The many healing stories in the Bible pose a challenge to those with disabilities, for many of whom physical healing is an unrealistic expectation. Often the disabled have chosen to see disability as a part of their identity, and they neither expect or want to be healed. Thus, when Jesus and others in the Bible react to disability by offering healing, the disabled can feel negated and unseen. In this talk I will examine the implications of this problem through the multiple lenses of my research on Beethoven’s deafness, my experience with my late wife Barbara, and the writings of Christian disability activists Jean Vanier and Bethany McKinney Fox. I will not seek to resolve the paradox, but to situate it within a deeper understanding of the complexity of lived experiences of disability and faith.

Robin Wallace, Professor of Musicology, has taught at Baylor University since 2003. Dr. Wallace is the author most recently of Hearing Beethoven: A Story of Musical Loss and Discovery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), a probing study of Beethoven’s deafness based partly on his experience with his late wife Barbara. He is an authority on the critical reception of the music of Beethoven, which is the subject of his first published book.
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