Abstract
The risen Christ presented his wounded hands and side to the disciples as evidence of his identity and the reality of his physical resurrection. Despite this, the picture of eschatological life in the popular Christian imagination is often one of flawless persons living in normalised and idealised resurrection bodies. In this thesis, I argue that persons with disabilities could retain in their post-resurrection bodies some of those features of diverse embodiment that have contributed to the experience of impairment and disability in pre-resurrection life. This is likely not the case for all persons with disabilities, but only for those persons for whom their diverse embodiment is identity-forming, so that the retention of those features safeguards the continuity of identity through the transformation of resurrection. In these cases, the physical transformation of the old creation and the redeemed sociality of resurrected persons will ameliorate the impairment and disability that diverse embodiment often entails in pre-resurrection life. Thus, the retention of diverse embodiment presents no threat to God’s goodness nor to the eschatological flourishing of the person in question and the full realisation of her humanity. This proposal is consonant with a reassessment of Scripture and theology from a disability perspective rather than through the prevailing normate bias, and it gives due attention to the persisting wounds of the risen Christ. I suggest that the possibility of persons with diverse embodiment enjoying fullness of life in the new creation can function as an eschatological parable to subvert the powers of this age which idolise success, mastery, and autonomy to the neglect of theologies of weakness, limitation, and dependency.