transports mutual recognition between a young person and significant others runs dry as the young person matures and becomes increasingly detached and “buffered.”^{Footnote 143} A buffered self would also notice the emotions of others less. It follows that nondisabled people may perceive another person’s emotional expressions less clearly because, as second nature, social convention has reduced their intercorporeal perception.

This does not suggest that the nondisabled, mainstream way of life, permeated by social conventions, is less desirable morally than a life with disabilities. Social norms of course play an important, often helpful role in communities. Nevertheless, social norms and mainstream rationality are not unalloyed goods. Greater rational capacities do not represent simple moral progress. Rather, in people less rationally competent, other valuable intercorporeal capacities can be more developed as a trade-off.