Bodily Life as Creaturely Life: The Ethical Coexistence of Human Beings with Disabilities and its Fulfillment

Abstract

The title “Bodily Life as Creaturely Life” indicates that any reflection on human life forms, on a human “ethos”, must deal with the transforming experiences that let appear how human beings coexist. Becoming aware of people with disabilities, this reflection implies particular experiences of transformation. There appears paradigmatically how one's own bodily existence is related to and connected with the bodily existence of others. The human “ethos” must be described in its bodily appearance as can be learned from biblical traditions and its interpreters (such as Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer). They suggest that communication is bodily mediated and is fulfilled through sharing one's bodily life with one another—as God shares His life in Jesus’ bodily existence and His story with human beings. This sharing, then, is the context of living together, which ethics must explore instead of focusing the question for a given common human nature, both its abilities and disabilities. Theological ethics draws the attention to the part that every human being plays in God's story. Theological ethics must unfold this bodily mediated “ethos” wherein people find their coexistence as God's creatures.