Wondrous Monsters: What Extraordinary Bodies Can Teach us about God
Devan Stahl, Baylor University, Waco, TX
Michel Foucault dreamt of a new age of curiosity. “We have the technical means for it; the desire is there; the things to be known are infinite; the people who can employ themselves at this task exist.” So why, Foucault wonders, have wonder ceased? Because we think too narrowly. Today, anomalous bodies are quickly categorized, diagnosed, and remedies are sought. For most of the ancient and medieval era, however, such bodies were monstrous--they were signs from God.
Christians did not originate the idea that monsters bore special messages from God, but they eagerly adopted ancient beliefs, adding to them their own theological interpretations. Monstrous births in particular, were fodder for theological speculation for centuries. Surely, God was trying to relay something particular through the birth of an unusually formed child. The message may have varied, but monstrous births were surely divine communication.
Yet, the theology of monstrosity did more than tell Christians something about the Creator God, it also influenced how monsters were treated, both medically and socially. At various points in history, persons deemed monsters were seen as portents of divine wrath, a display of God’s love of diversity, or proof of the playfulness of nature. They were exploited as religious and political props, scouted as proof of new scientific beliefs, paraded on stage for the purposes of charity, and dissected by God-fearing anatomists. Until late modernity, priests, physicians, scientists, political leaders, and book sellers found common cause in interpreting the bodies of monsters. Conjoined twins, hermaphrodites, dwarfs, giants, and countless others fascinated, horrified, disgusted, and tantalized.
Today, “severe fetal anomalies” rarely evoke the same sense of wonder and terror they once did. Theological interpretations of what are now called disabilities and deformities are often dismissed as a relic of a bygone era. Christians retain some unusual and sometimes unpleasant views about disability, but science and medicine now provide the dominating explanatory frame. Unusual bodies are no longer wonders who carry divine revelation, they are tragic, pitiable creatures who medicine must fix.
Secular bioethics has taken up a similar refrain. According to Gerald P. McKenny, the problem with “standard bioethics” is that it is incapable of addressing the meaning of the body or how modern medicine constructs and control the body. Despite its intense focus on the body, modern medicine has obscured the place of the body in the moral life. Indeed, the body no longer seems to have any moral significance beyond the ability help us achieve our desires. If we wish to explore the moral significance of the body or what moral purposes it serves, we must return to particular religious traditions.
This paper will argue for a renewed understanding of certain disabled bodies as wondrous. Using the wonder tradition inaugurated by Augustine, bodies might again become potent sites for transcendent moral meaning.
Augustine’s account of monstrous births has been both applauded and derided by disability scholars. One the one hand, Augustine also argues that there is a clear norm for human bodies and certain bodily impairment can be an effect of the Fall. On the other hand, Augustine departs from most of his contemporaries by tying monsters to God’s purposive, benevolent will, arguing we should see monsters as a wonder, not a failure or a punishment. In fact, everything created by God, from the mundane to the marvelous, are wonderful, because God is wonderful. Augustine goes so far as to argue that monsters belong to the diversity of creation, which contribute to the beauty of the whole of creation.
The wonder tradition can help reorient contemporary theological bioethics way from viewing people with extraordinary bodies as deformed or tragic and instead viewing them as wondrous creations. Wonders do not necessarily need to be pathologized, normalized or otherwise “fixed” by medicine.
Christians did not originate the idea that monsters bore special messages from God, but they eagerly adopted ancient beliefs, adding to them their own theological interpretations. Monstrous births in particular, were fodder for theological speculation for centuries. Surely, God was trying to relay something particular through the birth of an unusually formed child. The message may have varied, but monstrous births were surely divine communication.
Yet, the theology of monstrosity did more than tell Christians something about the Creator God, it also influenced how monsters were treated, both medically and socially. At various points in history, persons deemed monsters were seen as portents of divine wrath, a display of God’s love of diversity, or proof of the playfulness of nature. They were exploited as religious and political props, scouted as proof of new scientific beliefs, paraded on stage for the purposes of charity, and dissected by God-fearing anatomists. Until late modernity, priests, physicians, scientists, political leaders, and book sellers found common cause in interpreting the bodies of monsters. Conjoined twins, hermaphrodites, dwarfs, giants, and countless others fascinated, horrified, disgusted, and tantalized.
Today, “severe fetal anomalies” rarely evoke the same sense of wonder and terror they once did. Theological interpretations of what are now called disabilities and deformities are often dismissed as a relic of a bygone era. Christians retain some unusual and sometimes unpleasant views about disability, but science and medicine now provide the dominating explanatory frame. Unusual bodies are no longer wonders who carry divine revelation, they are tragic, pitiable creatures who medicine must fix.
Secular bioethics has taken up a similar refrain. According to Gerald P. McKenny, the problem with “standard bioethics” is that it is incapable of addressing the meaning of the body or how modern medicine constructs and control the body. Despite its intense focus on the body, modern medicine has obscured the place of the body in the moral life. Indeed, the body no longer seems to have any moral significance beyond the ability help us achieve our desires. If we wish to explore the moral significance of the body or what moral purposes it serves, we must return to particular religious traditions.
This paper will argue for a renewed understanding of certain disabled bodies as wondrous. Using the wonder tradition inaugurated by Augustine, bodies might again become potent sites for transcendent moral meaning.
Augustine’s account of monstrous births has been both applauded and derided by disability scholars. One the one hand, Augustine also argues that there is a clear norm for human bodies and certain bodily impairment can be an effect of the Fall. On the other hand, Augustine departs from most of his contemporaries by tying monsters to God’s purposive, benevolent will, arguing we should see monsters as a wonder, not a failure or a punishment. In fact, everything created by God, from the mundane to the marvelous, are wonderful, because God is wonderful. Augustine goes so far as to argue that monsters belong to the diversity of creation, which contribute to the beauty of the whole of creation.
The wonder tradition can help reorient contemporary theological bioethics way from viewing people with extraordinary bodies as deformed or tragic and instead viewing them as wondrous creations. Wonders do not necessarily need to be pathologized, normalized or otherwise “fixed” by medicine.