Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

57constructed understandings of issues such as oppression, freedom, embodimentand minority rights.Thus the following disability models are worth articulation and critique soas to discern the most appropriate model for engaging with and reflecting uponthe nature of the lives of those who live with an intellectual disability in aninstitutional context.2.3.1 The Christian Tradition ModelThe development of a disability model based on a rendering of Christiantradition is an inexact art. Amidst the plethora of biblical scholars and theologianswho have, since soon after the time of Christ, posited their scripturalinterpretations for consideration, the selection of those regarded as representativeis inherently subjective in character. For example, as disability theologian BrianBrock asserts, the historic ‘Western canon’ of biblical interpreters who arecommonly cited in scholarly debates today is mostly comprised of white males. 98Countless worthy voices from recent and more distant times are silent. Therefore,the scholarship offered here can only be regarded as “... a beginning, a firstsampling of what has traditionally been considered the main stream of WesternChristendom.” 99A significant difficulty also arises when the thinking of the distant past,before the word ‘disability’ had even come into usage, is found to be seeminglyincongruous with more contemporary insights regarding disability from aChristian perspective. Brock asserts that it is the concept of ‘communion ofsaints’ that serves as the necessary bridge between past and present. It is fromwithin this culturally diverse yet unifying ecclesial concept that Christiansthroughout the ages recognise that they “... have read a single set of scriptureswithin a shared confession of the role of the person and work of Jesus Christ ...with a theologically inflected understanding of the very concepts of tradition andhistory.” 100A search of the Patristic literature by ecclesial historian Almut Casparybegins with the teachings of Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of98 Brock, Brian. "Introduction: Disability and the Quest for the Human." In Disability in theChristian Tradition: A Reader, edited by Brian Bock and John Swinton, 1-23. Grand Rapids& Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012, 5-6.99 ibid., 6.100 ibid., 7.