Liberation beyond Action: Witness, Disability, and Glimpses of the Eschaton

In the recent turn to liberation in Christian theology, personal action and advocacy are paramount. Such action is indeed liberating for many oppressed minorities, but fails to take account of the experiences of people with intellectual disabilities, many of whom are unable to self-advocate. In this paper, by drawing on Barth’s theology of witness, I argue that the invading work of Christ through the Spirit in the life of Christians provides a means by which those with profound intellectual abilities experience the liberation of God. As they are liberated by the action of God, people with intellectual disabilities are simultaneously empowered to witness to this liberatory event, thus becoming sites of liberation themselves. As witnesses to their own liberation, people with intellectual disabilities offer glimpses of the coming kingdom of God, disrupting our tidy eschatological vision by the Kingdom appearing in the places some may least expect.