In God’s Image

Recognizing the Profoundly Impaired as Persons

Peter A. Comensoli, Nigel Zimmermann, Zimmermann

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781625646323
  9781498285377
• eBook ISBN:
  9781532652844
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

In God's Image: Recognizing the Profoundly Impaired as Persons is a bold Catholic argument in defense of the profoundly impaired. While a range of theological voices can now be heard speaking up on behalf of those who live their lives at the extremes of the human condition, few voices have been explicitly Catholic. Comensoli draws on the irreplaceable contribution of St. Thomas Aquinas to forge an engagement with one of the leading thinkers in the theology of the disabled, Professor Hans Reinders. While recognizing the crucial contribution that Reinders has made, Comensoli situates our perception of the cognitively impaired within the horizon of God's own image, refusing a reduction of the substantialist position the Catholic tradition has always valued. This is linked to the fresh and countercultural community life pioneered by Jean Vanier, founder of the L'Arche communities. For Comensoli, the profoundly impaired are persons whose personhood cannot be recognized outside of the condition of their impairment, and through which God's Image is perceived in all its paradoxical implications.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Persons among Persons?
• Chapter 1: Life Lived at the Extremes
• Chapter 2: “People Just Like Other People”
• Chapter 3: A Thoroughly Human Enterprise
• Chapter 4: Friendship-Made
• Chapter 5: Being a Creature
• Chapter 6: The Pilgrim Creature
• Chapter 7: Imago Dei
• Chapter 8: Drawing Near to Christ
• Conclusion: “Beyond Inclusion!”
• Bibliography