Imago Dei as imago Trinitatis: A theology of disability and embodied cognitio

This dissertation demonstrates how the illusion that disability is merely a medical condition has been sustained to a great extent by the classical understanding of the imago Dei as a disembodied rational substance. This understanding has played a vital role in shaping our modern respect for the virtues of independence and autonomy and our modern disrespect for people with disabilities. To destabilize the hegemony of medical discourses of disability, this dissertation proposes a new analysis of disability as a social phenomenon and buttresses this analysis with an application of Thomas Aquinas' interpretation of the imago Dei as embodied reason. By asserting the unity of the mind and the body, it refutes the idea that human experience is universal or disembodied and deconstructs the opposition between ability and disability. Analyzing the imago Dei in Trinitarian terms - as an imago Trinitatis if you will - I argue that the able are just as vulnerable and dependent on others as the disabled. As a result, it recaptures a sense of the naturalness of human frailty, vulnerability, limits and disability, which this dissertation argues, makes space for multiple ways of embodying the imago Dei, and thus multiple ways of embodying the rational soul.