This session explores conceptualizations of human and non-human freedom in relation to the great "wheel of being," creaturely plasticity and disability, and participation in the shared intentionality of the triune God.
My paper argues that the phenomenon of shared intentionality can serve both as an analogue for God as Trinity and as an explanatory concept for speaking about human freedom as participation in the life of the triune God. My paper has three parts. First, I summarize some recent findings of comparative and developmental psychologists, who have argued human beings are unique due to a capacity to share intentions with conspecifics. Second, I show how shared intentionality can serve as an analogue for God as Trinity. Finally, I argue that human freedom consists in being conformed to the shared intentionality of the triune God.
This paper engages Kathryn Tanner’s account of human nature in Christ the Key, where she re-interprets the common identification of freedom as imago Dei to be the plasticity of human nature. Drawing from disability theology the paper demonstrates the value of Tanner’s creative proposal for its potential inclusion of a vast range of human body/minds and the insistence that the body is an essential aspect of humanity’s plasticity. Lastly, the paper considers whether freedom as malleability is limited to a uniquely human nature. Drawing from indigenous and eco-theologies and disabled ecological advocates, the paper considers the interconnection of all creation, such that the “inputs” of which Tanner speaks go both ways: from environment to human and human to environment so as to shape not only human body/minds but all aspects of nature. The paper moves against the trend to theorize humanity isolated from land and all nature.
Dionysius depicts the divine Logos as the center of a circle, the many logoi of creation its radii. This image offers resources for resisting the axiological hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being with which it is often wrongly equated. Organizational hierarchies are not value hierarchies: complex organisms are “higher” only in the sense that their possibility is predicated on the existence of simpler forms of organization. A multispecies analysis of freedom offers a fruitful context of application. The possibility of complex forms of freedom is predicated on the prior existence of simpler forms of freedom; the emergence of the former arrives together with heightened modes of interdependence and vulnerability. Unpacking this dialectic of freedom and dependency, which this paper undertakes in conversation with Helmut Plessner, Hans Jonas, and Peter Godfrey-Smith, can correct human exceptionalism without obscuring the distinctive forms of freedom and agency that are possible for language-using animals.
Irenaeus of Lyon is a promising conversation partner for Christian theologians seeking a politics of justice, human flourishing, and the promotion of the common good, in contrast to fascistic models of domination, unchecked power, and the demonization of difference. Christian-valenced authoritarianism relies on assumptions about God, human society, and power that align more closely with Irenaeus’ depiction of the Antichrist than the complex model of Christian politics set forth in Adversus haereses and the Epideixis. Central to this model are particular assertions of divine sovereignty, the human vocation to rule, and the paradigmatic kingship of Christ. While Irenaeus has no neat answers for contemporary Christian political concerns, the heart of his political vision remains relevant today: a theo-centric, Christologically-rich politics that fosters socio-political coherence, diversity, and stability, along with practical care for the marginalized and vulnerable, without undermining individual human freedom.