A common reaction I hear whenever I speak about disability is something to the effect: “We know it’s bad, but it is a consequence of the Fall, and it will be healed in heaven.” If it crosses my mind to add that not everyone has the same relationship with their disabilities and that I do not think all of them have to be healed in heaven, my interlocutors are even more puzzled. Such a statement contradicts not only the instinct of wanting to be healed and feel “normal,” but it also goes against a very simple theological rationale: anything caused by the Fall will be overcome in the eschaton. Until recently, I was not sure how to make my argument convincingly. Now, I know: by comparison with national identity.
While teaching a recent course on Modern Orthodox theology at a Romanian university, I gave a lecture on political theology. Part and parcel of this topic was the question of nationalism, or how much one should love one’s country or ethnic heritage. In preparation, I returned to St. Dumitru Stăniloae’s writings, and what I found surprised me and allowed me to make some unexpected connections with disability.
In the chapter “Orthodoxy and Nation” in his book Orthodoxy and Romanian Identity [Ortodoxie și Românism], Stăniloae tackles the question of deification and national identity. He challenges the Roman Catholic theologians who argue that our union with God requires overcoming our ethnic identity—something they ground in the famous quote from Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” To live in Christ, one must get rid of any ethnic characteristics, since ethnic existence is ultimately a consequence of the Fall, and assume a more universal identity.
Stăniloae responds by arguing that these characteristics are in fact so profoundly ingrained in our identity that it would be inconceivable to appear in front of Christ without them. Nobody is born outside of a culture, language, or ethnic identity, and these cannot simply be washed away. Quite the opposite, all these elements are part of our hypostasis as willed and constituted by God from eternity. As Stăniloae explains:
“The hypostasis of each person comes from God, but it comes passing through the environment of a past accumulated in earthly ancestors, and this journey is integrated into the act of her constitution according to the image she has in others. The individualizing notes, which the newly constituted self receives in the order of the world, from the environment of history accumulated in parents, viewed from our chronological perspective, seem added to other notes which it would have had beforehand. In reality, the new self is constituted through a single act, natural-divine, entirely simultaneous. Therefore, one cannot say that the notes with which a new self is endowed by the past preceding it are more superficial, of a secondary order, and thus possibly to be abandoned by the person, in order to return to the state of a priori purity and face the influences of the past” (my italics).[1]
From an Orthodox perspective, Stăniloae continues, deification is not about overcoming our characteristics but transfiguring them through union with Christ. Christ does not ask us to give up who we are but to assume it and place it in His service. “The powers, qualities, characteristics of man are not converted, are not melted into grace, but the work of grace allows itself to be poured, is moulded according to man’s aptitudes and faculties.”[2]
Stăniloae’s point is that, even accounting for the Fall, we cannot make a distinction between good and bad characteristics, because all our characteristics shaped who we are as persons. Our union with Christ cannot be like peeling an onion, removing one layer or characteristic after another, because nothing is left in the end. Union with Christ must be more like the blossoming of a flower: certain elements that are put there through God’s care are shaped by the environment and in the end attain their fulfilment in the flower. Similarly, every element of our biological and spiritual existence is willed by God and comes to being through the personal history of our ancestors and especially our parents. Stăniloae includes among these elements our ethnic identity, but whatever he says about ethnicity can be fairly easily applied to disability, which in many cases is either directly or indirectly the consequence of “the environment of a past accumulated in earthly ancestors.”
As noted above, one critique usually levelled against disability theology, especially in some Orthodox quarters, is that it tries to promote as positive something that is actually a negative consequence of the Fall. Illness and disability spring from the disobedience of Adam and Eve, they have been assumed by Christ, and they will be completely healed in heaven. The same, however, can be said about ethnic identity: it is a consequence of human hubris. Linguistic and ethnic diversity appeared because humans wanted to be like God. Nations and languages did not exist until humans decided to build a tower that would reach the sky (Gen., chap. 11). Similarly to disability, there are good reasons to believe that languages will be overcome in the eschaton when communication with God and others will transcend the imperfections of human words and rationality.
Yet, if Stăniloae is right, neither disability nor ethnic identity can “be healed.” These characteristics are an integral part of who we are, and they will continue to be important for us even in the eschaton, not only because they are part of God’s plan for each hypostasis but also because our spiritual life on earth is already shaped by them. There must be some continuity between who we are now and who we will be in our eschatological relationship with Christ.
Taking a step further, we can say that human beings have the same relation with their ethnic background as they have with their disabilities. Some are proud of their ethnicity, others run away from it their entire lives, and some have an ambivalent approach. Persons with disabilities follow the same pattern, some are proud, others want to be healed, and some are still uncertain how to integrate disability into their identity. Thus, I think that deification must account for the relationship we have with our own characteristics.
More precisely, I argue that since deification is relational—we enter into a personal relationship with Christ through the Holy Spirit—it has to be the kind of relationship that will help us flourish by developing those characteristics that we want to keep and consider important for our identity. In this sense, to use an analogy, deification can be understood as an intercultural marriage. Spouses who enter the relationship from two different cultural backgrounds might want to preserve certain practices of their culture that are important to them. They might also want to negotiate which language to speak, but if everything is done in love and without imposing one’s will upon the other, they will develop a new identity, one more dependent on the partner than on oneself. Likewise, in deification, we negotiate the characteristics we preserve and we learn which ones help us flourish and enhance our love for Christ. Put differently, in the eschaton, we get to preserve our disability if we consider it important for our identity and, just as importantly, for our experience of God and others.
To summarize, I have tried to show how Stăniloae’s for national identity can illuminate the debate about the need for disability to be healed in heaven. If we accept that the structure of our hypostasis, including disability and ethnic background, is established by God and comes into being as an accumulation of various factors, then, as Stăniloae argues, we must imagine our union with God not as an erasure of these characteristics but as their fulfilment.
[1] Dumitru Stăniloae, Ortodoxie și Românism (Sibiu: Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidiecenzane, 1939), p. 9.
[2] Dumitru Stăniloae, Ortodoxie și Românism, p. 27
