Edith Stein and issues with translations

Part of the reason linguistic matters have come to the forefront of my work is the particular way in which they related to my work on Edith Stein’s essay’s on Woman and the comments made by several friends on what they perceived to be her narrow view on women in today’s world. I couldn’t understand it at the time because Stein’s ideas are in line with their own way of thinking. My lack of understanding stemmed from not having read either the English or the Spanish versions of her essays.  This term I am tutoring a student who is analysing an evangelical influencer group that is anti-feminism but defend what can be understood as fractional complementarity. I felt she needed to read Stein to better understand the broader context of Christian Feminism and how the group she is analysing has failed to comprehend certain aspects of metaphysics, unsurprising given their evangelical background and how since Luther this has been a weak point in Protestant theology. My student does not read or speak German so she is using the English materials, ie what I now know to be faulty translations, and in reading her writing I discovered where the mistranslations lie and the misunderstanding this is causing with Stein’s actual way of thinking. 

This is not a criticism to the translator into English of Stein, it is not easy to translate from German. I have encountered and continue to encounter a certain degree of difficulty when explaining some of her writing. Not just because it is in German but because Stein’s German is a bit different than today’s German. I mean there are words she uses that no longer hold the same meaning and require interpretation. This unfortunately is not the case with the translation of the essay in question. In a recent public seminar that I gave I used the German quotations and translated in situ to make my point clear. Part of my own translation was based on Stein’s own explanations within the essay of how she understood particular words such as vocation and the hebrew expression in Genesis ‘eser kenegdo’ (helper as a partner). A key to understanding Stein’s vision of male and female before and after the fall is simply omitted from the English translation. The title is changed in two important points. Therefore I will point them out here, as I did during the seminar. 

The essay I am referring to is the “Call/Vocation of Man and Woman according to Nature and the Order of Grace”. This is my translation of her essay which in German reads Beruf des Mannes und der Frau nach Natur und Gnadeordnung”. I have translated it as literally as possible because of those two very important points. The official English translation is “Separate Vocation of Man and Woman according to Nature and Grace”. This unfortunate interpreted translation has led to some people rejecting her writings when a closer look demonstrates a careful and much more nuanced response to the pressing questions of her day, which continue to be current and asked in our time. First, Stein thought man and woman were called to the same basic vocation as laid out in Genesis 1 and 2. This is where the idea of the universal baptismal vocation comes from and is in line with all branches of Christian theology on God’s call. In using the word separate the translator has laid the ground for an almost omission of this fundamental point in Stein’s thinking, which alines with proper theological thinking in all Christian traditions of God’s call. Second, the issue of the Order of Grace and not simply grace as it appears in English. In a very German way Stein has looked at the structure placed on the world, ie the created order, through grace, expressed most clearly in the creation narratives pre and post Fall. When Stein makes the distinction of what came before and after the Fall she is taking and presenting an all-encompassing understanding of the consequences of original sin on the God’s created order. Her clarity in identifying this is very needed when discussing male/female relationships and the community. What is often missing in the discussions about equality is the effect of sin on what once was the harmonious community of love amongst equals that are different that exist at the beginning of creation. Stein clarifies that in God’s order before the fall man and woman lived a harmonious loving community in which there was no mention of man ruling over woman. God, with home man and woman also lived in a harmonious loving community, called both to the same tasks. This was the order of grace disturbed by original sin and as a result of the disturbance man’s desire became not for God but for dominance over woman and this became the consequences, some see it as the punishment, on Eve because of original sin. We are called to imitate Christ and in this imitation collaborate in Christ’s redeeming power to re-establish the proper harmonious order to the relationship between man and woman. This then will bring back the equality amongst radically different people proper to God’s created order. 

Something to keep in mind next time the topic comes up.