「無障礙神學」與智障人士建立神人關係的模式政治

The Theology of Access and the Development of Divine-human Relationship for People with Intellectual Disability

LEE Fu Ho William

People with disability is not excluded from the gospel. The church and Christians should provide them access to approach God, as it is mandated by the gospel. The salvation of God is universal and granted to all people including those with intellectual disability. Therefore, a theological rationale needs to be developed for the sake of completing our discussion of soteriology to include people with intellectual disability. Reasoning, cognition, or usage of words and language are not necessary keys to build up a relationship with God and to our salvation; otherwise people with intellectual disability would be ignored and excluded in divine-human relationship. In other words, a solid and well-grounded theological rationale is needed to facilitate such a religion of inclusiveness; and we usually call it the theology of access. The theology of access will make the theological discussion of inclusiveness no longer speculative. Inclusiveness is always practical, and also has to be ecumenical. Therefore, the discussion of the theology of access cannot be separated from the “mainstream” discussion of theology, and it could in fact enrich the discipline of theology to manifest the Christian faith as universal and ecumenical as Christian theology should be.”God loves the world”; God’s love to the creature is unconditional. He unconditionally accepts all the mankind, including those with intellectual disability.

The aim of the theology of access is to include people with disability in soteriology or ecumenism. To achieve this, their responsiveness is important. It includes “the non-symbolic mode of responsiveness,” i.e. the responsiveness between people with or without disability, which is manifested in the friendship between them, and enriched by their mutual responses to each other. Therefore, the church should offer access to people with intellectual disability to make friendship in the church, so that their relationship with God could also be built up. However, this is not the only way to facilitate their divine-human relationship. People with intellectual disability could also use “symbolic mode of responsiveness” to respond to God, and thus receive access to build up a relationship with God. I argue that approaching Christian liturgy is a symbolic mode of response, and this includes following the practices of and participating in the rituals inherited from the Christian tradition. People with intellectual disability could discern the Spirit via participating in the Christian liturgy, and develop a positive divine-human relationship. Christian liturgy is not only for people with the capacity of reasoning, but also for people with less cognitive ability to discern the Spirit and to build up a proper relationship with God.