Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. ² Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³ And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. ⁴ And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” –Revelation 21

And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. ² In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. ³ And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him. ⁴ They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. ⁵ There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, forthe Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever. –Revelation 22

²⁰ For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, ²¹ who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself. –Philippians 3

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. ² Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. ³ And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. –I John 3

¹² Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands, ¹³ and in the midst of the seven lampstands One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band. ¹⁴ His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire;¹⁵ His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters; ¹⁶ He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength. ¹⁷ And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. ¹⁸ I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death. –Revelation 1

I don’t know if you have ever heard of what Amos Yong calls ‘disability theology,’ but it is Antichrist through and through. I shared the above passages of Scripture because even at a prima facie level they contradict and refute the very notion of disability theology. Others have come along and articulated, in the affirmative, Yong’s theology as well. You might be wondering what it entails? Here is another theologian, someone I was just reading for other reasons, who affirms this rubbish theology; John Bowlin writes:

At this point, let me offer three qualifications that indicate where my Thomistic sketch departs from Thomas’s views. First, Thomas assumes that the bodies of the blessed will be healed in every respect. He considers every disability a deficit that will be overcome. I do not. On my account, citizenship in God’s heavenly commonwealth requires a remedy for only the severest cognitive deficits. The blessed must be able to know and love God. Whether they will also have bodies healed and restored in every respect–abou this I have doubts. At the very least, I want to acknowledge what Elizabeth Barnes and others have taught us about other, less severe disabilities. There are many kinds of human bodies. Some of these ways and bodies are considered lamentably disabled when in fact they exhibit human differences that require neither lament nor healing. In many cases, what they require is the recognition that a so-called impediment may in fact provide for a unique way of being human and loving God.[1]

If Bowlin, Yong et al. were attempting to present this position to Jesus I am positive his first words to them would be: “get behind me satan!” Too often theologians get so deep into their own witty imaginations that they believe their ‘theological’ interpretation of Scripture fills in the gaps, in keeping with Scripture, that the logic of God’s grace simply will not allow for.

Disabilities, by definition, miss the mark of what a healthy physical and mental body ought to have. In other words, there is a privation of particular genes or DNA markers that lead to incapacities that were not supposed to be; save the fall. Clearly, Bowlin et al. are attempting to ascribe a mode of dignity to all of humanity by elevating disabilities. But this is not the way God does that. God takes the very source that has caused whatever the malady might be—physical, mental, or emotional—and puts it to death in the broken body of Jesus Christ. Also, in Jesus Christ, He raises all of humanity anew unto the exact same glorified body that Jesus rose and ascended with. This is not to say that while we inhabit disabled and diseased bodies now that they are not valuable. On the contrary, it is through these bodies of death that God in Christ builds the character and fruit of the Spirit that will be everlasting. That will be carried into our glorified bodies, the types of bodies that find their absolute correspondence with Jesus’s resurrected body.

These theologians ought to repent. They have gone beyond Scripture in the name of Scripture, and have presented a notion of salvation that is less than what God has presented the world with in the resurrected humanity of Jesus Christ. Jesus’s body went from broken, bruised, and battered to glorified, indestructible, and of the sort that can stand in the burning presence of the living and triune God and not be destroyed. These theologians offer an impish understanding of bodily salvation that has capitulated to cultural questions and concerns rather than the ones that are revealed to us through Jesus Christ. They ought to repent.

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[1] John R. Bowlin, “Dignity and Domination: A Thomistic Sketch,” in Dogma and Ecumenism: Vatican II and Karl Barth’s Ad Limina Apostolorum, edited by Matthew Levering, Bruce L. McCormack and Thomas Joseph White, OP (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2020), 223.

PS. The Lord has done a miracle. My dad is eating, gaining strength, has much of his mental capacity back, and just started walking again. Keep praying. We serve a living King who destroys what would seek to destroy us. I’ll do a longer update post soon. He still has the grotesque cancer on his head, but I’m praying for that too. Nothing is too difficult for the LORD; He is God and we are not.