Translating Religion

“A timely and relevant contribution to the debate concerning translation

and the study of religion. It combines ‘grounded’ studies of the ‘nitty gritty’
of translation activity with broader theoretical reflection. It is thus inclusive
and yet satisfyingly specialized.”
—James Hegarty, Cardiff University, UK
Translating Religion advances thinking about translation as a critical cat-
egory in religious studies, combining theoretical reflection about processes
of translation in religion with focused case studies that are international,
interdisciplinary, and interreligious. By operating with broad conceptions
of both religion and translation, this volume makes clear that processes of
translation, broadly construed, are everywhere in both religious life and the
study of religion; at the same time, the theory and practice of translation
and the advancement of translation studies as a field has developed in the
context of concerns about the possibility and propriety of translating reli-
gious texts. The nature of religions as living historical traditions depends on
the translation of religion from the past into the present. Interreligious dia-
logue and the comparative study of religion require the translation of reli-
gion from one tradition to another. Understanding the historical diffusion of
the world’s religions requires coming to terms with the success and failure of
translating a religion from one cultural context into another. Contributors
ask what it means to translate religion, both textually and conceptually, and
how the translation of religious content might differ from the translation of
other aspects of human culture. This volume proposes that questions on the
nature of translation find particularly acute expression in the domains of
religion and argues that theoretical approaches from translation studies can
be fruitfully brought to bear on contemporary religious studies.

Michael P. DeJonge is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the Uni-

versity of South Florida, USA. He teaches in the areas of Christian thought,
modern religious thought, and theories of religion. Previous publications
include Bonhoeffer’s Theological Formation and The Bonhoeffer Reader
(coedited with Clifford Green).

Christiane Tietz studied Theology and Mathematics and did her PhD and
Habilitation in Tübingen. She is Professor for Systematic Theology at the
University of Zurich, Switzerland, and is the editor of numerous books,
such as Die politische Aufgabe von Religion (coeditor).
Routledge Studies in Religion
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com
15 The Entangled God
Divine Relationality and Quantum
Physics
By Kirk Wegter-McNelly
16 Aquinas and Radical
Orthodoxy
A Critical Inquiry
Paul J. DeHart
17 Animal Ethics and Theology
The Lens of the Good Samaritan
Daniel K. Miller
18 The Origin of Heresy
A History of Discourse in Second
Temple Judaism and Early
Christianity
Robert M. Royalty, Jr.
19 Buddhism and Violence
Militarism and Buddhism in
Modern Asia
Edited by Vladimir Tikhonov and
Torkel Brekke
20 Popular Music in Evangelical
Youth Culture
Stella Sai-Chun Lau
21 Theology and the Science of
Moral Action
Virtue Ethics, Exemplarity, and
Cognitive Neuroscience
Edited by James A. Van Slyke,
Gregory R. Peterson, Kevin
S. Reimer, Michael L. Spezio and
Warren S. Brown
22 Abrogation in the Qur’an and
Islamic Law
By Louay Fatoohi
23 A New Science of Religion
Edited by Gregory W. Dawes and
James Maclaurin
24 Making Sense of the Secular
Critical Perspectives from Europe
to Asia
Edited by Ranjan Ghosh
25 The Rise of Modern Jewish
Politics
Extraordinary Movement
C.S. Monaco
26 Gender and Power in
Contemporary Spirituality
Ethnographic Approaches
Anna Fedele and Kim E. Knibbe
27 Religions in Movement
The Local and the Global in
Contemporary Faith Traditions
Robert W. Hefner, John
Hutchinson, Sara Mels and
Christiane Timmerman
28 William James’s Hidden
Religious Imagination
A Universe of Relations
Jeremy Carrette
29 Theology and the Arts
Engaging Faith
Ruth Illman and W. Alan Smith
30 Religion, Gender, and
the Public Sphere
Edited by Niamh Reilly and Stacey
Scriver
31 An Introduction to Jacob Boehme
Four Centuries of Thought and
Reception
Edited by Ariel Hessayon and
Sarah Apetrei
32 Globalization and Orthodox
Christianity
The Transformations of a
Religious Tradition
Victor Roudometof
33 Contemporary Jewish Writing
Austria after Waldheim
Andrea Reiter
34 Religious Ethics and Migration
Doing Justice to Undocumented
Workers
Ilsup Ahn
35 A Theology of Community
Organizing
Power to the People
Chris Shannahan
36 God and Natural Order
Physics, Philosophy, and Theology
Shaun C. Henson
37 Science and Religion
One Planet, Many Possibilities
Edited by Lucas F. Johnston and
Whitney A. Bauman
38 Queering Religion, Religious
Queers
Edited by Yvette Taylor and Ria
Snowdon
39 Sainthood and Race
Marked Flesh, Holy Flesh
Edited by Molly
H. Bassett and
Vincent W. Lloyd
40 Making European
Muslims
Religious Socialization
among Young Muslims in
Scandinavia and Western
Europe
Edited by Mark Sedgwick
41 Just War and the Ethics of
Espionage
Darrell Cole
42 Teaching the Historical 
Jesus
Issues and Exegesis
Edited by Zev Garber
43 Eschatology and the
Technological Future
Michael S. Burdett
44 Resurrection and Reception in
Early Christianity
Richard C. Miller
45 David’s Jerusalem
Between Memory
and History
Daniel D. Pioske
46 Scripturalizing the Human
The Written as the Political
Edited by Vincent L. Wimbush
47 Translating Religion
What is Lost and Gained?
Edited by Michael P. DeJonge
and Christiane Tietz
This page intentionally left blank
Translating Religion
What is Lost and Gained?

Edited by Michael P. DeJonge and

Christiane Tietz
First published 2015
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2015 Taylor & Francis
The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material,
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Translating religion : what is lost and gained? / edited by Michael P. DeJonge
  and Christiane Tietz.
   pages cm. — (Routledge studies in religion ; 47)
  Includes bibliographical references and index.
  1.  Religious thought—Translating.  2.  Translating and
interpreting.  I.  DeJonge, Michael P., editor.  II.  Tietz, Christiane,
1967– editor.
  BL51.T626 2015
 202—dc23
 2015007805
ISBN: 978-1-138-85145-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-72410-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by ApexCoVantage, LLC
Contents

List of Figuresix
Preface xi

Introduction: Translating Religion 1

MICHAEL P. DEJONGE AND CHRISTIANE TIETZ

1 Translating Dao: Cross-Cultural Translation as a Hermeneutic

of Edification 13
WEI ZHANG

2 Historical Translation: Pseudo-Dionysius, Thomas Aquinas,

and the Unknown God 29
MICHAEL P. DEJONGE

3 Philological Limits of Translating Religion: Śraddhā and

Dharma in Hindu Texts 45
CARLOS A. LOPEZ

4 Translating Religion between Parents and Children 70

ANDREA SCHULTE

5 Thick Translation of Religion between Cultures: The Basel

Mission in Ghana 85
ULRIKE SILL

6 Habermas’s Call for Translating Religion into

Secular Language 104
CHRISTIANE TIETZ
viii  Contents
7 Does Allah Translate ‘God’? Translating Concepts
between Religions 123
KLAUS VON STOSCH

8 Translating Religious Symbol Systems: Some Preliminary

Remarks on Christian Art in China 137
VOLKER KÜSTER

Conclusion: What is Lost and Gained? 169

MICHAEL P. DEJONGE AND CHRISTIANE TIETZ

Contributors 175
Index 177
Figures

8.1 Nestorian Stele, detail (781; excavated 1625), photographed

by Prof. Dr. Em. Klaus Koschorke (Munich) (2006):
http://www.aecg.evtheol.lmu.de/cms/index.php?id=
33&tx_gooffotoboek_pi1[srcdir]=Reise%20Seidenstrasse
&tx_gooffotoboek_pi1[fid]=8&cHash=e3c5301d4d
(Accessed 16.02.2015). 139
8.2 Tombstone Andrew of Perugia (d. ca. 1332; Quanzhou),
open access on Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AndreasPerusinus.jpg?uselang=de
(Accessed 16.02.2015). 141
8.3 Tombstone Katerina Ilioni (d. 1342; Yangzhou), in Josef
Franz Thiel, Die christliche Kunst in China, in: Die
Begegnung Chinas mit dem Christentum. Christliches
Kunstschaffen in China, Exhibition Catalogue
(St. Augustin, 1980). 142
8.4 Chinese Madonna (17th c.), in Mostra D’Arte
Missionaria, Exhibition Catalogue (Rome, 1950). 144
8.5 Annunciation in: Jao da Rocha, How to Pray the Rosary
(in Chinese, 1619), in Jeremy Clarke, The Virgin Mary and
Catholic Identities in Chinese History (Hong Kong: Hong
Kong University Press, 2013). 145
8.6 Annunciation in: Jeronimo Nadal, Adnotationes in
Euangelio (Rome, 1594), in Jeremy Clarke, The Virgin Mary
and Catholic Identities in Chinese History (Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press, 2013). 146
8.7 Embarking on the Christian Boat (mural; Chapel in Hwen
Giang, West China, ca. 1916), in Daniel Johnson Fleming,
Each with His Own Brush. Contemporary Christian Art in
Asia and Africa (New York: Friendship Press, 1938). 148
8.8 Liu Bizhen, Our Lady of Donglu (Shanghai, 1908), in Josef
Franz Thiel, Die christliche Kunst in China, in: Die Begegnung
­Chinas mit dem Christentum. Christliches Kunstschaffen in
China, Exhibition Catalogue (St. Augustin, 1980). 149
x  Figures
8.9  Our Lady of Donglu; copy (Ordination card, Xujiahui,
1946), in Jeremy Clarke, The Virgin Mary and Catholic
Identities in Chinese History (Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press, 2013). 150
8.10 Lukas Ch’en, Mary, Queen of the Angels (1938), in Fritz
Bornemann, Ars Sacra Pekinensis. Die chinesisch-christliche
Malerei an der Katholischen Universität (Fu Jen) in Peking
(Mödling bei Wien: Missionsdruckerei St. Gabriel, 1950). 151
8.11 Lukas Ch’en, Christ in the Tomb (1940), in Fritz Bornemann,
Ars Sacra Pekinensis. Die chinesisch-christliche Malerei an der
Katholischen Universität (Fu Jen) in Peking (Mödling bei
Wien: Missionsdruckerei St. Gabriel, 1950). 152
8.12 Lu Hung-Nien, Flight into Egypt (1934), in Fritz Bornemann,
Ars Sacra Pekinensis. Die chinesisch-christliche Malerei an
der Katholischen Universität (Fu Jen) in Peking (Mödling bei
Wien: Missionsdruckerei St. Gabriel, 1950). 154
8.13 Mon van Genechten, Suffering China (1943/44), in Lorrry
Swerts and Koen De Ridder, Mon van Genechten (1903–1974).
Flemish Missionary and Chinese Painter. Inculturation of
Christian Art in China (Leuven: University Press, 2002). 155
8.14 He Qi, The Prodigal Son (1991), private property of
Volker Küster. 157
8.15 He Qi, The Three Magi (2002), in He Qi, Look toward
the Heaven. The Art of He Qi (New Haven: OMSC
Publications, 2006). 158
8.16 Fan Pu, Long and Narrow Way (1997), private property
of Volker Küster. 159
8.17 Liu Bo-Han, Immanuel (1990s), in Colors of Faith: Christian
Art in China ([Nanjing]: Amity Foundation, 1995). 160
8.18 Bao Gu-Ping, They Will Soar on Wings Like Eagles (1990s),
in Colors of Faith: Christian Art in China ([Nanjing]: Amity
Foundation, 1995). 161
8.19 Ding Fang, The Book with Seven Seals (1990s), in
Zeitgenössische christliche Kunst aus China, Exhibition
Catalogue (Wien: Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, 2000). 162
8.20 Zhu Jiuyang, Lost Lamb (2010), in Souls of Living Water.
Fifth Beijing Holy Easter International Art Exhibition,
Exhibition Catalogue (Beijing, 2011). 163
Preface

Over the past few decades, the study of translation has grown from a subfield
of linguistics to an interdisciplinary cultural field of study. This development
of “translation studies” has in turn created possibilities of reconceiving
“translation” even more broadly, as a metaphor in keeping with the ety-
mological sense of the term—translation as the carrying of meaning across
boundaries. The potential for applying the insights of translation theory to
religious studies is evident, since translation, broadly construed, is an ines-
capable feature of both religion (where, e.g., in mission a religion is trans-
lated from one cultural context to another) and the study of religion (which
is increasingly cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural, and comparative). In Trans-
lating Religion, an international group of scholars of religion and theology
applies the metaphor of translation to their respective areas of expertise,
reflecting together on the processes of translation in religion. The contribu-
tors combine focused interreligious and interdisciplinary case studies with
theoretical reflection, asking together, how do processes of translation work
in religion? What is lost and gained in translating religion?
The editors are grateful to those who supported this project financially.
These include the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (through its
TransCoop Program), the Center for Intercultural Studies of the Johannes
Gutenberg University of Mainz, and the University of South Florida (through
its Conference Support Grant and Creative Scholarship Grant). The editors
are especially grateful to Nik Byle for his editorial and research assistance,
which was both reliable and excellent. It is one of the joys of academic life
to have an outstanding graduate student. That joy is doubled when that
student is also a first-rate colleague.
The images in Chapter 8 are reproduced with the kind permission of the
artists, museums, galleries, and private owners who hold their copyrights.
This page intentionally left blank
Introduction
Translating Religion
Michael P. DeJonge and Christiane Tietz

RELIGION AND TRANSLATION

The study of religion and the study of translation belong together because
much of the theory and practice of translation has developed in religious
contexts concerned with the necessity and possibility of translating religious
texts.
Historically, the strongest impetus for translation has been explicitly
religious, stemming from the Christian missionary imperative. After some
initial debate, Christians have generally adopted the strategy of “mission
by translation”;1 Christ’s call to go and make disciples of all nations (as
recorded in Matthew 28:19) was taken to mean that the gospel must be
translated into all languages. Thus, Augustine, perhaps the single most influ-
ential theologian of the Christian tradition, connects the translation of the
Bible with God’s providential plan to bring the gospel’s saving message to all
the world.2 And translators long after him located the motivation for their
work in the missionary necessity of translation. The anonymous preface to
the second Wycliffite Bible (ca. 1395) stated that “with common charity to
save all men in our realm, whom God would have saved, a simple creature
has translated the Bible out of Latin into English.”3 Erasmus of Rotter-
dam, too, prefaced his 1516 Greek/Latin New Testament by proclaiming,
“I would desire that all women should read the gospel and Paul’s epistles,
and I would to God they were translated in to the tongues of all men . . .”4
This task of translating into the “tongues of all men” is not yet complete,
but with portions of the Bible translated into 2,527 of the world’s some
6,600 languages, and with translation into 2,000 more languages under-
way,5 the Christian imperative to bring the gospel to all nations has driven
the largest translation project in history.
If Christian mission by translation drew its impulse from the great com-
mission, it found its logic in the apostle Paul’s distinction between the letter
and the spirit. The immediate context for Paul’s distinction was a debate
about whether Gentile followers of Christ ought to undergo circumcision
as mandated by Jewish law. Paul’s solution to the issue defined true cir-
cumcision as circumcision “of the heart, in the spirit and not in the letter”
2  Michael P. DeJonge and Christiane Tietz
(Romans 2:29, KJV). Gentiles were to remain true to the spirit of the law but
not necessarily its letter since, as Paul put it elsewhere, the letter kills but the
spirit gives life (II Corinthians 3:6). Paul’s distinction between spirit and let-
ter was taken to be much more than a solution to the circumcision dispute; in
early Christianity the contrast between letter and spirit became an exegetical
principle6 and therefore a principle of translation. Confident that the spirit
of the gospel transcended the limits of Hebrew, Greek or any other language,
the translator could work to express the message in a new language.
This example of the spirit and the letter illustrates how translation theory,
not just translation practice, developed in close relationship with religion.
Even after the double sense of the early Christian ‘spirit’—as the meaning
or energy of a text as well as the Holy Spirit who works through it—was
lost, the distinction between spirit and letter remained, in various guises,
a touchstone for translators and translation theorists.7 Thus, some sixteen
centuries after Paul, Anne Dacier could argue in the context of translating
Homer that a translation errs by being too scrupulous when “it loses the
spirit to preserve the letter.”8
In fact, this Christian framework for both the necessity and possibility
of translation can be seen as a prototype of one pole in a perennial debate
about translation. On one side of this debate is the universalist position,
which posits that a deep structure common to all languages makes trans-
lation possible: “To translate is to descend beneath the exterior disparities
of two languages in order to bring into vital play their analogous and, at
the final depths, common principles of being.”9 Influential articulations of
this linguistic universalism have come from, and continue to come from,
the Christian tradition. An example of a recent proponent of the universal-
ist position is the linguist, translation theorist, and Bible translator Eugene
Nida. Drawing on Noam Chomsky’s distinction between language’s deep
and surface structures, Nida argued that the Bible translator should aim not
for formal equivalence, which would focus on the text’s surface structure,
but for functional or dynamic equivalence, which would reexpress the text’s
deep structure, or spirit, in a new cultural and linguistic context.10 Nida is
thus a modern example of the Christian confidence that the Bible’s spirit can
be distinguished from its letter and translated for the whole world.
Against this universalism stands the monadist or relativist position,
articulated by Wilhelm von Humboldt in the early nineteenth century and
Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf in the twentieth. It claims that each lan-
guage maps the world in a unique way such that “universal deep structures
[of language] are either fathomless to logical and psychological investiga-
tion or of an order so abstract, so generalized as to be well-nigh trivial.”11
Extreme versions of monadism hold that genuine translation is impossible.
The monadist pole, too, can draw on religious resources. A strong resis-
tance to translation developed on Islamic soil, where it has generally been
accepted that the wording of the Qur’an is of divine origin and inimitable
by humans.12 The Qur’an is explicitly the “Arabic Qur’an”13 such that its
 Introduction  3
translation is strictly speaking impossible. A Greek or English version is
merely an interpretation. In accord with this attitude toward translation,
there have been, until a boom during the twentieth century, relatively few
renderings of the Qur’an into non-Arabic languages.14 The key linguistic
claim in this caution against translation—that the language of the Qur’an
is essential to its message—amounts to a rejection of the Pauline-inspired
distinction between spirit and letter, at least as applied to the Qur’an. The
Qur’an cannot be translated because it is divine in both its meaning and its
wording, in both its spirit and its letter.15
More recent and less religiously inclined monadist accounts of language
and claims for the impossibility of translation have focused their arguments
on this same point, that there is no coherent way to disentangle spirit from
letter, meaning from wording. This case is most often made with regard to
poetry, where meaning and form of expression are so closely interwoven.16
But if the close connection of form and content in poetry operates to a
lesser degree in all types of language, the impossibility of translating poetry
applies by extension to translation in general. As Jacques Derrida put it,
translation as traditionally understood presupposes “the difference between
signifier and signified . . . But if this difference is never pure, no more so is
translation.”17 The indivisibility of form from content, of word from spirit,
and of signifier from signified suggests the difficulty or, at the extreme end,
the impossibility of translation.
Long after translation theory and praxis had shifted its focus to nonreli-
gious literature, the metaphysical and linguistic assumptions refined in reli-
gious contexts have continued to resonate, as can be seen, for example, in
the ways the perennial debate between universalist and monadist accounts
of language and the related debate about the possibility of translation echo
earlier religious debates.
The preceding discussion has focused on the interaction of religion and
translation above all at the linguistic level. Indeed, as the discipline of trans-
lation studies emerged in the 1970s, its focus was on translation as a lin-
guistic phenomenon. But in the 1990s, the discipline underwent a “cultural
turn,” which “expressed the realization that linguistic models were insuffi-
cient to account for translation processes and altered the way that the trans-
lation of literary texts was approached by giving the cultural context at least
equal footing with the linguistic context.”18 Without setting aside linguistic
considerations, translation studies has increasingly turned to the cultural
aspects of translation. On this cultural level, too, there is a close connection
between religion and translation.
Edwin Gentzler argues that “the study of translation is the study of cul-
tural interaction.” This is because translators are at the forefront of “the
process of mediating between cultures and/or of introducing different
words, forms, cultural nuances, and meaning into their own respective cul-
ture.”19 To this it can be added that cultural interaction, especially between
the Christian West and other cultures, has often been missionary in nature,
4  Michael P. DeJonge and Christiane Tietz
and the point of the spear in missionary encounter is the translator.20 As
Gentzler notes, translation is a place of heightened cultural interaction. To
this we add, translation has often been driven by religion.
As a result of the cultural turn in translation studies, theorists of translation
now focus “not solely on the source text, nor on the target text, but instead
look at how different discourses and semiotic practices in language are medi-
ated through translation.”21 Here, too, religion takes center stage, since the
discourse of religion has been mediated through, or even generated by, trans-
lation. The word religion is native to the West, shaped by the Christian appro-
priation of a Greco-Roman heritage and refined through characteristically
Western events such as the Reformation and the Enlightenment. The Western
provenance of ‘religion’ is apparent in many of the various senses of the word,
including several in use in this introduction. The sense of ‘religion’ designat-
ing a sphere in opposition to the secular or profane, for example, reflects a
characteristically modern, Western division of reality. But with the rise of the
modern ‘science of religion’ (or religious studies) this sense of religion was dis-
covered in, and some would say projected onto, the rest of the world through
translation.22 This happens, for example, when ‘religion’ is used consistently
to translate dharma despite significant differences in semantic range.23 And it
happens when the very selection of texts to be translated, as in Friedrich Max
Müller’s monumental Sacred Books of the East (fifty volumes between 1879
and 1910), draws the Western line between sacred and profane texts that is
often less clear in Eastern cultures. As these processes show, religion not only
motivates translation; it is often a product of translation.
What solidifies and perpetuates the various senses of ‘religion,’ that dis-
course formed in the West and perhaps projected onto the rest of the world,
is in large part a body of texts. As Daniel Dubuisson puts it,

[w]e hardly ever speak of religion or of religions themselves, that is, of

immanent reality itself . . . Most often, we paraphrase, through transla-
tion, commentary or free improvisation, preexistent texts that are judged
religious . . . or texts that themselves deal with subjects that are also
considered religious . . . These attributions and classifications are them-
selves justified by other texts . . . Here . . ., it is not possible to speak of
the thing itself (religion, a given religion), seen with full objectivity, in its
unique, contingent reality. For this thing probably does not exist outside
the texts that lend it a certain consistency . . . It is then within texts that
the various conceptions relative to what religion is find their coherence
and homogeneity.24

Dubuisson’s point is that religion, as an object of study, is constructed and

held together in part by interrelated texts. Even those who might not want
to follow his thoroughgoing constructivism, with its suggestion that there is
no such thing as religion out there, can appreciate the point that our sense of
what counts as religious is heavily informed by our reading of texts already
designated as religious.25
 Introduction  5
Given the theme of this volume, it must be added that these texts that
perpetuate religion as an object of study are almost always translated texts.
Most religious texts are read in translation by all but specialized scholars,
and more than any other field, it seems, religious studies deals with texts
in translation. “[S]cholars in the study of religion are perhaps among the
highest users and perpetrators of translation from remote cultures.”26 The
discipline of religious studies depends on and perpetuates translation.
The foregoing suggests some of the many ways that religion and trans-
lation are mutually implicated both historically and theoretically. Because
basic questions about the propriety and possibility of translation developed
in religious contexts, contemporary translation studies, despite its securely
secular status, continues to echo the vocabulary of religion. And because
translation plays a crucial role in forming and maintaining what we con-
sider to be religion, religious studies cannot separate itself from questions of
translation. All of these connections suggest that the intersection of religion
and translation is a fertile field for scholarly investigation.

PROCESSES OF TRANSLATION IN RELIGION

The specific connection between religion and translation that guides this
volume is the following: Processes of translation, broadly conceived, are
everywhere in religion and the study of religion. Interreligious dialogue
and the comparative study of religion require translation between religions.
Understanding the historical diffusion of the world’s religions requires com-
ing to terms with the success and failure of translating a religion from one
cultural context to another. Religion and the academic study of religion are
fundamentally translation enterprises.27 Because of this, all scholars of reli-
gion are practitioners or theorists of translation, even if they do not employ
that language. This volume makes this explicit by applying the theoretical
lens of translation to the study of religion and vice versa.
Seeing the omnipresence of translation in religion requires an expansive
understanding of translation such as the one provided by Roman Jakobson
in his influential essay “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.”28 He offers a
tripartite typology of translation:

1) Intralingual translation or rewording is an interpretation of verbal

signs by means of other signs of the same language.
2) Interlingual translation or translation proper is an interpretation of
verbal signs by means of some other language.
3) Intersemiotic translation or transmutation is an interpretation of ver-
bal signs by means of the signs of nonverbal sign systems.29

Jakobson’s influential and oft-cited typology30 suggests that translation is a

wide enough concept to include not only interlingual translation but also
processes such as the rendering of scientific conclusions into ‘every-day
6  Michael P. DeJonge and Christiane Tietz
language’ (an example of intralingual translation) and the transmutation of
verbal narrative into visual art (an example of intersemiotic translation).31
The editors of the present volume invited scholars from a selection of sub-
disciplines in religious studies and theology to individually examine cases of
translation in their areas of expertise and to reflect together theoretically
on them.32 While the editors did articulate the expansive understanding of
translation informing this volume, they did not impose specific definitions of
translation or religion, instead leaving the contributors the freedom to nego-
tiate those terms as appropriate in the context of their case studies. In order
to bring coherence to the group’s collaborative reflection and to this volume,
the editors asked the contributors to keep the following guiding questions in
mind as they studied the various processes of translation at work in religion.
First, the contributors were encouraged to think about what it means to
translate religion, what it means to bring the theoretical lens of translation to
their specific area of religion. In other words, what difference, if any, does it
make to apply the language of translation, as opposed to some other theoret-
ical tool, to their area of expertise? This question, in effect, asks the contrib-
utors to think about their study of religion explicitly in terms of translation.
The second question inverts the first by asking, what does it mean to
translate religion? What difference, if any, does it make that the material or
content being translated is religious rather than, say, literary? How might
the translation of religion differ from the translation of other aspects of
human culture? This second question raises the possibility that the issues
exercising theoretical reflection on translation—What is the nature of trans-
lation? Are certain things untranslatable?—find particularly acute expres-
sion in the domains of religion.33
The third question guiding this volume’s contributions arises from the
consensus among translation theorists that translation is possible but never
perfect. On one hand, there is broad agreement that the commonsense goal
of translation—meaning equivalence—is impossible.34 On the other hand,
translation happens constantly with some degree of success. Regarding this
central question of translation, “[c]an a translation ever communicate to its
readers the understanding of the foreign text that the foreign readers have?
The consensus seems to be: ‘Yes, but always only partially.’ ”35 Given that
translation seems possible but destined to imperfection, the editors asked the
contributors, what is lost and what is gained in your case study of translation?

SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS

The book begins with a chapter on translation and the hermeneutics of

cross-cultural understanding. Wei Zhang examines the translation into West-
ern culture of the Daodejing, its central concept of dao, and the tradition
we now call Daoism. Zhang shows that dao poses significant problems for
translation, particularly if translation is understood in terms of one-to-one
 Introduction  7
meaning equivalence. Relying on Gadamer and Rorty, Zhang argues for an
alternative understanding of translation conceived in terms of a hermeneutic
of edification where cross-cultural translation projects such as the transla-
tion of dao are valuable not only in spite of but also because of the seemingly
insurmountable differences between the source and target cultures.
Chapter 2 treats the translation of religion from past to present, look-
ing at the case study of the medieval Christian theologian Thomas Aqui-
nas’s translation of Pseudo-Dionysius’s idea of ‘the unknown God.’ Michael
DeJonge claims, first, that the interpretation of statements from the past can
be characterized as historical translation and, second, that such historical
translation is a constitutive feature of religious traditions. The conjunction
of these two claims suggests the application of translation theory to the pro-
cesses of historical translation within religion. This chapter provides such
an application by using George Steiner’s view of language and translation to
trace the loss and gain in meaning involved in the medieval Christian theo-
logian Thomas Aquinas’s historical translation of Pseudo-Dionysius. Since
Thomas’s translation of Dionysius is one instance of a process constitutive
of Christianity as a historical tradition, it follows that the Christian tradi-
tion, viewed through the lens of Steiner’s view of language and translation,
perpetuates itself through constant change.
In Chapter 3, Carlos Lopez looks at translation in the narrowest sense,
translation from one language to another. But translating from one language
to another always involves transferring a statement from one discursive con-
text to another. In the case of translating Vedic texts, the target context is
one that is often dominated by the discourse of ‘religion.’ This can be seen
in the frequent translation of śraddhā and dharma as ‘faith’ and ‘religion’
respectively, despite significant divergence between the semantic ranges of
the Sanskrit words and those of the terms native to the Western discourse
of religion. A close examination of śraddhā and dharma shows that neither
‘faith’ nor ‘religion,’ as they are used in the Western discourse of religion,
are present in the original Vedic context. Rather, they are introduced in the
process of translation. Religion, in this case, is a product of translation.
In Chapter 4, Andrea Schulte examines the translation of religion
between parents and children. Recent research on religious development,
which builds on Fritz Oser’s, Paul Gmünder’s, and James Fowler’s adapta-
tions of Jean Piaget’s developmental theories, has dramatically increased our
knowledge of how children understand religion and how they ‘do theology.’
However, this research tells us little about parents’ religion and, therefore,
about conversations between parents and children on the topic of religion.
The metaphor of ‘translating religion’ provides a way into this neglected
aspect of the field of religious education. Situating translation within the
context of theories of religious development, Schulte argues that translation
is a powerful metaphor for understanding how parent–child conversations
about religion negotiate the distance between a parent’s and a child’s stages
of cognitive and religious development.
8  Michael P. DeJonge and Christiane Tietz
Chapter  5 looks at the translation of lived religion from one culture,
in which the religion is well established, into a new culture. Following
British-born Ghanaian-American philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah’s
notion of ‘thick translation,’ Ulrike Sill argues that translation is best under-
stood as the project of carrying significance across cultural lines. Regarding
the specific case study of the nineteenth-century translating of Christianity
and the Bible from European to Ghanaian culture initiated by the Basel Mis-
sion, the goal is not to quibble over which word best translates which word
or even the most effective way of translating general religious doctrines;
rather, the project is to translate faith or that which makes Christianity and
the Bible significant to European culture in such a way that they may have a
comparable, lived significance for Ghanaian culture. This illuminates some
delicate and controversial gains and losses of this type of translation. While
such translation can help to facilitate a genuine encounter between the two
cultures that may foster informed, mutual respect, this may also lead to the
loss or obscuring of the target culture’s unique practices and historical roots.
Chapter  6 inquires about translating religion into the secular sphere,
using as a starting point Jürgen Habermas’s call for translating religious
language into secular language. In Habermas’s view, a post-secular society
requires religious concepts to be translated into secular language because
only then can they be understood by nonreligious people. Standing in the
background of Habermas’s call for translation is his interpretation of secu-
larization itself as a historical translation process in which some insights of
religion have been preserved and others have been lost. As Christiane Tietz
shows, a careful examination of Habermas’s writings on the topic, however,
reveals inconsistencies with regard to his definition of religion. Attending to
these inconsistencies sheds light on the difficulties in defining religion and
suggests that religion and the secular cannot be separated clearly. These
conclusions are not that different from what we find in other, not strictly
linguistic processes of translation: it is often difficult to discern what exactly
is being translated, and the source and target languages are intertwined in
a number of ways.
In Chapter 7, Klaus von Stosch asks whether it is possible to translate
concepts from one religion to another. He pursues this question through
three case studies at the intersection of Christianity and Islam: whether
Allah translates God, whether Masih translates Christ, and whether Rūh
translates Holy Spirit. The case for an affirmative answer is strongest with
regard to Allah and God, but in each case the answer depends heavily on
context, target audience, and language game. And in each case a success-
ful translation is accompanied by gains, such as the possibility of dialogue
across religious traditions, as well as losses, such as the blurring of differ-
ences. The fact that the translation of concepts between religions is not an
easy or straightforward affair does not threaten the project of comparative
theology, argues von Stosch, since translations are not the precondition but
rather the result of discourse between religious traditions.
 Introduction 9
Chapter 8 examines the translation of the Christian message into visual
art. Tracing the interaction of the Christian faith and Chinese culture from
the eighth century to the present, Volker Küster discusses artwork that man-
ifests a successive series of translation strategies that he calls assimilation,
transplantation, accommodation, and contextualization. Late in the twen-
tieth century, argues Küster, we see the emergence of glocalized Chinese
Christian art characterized by multiple belonging, hybridity, and multilin-
gualism, which bursts the bounds of the concept of translation.

NOTES

1. Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture,

2nd ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2008), 33.
2. The Bible, “being at first set forth in one language, by means of which it could
at the fit season be disseminated through the whole world, was interpreted
into various tongues, and spread far and wide, and thus became known to
the nations for their salvation,” Augustine, “Christian Doctrine,” in A Select
Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 2,
ed. Philip Schaff, trans. J. F. Shaw (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1889),
II.6:536.
3. Anonymous (John Purvey?), “On Translating the Bible,” in Western Transla-
tion Theory: From Herodotus to Nietzsche, 2nd ed., ed. Douglas Robinson
(Manchester, UK: St. Jerome, 2007), 54.
4. Desiderius Erasmus, An Exhortation to the Diligent Study of Scripture (1516).
Hanover, IN: Hanover College History Department, accessed August  28,
2014, http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/346erasmus.html.
5. “Bible Translation,” United Bible Societies, accessed August 28, 2014, http://
www.unitedbiblesocieties.org/sample-page/bible-translation/.
6. Carlo Ginzburg, “The Letter Kills: On Some Implications of 2 Corinthians
3:6,” History and Theory 49 (2010): 72.
7. For a history of the term spirit in translation theory, see Louis Kelly, The True
Interpreter: A History of Translation Theory and Practice in the West (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979), 205ff.
8. Anne Dacier, “My Condemnation (From preface to translation of L’Iliade
d’Homère, 1699),” in Western Translation Theory, 189.
9. George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, 2nd ed.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 77. Steiner presents universalist
position on pages 97–113.
10. This according to the presentation of Nida’s work in Jeremy Munday, Intro-
ducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications (London: Routledge,
2008), 38–44; and Edwin Gentzler, Contemporary Translation Theories,
2nd ed. (Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2001), 44–59. According to
Gentzler, Nida uses a variety of terms, including spirit, to name the deep struc-
ture of language (47).
11. Steiner, After Babel, 77. He presents the monadist position on pages 76–97.
12. J. D. Pearson, “al-Kur ān,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., Brill Online,
˘

˙
2013, accessed August  28, 2014, http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/
entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/al-kuran-COM_0543.
Jerome, the patron saint of translators, makes a similar claim about the Bible:
“in translating from the Greek—except of course in the case of Holy Scripture,
10  Michael P. DeJonge and Christiane Tietz
where even the syntax contains a mystery—I render not word for word, but
sense for sense”; Jerome, “The Best Kind of Translator,” in Western Transla-
tion Theory, 25. But he seems to contradict himself by saying that “in dealing
with the Bible one must consider the substance and not the literal words” (29).
In any case, Jerome was taken by later translation theorists as a proponent
of “sense for sense” rather than “word for word” translation with regard to
both biblical and nonbiblical translation; Munday, Introducing Translation
Studies, 20.
13. See Sūra XII, 2; XX, 113; XXXIX, 28; XLI, 3; XLII, 7; XLIII, 3 (as cited in
Pearson, “al-Kurān”).
˘
˙
14. Franz Greifenhagen, “Traduttore Traditore: An Analysis of the History of
English Translations of the Qur’an,” in Islam and Muslim-Christian Relations
3, no. 2 (1992): 276.
15. Accordingly, Lamin Sanneh characterizes Islam’s mode of mission as “mission
by diffusion,” in contrast with Christianity’s “mission by translation”; San-
neh, Translating the Message, 33.
16. See Roman Jakobson, “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation,” in On Trans-
lation, ed. Reuben A. Brower (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1959), 238. Also, “[t]he answer to the question, ‘Can one translate a poem?’
is of course no”; Yves Bonnefoy, “Translating Poetry,” in Theories of Transla-
tion: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida, ed. Rainer Schulte and
John Biguenet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 186.
17. Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1981), 20.
18. Lynne Long, ed., Translation and Religion: Holy Untranslatable? (Clevedon,
UK: Multilingual Matters, 2005), 4–5.
19. Edwin Gentzler, foreword to Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere, Construct-
ing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation (Clevedon, UK: Multilingual
Matters, 1998), ix.
20. See Ulrike Sill’s chapter in this volume. As postcolonial studies have shown,
and as Sill recognizes, the missionary project has often been inseparable from
the colonial project.
21. Alan Williams, “New Approaches to the Problem of Translation in the Study
of Religion,” in New Approaches to the Study of Religion, vol. 2: Textual,
Comparative, Sociological, and Cognitive Approaches, ed. Peter Antes, Armin
W. Geertz, and Randi R. Warne (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 40–41.
22. For a brief version of this story, see Jonathan Z. Smith, “Religion, Religions,
Religious,” in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. Mark C. Taylor (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 269–284. Longer versions are avail-
able in Daniel Dubuisson, The Western Construction of Religion: Myths,
Knowledge, and Ideology, trans. William Sayers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2003); and Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World
Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language
of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
23. See Carlos Lopez’s chapter in this volume.
24. Dubuisson, Western Construction of Religion, 20.
25. See Wei Zhang’s chapter in this volume, which discusses how Western scholars
designated the Daodejing as a religious text.
26. Williams, “New Approaches,” 41.
27. Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 105.
28. For elaboration of an expansive understanding of translation, see Michael
DeJonge’s chapter in this volume.
29. Jakobson, “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation,” 233.
 Introduction 11
30. Susan Bassnett, Translation Studies, third ed. (London and New York: Rout-
ledge, 2002), 22. Munday, Introducing Translation Studies, 5. Jakobson’s
typology is not uncontested, of course. See, for example, Jacques Derrida,
“From Des Tours de Babel,” in Theories of Translation, 225.
31. See Volker Küster’s chapter in this volume.
32. The highlight of the collaborative element of the project was a June  2012
conference in Mainz, Germany.
33. Williams, “New Approaches,” 14.
34. Bassnet, Translation Studies, 22, 32. Steiner, After Babel, 428.
35. Williams, “New Approaches,” 40.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anonymous (John Purvey?). “On Translating the Bible.” In Western Translation

Theory: From Herodotus to Nietzsche. 2nd ed. Edited by Douglas Robinson,
53–57. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome, 2007.
Augustine. “Christian Doctrine.” In A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 2. Edited by Philip Schaff. Translated by J. F.
Shaw, 519–597. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1887.
Bassnett, Susan. Translation Studies, 3rd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.
“Bible Translation.” United Bible Societies. Accessed August 28, 2014. http://www.
unitedbiblesocieties.org/sample-page/bible-translation/.
Bonnefoy, Yves. “Translating Poetry.” In Theories of Translation: An Anthology of
Essays from Dryden to Derrida. Edited by Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet,
186–192. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Dacier, Anne. “My Condemnation (From preface to translation of L’Iliade d’Homère,
1699).” In Western Translation Theory: From Herodotus to Nietzsche. 2nd ed.
Edited by Douglas Robinson, 186–190. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome, 2007.
Derrida, Jacques. “From Des Tours de Babel.” In Theories of Translation: An
Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida. Edited by Rainer Schulte and John
Biguenet, 218–227. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
————. Positions. Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1981.
Dubuisson, Daniel. The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge, and
Ideology. Translated by William Sayers. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2003.
Erasmus, Desiderius, An Exhortation to the Diligent Study of Scripture (1516).
Hanover, IN: Hanover College History Department, accessed August 28, 2014,
http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/346erasmus.html.
Gentzler, Edwin. Contemporary Translation Theories. 2nd ed. Clevedon, UK: Mul-
tilingual Matters, 2001.
————. Foreword to Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere, Constructing Cul-
tures: Essays on Literary Translation, ix–xvii. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual
Matters, 1998.
Ginzburg, Carlo. “The Letter Kills: On Some Implications of 2 Corinthians 3:6.”
History and Theory 49 (2010): 71–89.
Greifenhagen, Franz. “Traduttore Traditore: An Analysis of the History of English
Translations of the Qur’an.” In Islam and Muslim-Christian Relations 3, no. 2
(1992): 274–291.
Jakobson, Roman. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” In On Translation.
Edited by Reuben A. Brower, 232–239. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1959.
12  Michael P. DeJonge and Christiane Tietz
Jerome. “The Best Kind of Translator.” In Western Translation Theory: From Hero-
dotus to Nietzsche. 2nd ed. Edited by Douglas Robinson. Translated by Paul
Carroll, 23–30. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome, 2007.
Kelly, Louis. The True Interpreter: A History of Translation Theory and Practice in
the West. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979.
Long, Lynne, ed. Translation and Religion: Holy Untranslatable? Clevedon, UK:
Multilingual Matters, 2005.
Masuzawa, Tomoko. The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Uni-
versalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2005.
Munday, Jeremy. Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications. Lon-
don: Routledge, 2008.
Pearson, J. D. “al-Kurān.” In Encyclopedia of Islam. 2nd ed. Brill Online, 2013, accessed
˘

August 28, 2014,˙ http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-

islam-2/al-kuran-COM_0543.
Sanneh, Lamin. Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture, 2nd
ed. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2008.
Smith, Jonathan Z. Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1988.
————. “Religion, Religions, Religious.” In Critical Terms for Religious Studies.
Edited by Mark C. Taylor, 269–284. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Steiner, George. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. 2nd ed. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1992.
Williams, Alan. “New Approaches to the Problem of Translation in the Study of
Religion.” In New Approaches to the Study of Religion, vol. 2, Textual, Com-
parative, Sociological, and Cognitive Approaches. Edited by Peter Antes, Armin
W. Geertz, and Randi R. Warne, 13–44. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008.
1 Translating Dao
 ross-Cultural Translation as a
C
Hermeneutic of Edification
Wei Zhang

TRANSLATING DAOISM

What is known today as Daoism in the West is one of the traditions of

ancient China, dating back to the sixth through the fifth centuries BC. The
formative beginning of Daoism was associated with an individual, Laozi,
and a small volume of ‘philosophical poems,’ known as the Daodejing or
Laozi, named after him (though the texts were composite and are regarded
as multilayered and multiauthored).
Compared to Confucianism, Daoism has proven difficult to translate,
both linguistically and culturally. There are the “ineffable” dao, the ruling
concepts of “nothingness” (wu), nonaction (wuwei), and the doctrine of the
unity of opposites (yin and yang). Stylistically, Daoist authors were fond of
using apophatic language, and culturally specific metaphoric expressions.
These concepts and linguistic practices seem to resist the process of trans-
lation generally and make a literal translation impossible. Moreover, as a
tradition, Daoism seems to be discontinuous. There have been no obvious
dominate or representative religious institutions or orders, nor a single set
of texts claiming to be authoritative among all followers of the different
schools within the Daoist tradition so conceived by Western scholars. Dao-
ism seems, then, to represent one of the most dire cases for translation,
particularly if one is concerned with one-to-one meaning equivalence. Yet,
if I can show that even here cultural and linguistic translation has something
positive to offer, then one should see the prospects of translation more gen-
erally as positive. In fact, I do so by arguing that not only in spite of, but
also because of, such seemingly insurmountable differences, such transla-
tion projects can be edifying.

HISTORY OF TRANSLATING THE DAODEJING

As a number of sinologists have pointed out, the Daodejing, the first known
Daoist classic, is the most frequently translated text of the Eastern traditions.
Thus far, there have been more than two hundred translations in seventeen
14  Wei Zhang
languages.1 The earliest-known Western translations of the Daodejing were
perhaps by Jesuit missionary scholars, who produced several Latin versions
of the text in the eighteenth century.2 But the missionary scholars favored
Confucian texts over the Daodejing for the alleged reason that the latter
was associated with obscure traditions and native superstitions. The first
scholarly translations of the Daodejing were done by the French orientalist
Stanislas Jullien in 1841 and the English sinologist James Legge in 1891.3
The first half of the twentieth century saw increased interest in the Dao-
ist tradition among Western intellectuals, and the Daodejing attracted the
attention of a long and impressive list of translators. The scholarly treatment
and translation of the Daodejing by the German sinologist Richard Wilhelm
in 1911 was followed by the translations of the orientalist Paul Carus in
1913 and the English sinologist Arthur Waley in 1934. Not only sinologists
and orientalists but prominent religious scholars and philosophers tried
their hand at translation as well. These included Martin Buber, C. G. Jung,
and, perhaps most unlikely, Martin Heidegger, who was reported to have
collaborated with a Chinese scholar to produce a translation in 1946.4
In the latter third of the twentieth century, archaeologists unearthed pre-
viously unknown versions of the Daodejing from a number of locales in
China. This naturally began a series of new translations. Robert G. Hen-
ricks incorporated “the startling new documents found at Guodian” into his
2000 translation. Rudolf G. Wanger included the most authoritative Chi-
nese commentator’s work, “Wang Bi’s Commentary on the Laozi,” in his
2003 effort. And Roger Ames and David Hall’s translation, featuring “the
recently discovered bamboo texts,” appeared in 2003. According to Harold
D. Roth, this new wave of translations created “a textual revolution,” or
“textual archaeology” in the Western academic studies of Daoism.5
This far from exhaustive survey of translations shows that there has been
a sustained, and indeed increasing, interest in translating the Daodejing.
However, as we shall see, the number of translations is not indicative of the
ease with which the Daodejing may be translated.

HISTORY OF TRANSLATING THE TERM DAO

The sheer number of translations of the Daodejing may mislead one to

believe that translation is not especially difficult here. In fact, this may be a
manifestation of the difficulties inherent in translating this text. The heart
of this difficulty may lay its central concept of the dao. In the Daodejing,
a number of adjectives point to the dao’s mysterious nature; it is “subtle,”
“deep,” “grand,” “empty,” and “dark.” Ultimately, we are told that the dao
is the “mystery of all mysteries.”6 The begetter of all, dao cannot be named
after what it has begotten. Ultimately, the dao resists all concepts and lan-
guage. As the text states, the dao cannot be named. The “dao that can be
spoken is not the real dao.” These references to the dao’s ineffability serve
 Translating Dao 15
to warn readers of the Daodejing and practitioners of dao of the difficulties
that await them. Such warnings also seem to rule out translation. If it is
impossible to name the dao in the native tongue, translation into foreign
languages and concepts appears utterly futile.
The concept of dao does not, however, merely challenge the linguistic
practice of translation, but the cultural as well. In the Daodejing, dao is not
simply described as the “beginning” of all things, or, the cosmic “mother”
who engenders all. This “beginning” has since “degraded” with the advance
of culture and civilization. Because of this, the text also speaks of a “return”
to dao that involves undoing civilization and all that it entails, which
includes learning, thinking, knowledge, and so forth. Here the concept of
dao not only rejects the application of language and translation of itself
but also challenges the cultural and intellectual foundations necessary for
translation of any kind.
But these warnings have obviously not deterred those who would attempt
to name the dao and penetrate its mysteries, both in the land of its origin and,
as we have already seen, outside of it. In fact, the Western program of transla-
tion has, in effect, transformed dao into that which “can be told.”7 Thus, the
“unnamable” dao has been given numerous names, generating a large body
of literature explicating its meaning and significance. It has been rendered as
“natural law,” “metaphysical reality,” “principle or pattern,” or “method”
and “doctrine.” It has even been understood as something “very like God.”8
Perhaps the most ordinary and common translation of dao is “way.”
But the reader of the Daodejing quickly discovers that it can mean the way
things are (the ontological), a way of knowing (the epistemological), or a
way things ought to be (the moral or ethical). Hence, it is difficult to identify
dao with a single, specific path. The ambiguity of the word has given rise to
a great variety of translations. A sample of translations gives a sense of the
challenge facing translators as well as their creativity. Here are some trans-
lations of the first two lines of chapter one in the Daodejing:

The Tao that can be expressed is not the eternal Tao. The name that can
be named is not the eternal name.9
The Reason that can be reasoned is not the eternal Reason. The name
that can be named is not the eternal name.10
The Way that can be “way”-ed is not the constant Way. The name
that can be named is not the constant Name.11
A way can be a guide, but not a fixed path; names can be given, but
not permanent labels.12
Way-making (dao) that can be put into words is not really
way-making, and naming (ming) that can assign fixed reference to
things is not really naming.13

In these translations, we see a number of strategies that were attempted to

disclose different aspects of dao. Wilhelm’s translation strategy is to leave
16  Wei Zhang
dao untranslated, as if to heed the warning of its ineffability. Note that both
Wilhelm and Carus translated dao as something “eternal” (even though the
Chinese adjective chang, qualifying dao, was perhaps best rendered as con-
stant), thus associating dao with a theistic, timeless reality. Cleary chooses
an indirect translation strategy, avoiding claims of what dao is in favor of
what it can and cannot be. This emphasizes the function of dao, as that
which leads or guides, without identifying an essence of dao.
Graham treats dao as a verb, uncovering yet another semantic dimension
of the word obscured by the translation of dao as “way.” Since in the clas-
sical Chinese lexicon, “to dao” means “to speak,” Grahams’s translation
actually captures the “pun” in the original verses, which indicates a para-
doxical relation between the linguistic convention and the “ultimate” real-
ity. The problem is, however, that in English there is not a ready-made word
for both “way” and “speech,” and that expresses the paradoxical relation
between language and reality. But Graham’s translation indeed highlights
what has been obscured in the most common English translation of dao as
a mere noun.
Ames and Hall’s translation continues to highlight the dynamic nature of
dao. They suggest that in the classical Chinese lexicon, dao was employed
as a loan word from its verbal cognate, to “lead forth” or “guide through,”
specifically used in the areas of irrigation, where the verb cognate of dao
means the channeling of water to the right pathway in order to divert flood-
ing,14 and in medicine, where it refers to the guiding of proper flow of the
qi or bio-energy to avert blood clots and energetic stagnation. Since the
verbal form of dao originally meant to be “gerundive, processional, and
dynamic,” Ames and Hall conclude that the “neologism” of dao should be
“way-making.”15
Most translators would shy away from Carus’s rendering of dao as “Rea-
son,” which harkens to the Greek word logos and thus seems to suggest an
illegitimate conflation of Western metaphysics and early Chinese thought.
But the resonances of logos with dao recognized by German translators of
Daoist texts dispel some of these concerns. As Buber explained in his after-
word to a 1910 edition of Tschung-Tse (or Zhaungzi, a Daoist classic of the
fourth century BC),

The word Tao means way, path; but it also has the meaning of speech
[Rede]. It has sometimes been rendered by ‘logos.’ That among Laozi
and his disciples, the term Tao has always been developed metaphor-
ically, and the linguistic atmosphere is actually related to that of the
Heraclitean logos.16

Buber sensed that in the early community of Daoists, the concept of dao
was being articulated in a linguistic environment similar to or parallel with
that of Heraclitean where the concept logos was conceptualized. But Buber
did not offer any further explanation on such a perceived linguistic parallel.
 Translating Dao 17
Decades later, Heidegger endorsed Buber’s use of logos for appropriating
dao. He stated in his language lecture series,

The key word in Laotse’s poetic thinking is Tao, which ‘properly speak-
ing’ means way. But because we are prone to think of ‘way” superfi-
cially, as a stretch connecting two places, our word ‘way’ has all too
rashly been considered unfit to name what Tao says. Tao is then trans-
lated as reason, mind, raison, meaning, logos.17

Here Heidegger objected to the ordinary understanding of dao as a noun

but was interested in knowing what dao “says.” He attempted to appro-
priate dao throughout his lecture series in relation to what he called “lan-
guage.” Dao was also used as a counter example of what Heidegger referred
to as “method.” But nothing further was offered concerning the correlation
of dao and logos.
Gadamer’s more recent discussion of the concept of logos may shed some
light on why both Buber and Heidegger associate the term with the Chinese
notion of dao. Logos was usually rendered as reason or thought, but it
should primarily be understood as “language,” Gadamer argued. Aristotle
defines man as “the living being who has logos.” It is with this special gift
of logos that man is distinguished from other animals. Furthermore, lan-
guage enables man to “make what is not present manifest through speak-
ing.” Thus, to speak is to think—to acquire universal concepts, according
to Aristotle.18 The intrinsic link between thinking and speaking in the con-
cept of logos in ancient Greek thinking found direct correlation of Denken
and Sprechen in German, but such a correlation is absent in the English
language.
These various translations and appropriations of the concept of dao are
all illuminating in their own ways, particularly dao understood and trans-
lated as logos. The latter highlights the dynamic tension between language
and its referent that will inform the forthcoming section on edification.

THE HISTORY OF APPROPRIATING DAOISM

The history of the Western translation of Daoism raises some import-

ant questions. While some may be impressed by the popularity of such a
cross-cultural project, others may be skeptical of such popularity and the
multiple reproductions of the text. For the latter group, the literal or faithful
translation of the Daodejing and the nuanced reading of ancient Chinese
texts are better means to advance sinological scholarship. Some religious
scholars of the monotheistic traditions would perhaps side with those skep-
tics and question whether the Daodejing should be treated as a religious or
canonical text. For a religious canon was invested with a divine authority,
hence regarded as sacred. The authority and sacredness of the religious texts
18  Wei Zhang
were necessarily safeguarded by the religious institutions, and reinforced
by the communities of the faithful. Such institutions or communities would
limit any “arbitrary” translations and reproductions of the canonical reli-
gious texts. But the Daodejing does not appear to assume a divine authority
nor are there any Daoist communities protesting the multiple reproductions
of the original text.
Not only is there a history of translating the Daodejing and its central
concept, dao, but there is also a history of cultural translation or transplant-
ing of the larger system in which they are embedded, that is, what the West
now calls Daoism. Such practices raise questions concerning what Western
context to place ‘Daoism’ in and what native Western movements and tra-
ditions are most comparable or fruitfully placed in dialogue with Daoism.
For instance, Victor von Stras, who published his German translation of the
text in 1870, identified the Daodejing as “a theosophical work.” Arthur
Waley, whose 1934 translation became an instant classic, located the text
in the tradition of “mysticism.” At about the same time, Aleister Crowley
placed his translation of the Daodejing within “Kabalistic traditions.” In
North America, a populist rendition of the Daodejing by Witter Bynner,
who was criticized for the not knowing of the original language, located the
text in the framework of the “Yankee transcendentalism” of the 1930s.19 All
these early attempts of integrating Daoism continued to exert influence on
the East–West comparative scholarship and especially comparative religious
mysticism.
Attempts to fit Daoism into familiar categories often require imposing
organizing frameworks onto Daoism’s otherwise discontinuous and hetero-
geneous traditions. The twentieth-century sinologist H. G. Greel was per-
haps the first scholar to divide the tradition into two phases, calling the
formative phase “philosophical Daoism” and its later development “reli-
gious Daoism.” He considered philosophical Daoism more authentic by vir-
tue of its proximity to Laozi and Zhuangzi and the texts attributed to them.
In contrast, he associated religious Daoism with the later esoteric teachings
of local masters and the rituals practiced by various local groups. His peri-
odization was thus not merely chronological but also normative, conveying
a value judgment. As the formative phase was credited with originality and
contemplative wisdom; the latter was devalued as having corrupted the orig-
inal tradition through local superstition. Greel’s periodization of Daoism
has been embraced by the majority of Western scholars and students of Chi-
nese religions since the 1950s; it is only until recently that the community of
Daoist teachers and scholars began to challenge Greel’s periodization.
A more constructive attempt sought to thematically structure Daoism.
For instance, Roth suggested that an overview of the Daoist texts allows
three distinctive themes to emerge. The first theme is cosmological, point-
ing to Daoist thinkers’ speculation about the cosmos, which delineates the
relations among the macrocosmic events and processes. The second theme is
“self-cultivation,” which refers to the various styles of physical and spiritual
 Translating Dao  19
practices aimed at the preservation of life by nurturing and sustaining its
vitality. The third theme concerns the development of a social, moral, and
political order or the establishment of an ideal society. Hence, according to
Roth, the Daoists’ teachings concern a cosmic reality, a personal reality, and
social reality all at once.20

HERMENEUTICS OF EDIFICATION

There are indeed good reasons to be skeptical of linguistic and cultural trans-
lation; however, the skeptic’s criteria of good and successful translation are
not the only, nor perhaps even the best, criteria with which to work. Here
I will suggest that philosophical hermeneutics provides us with a criterion of
edification by which to judge the fruitfulness of translation.
I am drawing on Richard Rorty’s appropriation of Gadamer’s concept of
Bildung as edification. Rorty states that

[s]ince ‘education’ sounds a little bit flat, and Bildung a bit foreign,
I shall use ‘edification’ to stand for this project of finding new, better,
fruitful ways of speaking. The attempts to edify (ourselves and oth-
ers) may consist in the hermeneutic activities of making connections
between our own culture and some exotic culture or historical period,
or between our discipline and another discipline which seems to pursue
incommensurable aims in an incommensurable vocabulary.21

In Truth and Method, Gadamer argued that hermeneutic understanding is

not a mere cognitive function of an apprehending subject in relation to a
given object; rather, understanding is a “mode of being . . . that constitutes”
the “finitude and historicity, and hence embraces the whole of its experience
of the world.”22 As a mode of being (in the world), hermeneutic under-
standing necessarily entails a self-understanding of one’s own historicity and
finitude, according to Gadamer. An educational program that fosters encul-
turation (Bildung) is required to aid such self-understanding. Such encultur-
ation would nurture reflective awareness of oneself and others. A reflective
awareness of oneself would then also include a growing awareness of not
only one’s personal but also of one’s historical and cultural situation. It is
from this situation that we gain various prejudgments (Vorurteile), such
as what counts as religion and mysticism, that we use to understand and
navigate through the world. These prejudgments may help or hinder under-
standing, depending on their function and relation to the subject matter.
Enculturation should then also bring such prejudgments to our attention.
For Gadamer, the primary means of disclosing these prejudgments is through
dialogue. One’s partner in the dialogue need not necessarily be another per-
son. It may also be a text, a work of art, a historical tradition in general, and
so forth. The dialogue centers on a particular subject matter (Sache) about
20  Wei Zhang
which both dialogue partners have something to say. What is particularly
important for our purposes is the way in which our prejudgments determine
how we understand both the subject matter and what our dialogue partner
is saying about it. In the course of our dialogue we realize that certain of our
assumptions do not match either the subject matter or the partner’s position
or both. Here we have foregrounded some prejudgment of which we were
most likely unaware. Through this experience we come to know ourselves,
the subject matter, and our partner a little better. We are edified.
Moreover, while Gadamer does argue that there are better and worse
understandings and interpretations, the process is never completed or per-
fected. Both we and our dialogue partner exist in living traditions with
changing horizons of understanding and changing prejudgments determin-
ing our interpretations. This means that the process must always be repeated
according to new, emerging situations.
This process of edification introduced by Gadamer and appropriated by
Rorty helps to better define the goals and evaluate the accomplishments of
cross-cultural translation. I propose that cross-cultural translation does not
simply entail linguistic translation whereby the translator attempts to find the
term or terms in the target language that most closely matches the concepts in
the source language. This would lead one to the preceding skeptical position.
Rather the translator is also engaged in the practice of ‘transplanting’ the
source culture. It seems that here there is a dialogue not simply between the
translator and the text but that this is actually a manifestation of two cultural
and historical traditions in dialogue. The initial linguistic approximation of
the foreign concepts is largely informed by assuming the cultural significance
of those terms. The reified knowledge in turn leads to an improved ability for
cultural appropriation of the foreign terms and concepts.
Hermeneutically, the claim to be able to correlate one word with another
in a translation is no more than an ideal. In order for an understanding to
occur, there must be distance, whether temporal or cultural, between the
source text and the target culture. Without such distance the text does not
have the difference or ‘foreignness’ necessary to sustain a dialogue. Without
this dialogue there is no chance of challenging the translator’s historically
and culturally inherited prejudgments, and hence coming to a richer under-
standing of one’s own historical and intellectual tradition, the subject of the
dialogue, and the dialogue partner’s tradition. Here what was problematic
for the skeptic is transformed into a boon. In the next section I attempt to
demonstrate this new understanding of translation as edification through a
particular example. Here the subject is mysticism and the dialogue partners
are the tradition of the Western academic study of religion and “Daoism.”

INSTANCES OF EDIFICATION

I shall only tentatively suggest here that treating Daoism as a form of mysti-
cism has generated productive conversations about comparative mysticism,
 Translating Dao 21
energizing the debate concerning the meaning of transcendence, the nature of
religious language and so-called ultimate reality, which are central to under-
standing and defining mysticism. Since the mid-twentieth century, a number
of comparative sinologists have attempted to engage Daoism in broader
discussions of mysticism. We can find such treatments in the works of such
leading sinologists as Benjamin Schwarz, A. C. Graham, David Hall, Harold
Roth, and Liva Kohn.23 In part, such scholars of religion regard mysticism
as a superior descriptive category by which to understand religious experi-
ence. William James, for instance, prefers the broader category of mysticism
for discussing the “variety of religious experiences.”24 Comparative phi-
losophers Ames and Hall are also convinced that from “spiritual/mystical
contexts rather than the theistic/doctrinal,” a language capable of charac-
terizing religious experience beyond the Western contexts” can be derived.25
Such scholars commonly assert that despite the vast temporal and cultural
distances between different religious traditions, there are observable over-
lapping experiences among the world mystics. Mystical experiences seem to
confirm that ultimate reality is ineffable and thus ‘beyond’ straightforward
doctrinal formulations and logical deduction. Thus, mysticism is inclusive
of many different traditions and therefore seems to open up space otherwise
unavailable for forging connections between such traditions. Treating Dao-
ism as a form of mysticism then appears to afford a means of translating
Daoism.
Classical characterizations of mysticism in the twentieth century can be
found in the works of William James, Rudolf Otto, Arthur Danto, W. T.
Stace, R. C. Zaehner, Ninian Smart, and others. First, there have been
attempts to define the subject matter of the mystical traditions. James
describes the subject contemplated by the mystics as “ineffable,” that which
cannot be expressed in words, and “noetic,” that which is open to insight
but not rational reflection. Despite the fact that it is common to assume
reason’s ability to come to know that God exists, it is not uncommon to
assume that reason cannot know the nature of God’s existence. According
to Otto, the “ultimate reality” in mystical traditions is a kind of “subject”
or “one” that “unites.” As it unites, the one “concentrates attention upon
itself, draws the value of the many to itself,” and “becom[es] that which is
and remains the real value behind the many.”26 Also, the ‘one’ necessarily
exists simply in virtue of its nature. Anselm’s ontological argument is a clas-
sic example of this. This ‘one’ is also ontologically separate from the many.
Ontological separation and creation’s dependence on God for existence and
value, then often entails asymmetry between God and creation, or the one
and the many. We have, then, five basic characteristics of the subject of
mystical experience as understood by the Western academic tradition: (1) it
is ineffable, (2) it is not available to reason, (3) it is the origin of all value,
(4) it transcends the many, and (5) it necessarily exists. These characteristics
are the prejudgments (Vorurteile) that inform the category of mysticism.
Again, they need not be negative; we require such categories and assump-
tions to make sense of the world. We must, however, be aware of them.
22  Wei Zhang
Placing them in dialogue with Daoism should aid in making them explicit.
We can then gain a deeper appreciation of how they influence our under-
standing, how Daoism does and does not match our assumptions, and make
the domain of acceptable and fruitful translation clearer.
Second, there is then the Western academic attempt to classify various
types of mysticism based on where the subject of mystical experience is. For
Zaehner, all mystical experiences could be classified into three general types.
The “theistic” type encompasses most forms of mystical experiences in Chris-
tianity, Islam, and some of the Indian religious traditions. The “monistic”
includes some Hindu traditions of the non-dualistic nature such as Advaita
Vedanta, Samkhya (though with a distinct ontology of dualism), as well as
Buddhism. However, the last two traditions do not seem to fit the category,
since Zaehner’s definition of monistic mysticism is described as a unitary con-
sciousness with one’s own soul. The third type, “panenhenic” or “nature”
mysticism, includes a range of unclassifiable mystical experiences from the
animistic spirit of the so-called primitive traditions, to the trance-like experi-
ences of nature worshipers, and the “ecstasy” induced by consciousness alter-
ing substances.27 For him, the three categories of mystical experience were
mutually exclusive, with the theistic type superior to the other two, since it
provides a moral framework. Later, scholars, such as Smart and Staal, crit-
icized Zaehner’s treatment of mystical experiences for its “Catholic bias.”28
The most direct engagement with Zaehner’s position was perhaps by
Walter Stace who published Mysticism and Philosophy in 1960. For Stace,
Zaehner, as well as his predecessors, failed to distinguish between mysti-
cal experiences as such, and the interpretation or interpretative categories
employed to recount those experiences. The failure to differentiate the pri-
mary mystical experience from the secondary interpretation of such expe-
riences obscured some of the “core values” of all mystical experiences. For
Stace, the common core of mystical experiences includes a sense of “objec-
tivity or reality,” and a feeling of “the holy, sacred or divine,” which is
usually expressed in nondiscursive and even paradoxical terms.29 According
to Stace, this common core could then be divided into two types, the “extro-
vertive” and “introvertive.” Eastern mystical experiences are, according to
Stace, generally extrovertive, while Western mystical experiences are pri-
marily introvertive. As with Zaehner, Stace also favored one over the other.
According to Stace, extrovertive mystical experiences are only partially real-
ized mystical experiences, because they are union or identity of only two,
while introvertive experiences are the unification or identity of everything.30
I would now like to bring the preceding Western academic accounts of
mysticism into dialogue with Daoism, particularly on the subject of tran-
scendence and its supposed necessary connection to mystical experience. As
we shall see Daoism does and does not fit within the Western academic con-
ceptions of mysticism in such a way that Daoism should disclose to us our
preconceptions concerning mysticism thereby edifying us to both ourselves
and our Daoist dialogue partners.
 Translating Dao 23
First, it is true, as I noted earlier, that there is a strong tradition surround-
ing dao’s ineffability, as the first lines of the Daodejing state. Experience of
dao is, then, noetic or insightful and independent of linguistic communi-
cation and convention. The Daoist sages or mystics should remain silent,
then. However, given that there are eighty-one chapters in the Daodejing,
plus the writings of Zhuangzi, it is obvious that they must speak. Dao-
ists do indeed offer some alternative perspectives on how to conceptualize
dao and the experience of consummating and realizing dao. Dao, though
canonically understood as ineffable, may nevertheless be meaningfully
expressed. First, the Daodejing does not pose the question, “What is dao?”
The Indo-European linguistic convention does not apply to classical Chinese
literary language users, and the interest in thematic truth did not preoccupy
the Daoist writers. For instance, the pair of this/that may designate two sets
of distinctive things with different or opposed qualities but with equal value.
For ‘something’ and ‘nothing’ mutually presuppose each other. Ames and
Hall’s rendition of the verses of the Daodejing conforms to such classical
Chinese thematic structure: “The events of the world arise from the deter-
minate (you), and the determinate arises from the indeterminate (wu).”31
Here we have the correlative pair of “determinate” and “indeterminate.”
Similarly, “the named” and the “nameless” are said to come from “the same
source yet are referred to differently.”32 For the “nameless” was metaphor-
ically described as the potential or the “fetal beginning” of the world, and
the “named” was the mother of the world becoming. All correlative pairs
were symbolized by yin and yang, designating the widest possible range of
world phenomena and their attributes from the two farthest poles, as well as
their potential for transforming themselves into their opposite.
Some scholars regard the ways in which Daoists speak of dao as a unique
Chinese contribution. As Schwartz points out, Daoist masters indeed find
ways of communicating dao by way of paradoxical expressions.33 The
apophatic language employed in Daoist texts conveys the inherent creative
tension of “perception and reality” and “action and effect” and, impor-
tantly, the mystical experiences of “self-contradiction.”34 Other religious
studies scholars continued to argue that by speaking the paradoxical lan-
guage, the mystics could bypass the “distinction between immanent and
transcendent.”35 To say dao is then to say both is/is not, being/nonbeing, or
yin/yang, which violates the law of noncontradiction. But this violation of
basic rational laws allows paradoxical language to accomplish what con-
ventional language cannot; it can point to a referent that is beyond the sig-
nification of conventional language.
So far, there is some agreement between the Daoist tradition concerning
dao and Western academic understandings of mysticism on the category
of ineffability. Ineffability is not a problem exclusive to the dao, however.
Whereas ineffability in Western mysticism is generally contained to the
nature of God given the asymmetric relation between God and creation;
however, dao, in fact, grants a degree of ineffability to the things of everyday
24  Wei Zhang
experience. Dao is said to engender the heavens, earth, humans and the
other myriad or tens of thousands of things. These individual things have
their own dao. Zhuangzi, for example, claims to see dao in all things—even
in the tiny ants. Having their own dao, then, grants them a degree of inef-
fability or namelessness. Whatever attempt humans make to linguistically
contain things of this world, there will always be a remainder, a way in
which they exceed or challenge the conventional linguistic categories.
The transfer of ineffability from dao to the things of this world already
challenges the categorical understanding of transcendence. This is not, how-
ever, the only reason that dao cannot be unproblematically understood as
transcendent. It is true, as stated earlier, that dao creates the things of this
world; however, it does so not at a remove. Dao does not stand apart or
unaffected by that which it creates. Described metaphorically as “a mother
of the world” that gives birth to all, dao remains united with all that is
created. As a mother it is always and already related to her children. Like
water that pervades the land and irrigates that which grows on the land, it is
always companion to that through which it flows. Just as water infuses the
land and grants the potentiality of growth to it, dao is the very potentiality
and capability to produce and sustain all that lives and is. In the Daoist uni-
verse, all that is and lives are in mutual and constant energetic interaction
thereby forming the ecological network of synergy. Dao, then, does not
stand outside of that which it creates, as is generally understood in the West
by transcendent; rather, dao “stands by” or “stands with” every other thing
and process in the world that it engenders.
If the concept of transcendence in relation to dao is altered, then so, too,
is the concept of value and how it relates to that which dao creates. Though
there is a strong current in Western traditions to acknowledge creation as
good, there is also a tendency to find creation less than perfect in compar-
ison to the divine, perhaps even fallen. While reading the second Daoist
classic, the Zhuangzi, one gets the impression that every entity and type of
entity is complete and perfect, from the accomplished sage to the crippled
or disfigured individual, from beautiful sacrificial vases to apparently useless
trees, and from huge and powerful flying birds to tail-dragging creatures of
the mud. Nothing need be added or taken away. This more or less naturally
follows from the fact that dao is perfect and infuses all of creatures. This will
have its concomitant effect on what is sought in Daoist mysticism and where
it is sought. Rejecting dao as transcendent also alters the way in which it is
necessary. In many Western accounts of the necessary existence of the divine,
such necessity is based solely on its own nature independent of creation. It
does not depend for its existence on that which it creates; it is the other
way around. Dao is certainly necessary; however, its necessary existence is
not through itself. Rather, since all that exists is infused with dao and has
its own particular dao, which necessarily exists insofar as this world exists.
It is its immanence and not its transcendence that guarantees its existence.
Both the preceding similarities and difference then lead to some important
 Translating Dao 25
distinctions that must be made between the nature of mystical experience
in Daoism and in the West. First, there is a strong current in Western mys-
tical traditions to maintain the division of the human and divine even when
they are at their closest in a mystical experience. For instance, Paul Tillich
believes there are two problems with an ultimate mystical union with an
impersonal absolute, which he finds in pantheistic traditions. First, such an
ultimate mystical union ignores the necessary distance between “finite man,
on the one hand . . . and the holy in its numerous manifestations, on the
other.” Second, the extreme form of this union negates the “mutual freedom
of man and God,” and the freedom of man to “turn away from its essen-
tial unity with its creative ground,” or God.36 Western mystics should not
attempt to overcome the differences between the divine and human, in order
to transcend the distinctions of time and eternity, and divinity and human-
ity. For epistemic purposes, “a fundamental duality in the presentation of
and response to the sacred” should be retained.37 Given the earlier rejection
of dao as transcendent and the mitigation of any ontological difference, a
Daoist mystical experience should bridge the epistemic gap.
Second, reactions to mystical experiences are different in these two tra-
ditions. In many Western mystical traditions, a mystical experience evokes
a strong devotional reaction and sometimes subsequent organized worship.
As Otto points out, mystics often recount feelings of both awe and humility,
and a sense of closeness to God. Daoist “mystics,” referred to as sages in
the Daodejing, are those who realized dao. Unlike other mystics, they do
not exhibit any strong emotions such as intense and conflicting feelings of
love and fear. Instead, Daoist mystics are “subtle and flexible, profound
and comprehensive,” yet at the same time very “simple”—as simple and
plain as a “not-yet-being-carved block.”38 Instead of being overwhelmed
by joy and excitement or lost in a trancelike state, a Daoist mystic acts
soberly and carefully, as if he were guarding the “mystery of all mysteries”
of dao. He appears to be “reluctant, as though he was crossing a winter
stream,” and he is “vigilant,” as though he was fearful of “disturbing the
neighbors.” Instead of professing devotion to a personal deity or a strong
commitment to an ultimate cause, the Daoist mystic, realizing dao seems to
prefer to “remain like a hidden sprout, and does not rush to early ripening.”
Approximating what dao would do, Daoist sage does not “seek fullness” or
completeness, because he is ultimately fulfilled or completed.39

CONCLUSION

We suggest, that while there has been consistent efforts aiming at a “literal”
translation of the “original” meaning of dao and the reconstruction of a
“historical” Daoism, there are also translators of the Daodejing who treat
such translation as a way of generating dialogues and a way of self-edifying.
Clarke observed that the “driving force” of translating dao and the
26  Wei Zhang
Daodejing was not so much to reach a literal understanding and reconstruc-
tion of the native history of a Chinese tradition as such, but to find ways
to “confront and clarifying issues of immediate concern” to our own tradi-
tions.40 The cross-cultural translation, in the earlier delineated sense, can be
appealing. For it gives the translators more incentives, while translating the
foreign texts and traditions by making them intelligible and meaningful, to
have their own intellectual and religious horizons widened, thus to become
edified. The new experiences of the dialogues and self-transformation then
help generate new layers of meaning for the religious concepts that may
not have previously existed in either host or target traditions. In brief, the
innovative part of the new practice of translation may open up some new
field of intellectual inquiry. Scholars have noted some cultural significance
generated by the cross-cultural translation project of the Daodejing. The
appropriation of Daoism as a form of mysticism forges a discipline of com-
parative study of mysticism, providing a forum of mutual engagement and
critical assessment of different religious concepts and experiences that had
been taken for granted by separate traditions. Some religious scholar hope
that Daoist approaches to dao can point to an alternative spiritual path, cul-
tivating a religiosity without deferring to “creedal commitment or doctrinal
validation.”41 For others, Daoism may balance the extreme forms of other-
worldliness, by valuing the significance of the present and the particulars.
Importantly, the Daoist worldview may encourage participation in multiple
religious activities in place of mutually exclusive religious identities.42

NOTES

1. J. J. Clarke, The Tao of the West: Western Transformations of Taoist Thought
(London: Routledge, 2002), 56.
2. Ibid., 54.
3. Ibid., 54–55.
4. Graham Parkes, ed., Heidegger and Asian Thought (Honolulu: University of
Hawai‘i Press, 1990), 93.
5. Harold D. Roth, Original Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations of Tao-
ist Mysticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 1–2.
6. See the chapters that mention the dao in Roger Ames and David Hall, trans.,
Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation (New York: Ballantine Books,
2003).
7. J. J. Clarke, Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter between Asian and West-
ern Thought (London: Routledge, 1997), 1–6.
8. Translation by Arthur Waley cited in Chad Hansen, A Daoist Theory of Chi-
nese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992), 207.
9. Translated into German by Richard Wilhelm (1910), thence into English by
H. G. Ostwald (1985) found at “Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching (175+ Translations
of Chapter 1),” accessed September 6, 2014, http://www.bopsecrets.org/gate
way/passages/tao-te-ching.htm.
10. Translated by D. T. Suzuki and Paul Carus (1913) found at ibid.
11. A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient
China (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989).
 Translating Dao 27
12. Thomas Cleary, ed., The Taoist Classics, vol. 1, trans. Thomas Cleary (Bos-
ton: Shambhala, 2003).
13. Ames and Hall, Dao De Jing, 77.
14. Ibid., 57.
15. Ibid.
16. Martin Buber, Chinese Tales, trans. Alex Page (Amherst, NY: Humanity
Books, 1991), 92–93.
17. Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language, trans. Peter Hertz (San Fran-
cisco: Harper, 1971), 92.
18. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. David E. Linge
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 59–63.
19. Clarke, The Tao of the West, 54–55.
20. Roth, Original Tao, 7.
21. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Prince-
ton University Press, 1981), 360.
22. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Garrett Barden and John
Cumming (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), xxvii.
23. Benjamin I. Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge,
NA: Belknap Press, 1985); Graham, Disputers of the Tao; Roth, Original
Tao; Livia Kohn, Early Chinese Mysticism: Philosophy and Soteriology in the
Taoist Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); and David
L. Hall, Thinking from the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese
and Western Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998).
24. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human
Nature (London and New York: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1902), 418–419.
25. Hall, Thinking from the Han, 213.
26. Rudolf Otto, Mysticism East and West (New York: Macmillan, 1932), 68.
27. Quoted in Richard King, Orientalism and Religion (London: Routledge,
1999), 164.
28. Ibid.
29. Quoted ibid., 164–165.
30. Ibid., 164–167; and Hall, Thinking from the Han, 210.
31. Ames and Hall, Dao De Jing, 139.
32. Ibid., 77.
33. Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China, 197–198.
34. Mark Csikszentmihalyi and Philip J. Ivanhoe, Religious and Philosophical Aspects
of the Laozi (New York: State University of New York Press, 1999), 46–51.
35. Michael A. Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1985), 197–198.
36. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology: Existence and the Christ, vol. 2 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1957), 5–10.
37. Conrad Hyers, “Prophet and Mystic: Toward a Phenomenological Foundation
for a World Ecumenicity,” Cross Currents 20, no. 4 (September 1, 1970): 435.
38. Ames and Hall, Dao De Jing, 120.
39. John C. H. Wu, trans., Tao Teh Ching (Boston: Shambhala, 1990), 31.
40. Clarke, The Tao of the West, 4.
41. Ibid., 207.
42. Chenyang Li, The Tao Encounters the West: Explorations in Comparative
Philosophy (New York: State University of New York Press, 1999), 139–162.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ames, Roger, and David Hall, trans. Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation. New
York: Ballantine Books, 2003.
28  Wei Zhang
Buber, Martin. Chinese Tales. Translated by Alex Page. Amherst, NY: Humanity
Books, 1991.
Clarke, J. J. Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter between Asian and Western
Thought. London: Routledge, 1997.
———. The Tao of the West: Western Transformations of Taoist Thought. London:
Routledge, 2002.
Cleary, Thomas, ed. The Taoist Classics. Vol. 1. Translated by Thomas Cleary. Bos-
ton: Shambhala, 2003.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mark, and Philip J. Ivanhoe. Religious and Philosophical Aspects
of the Laozi. New York: State University of New York Press, 1999.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Philosophical Hermeneutics. Translated by David E. Linge.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
———. Truth and Method. Translated by Garrett Barden and John Cumming. New
York: Seabury Press, 1975.
Graham, A. C. Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China. La
Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989.
Hall, David L. Thinking from the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese
and Western Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998.
Hansen, Chad. A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpreta-
tion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Heidegger, Martin. On the Way to Language. Translated by Peter Hertz. San
Francisco: Harper, 1971.
Hyers, Conrad. “Prophet and Mystic: Toward a Phenomenological Foundation for
a World Ecumenicity.” Cross Currents 20, no. 4 (September 1, 1970): 435–454.
James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature.
London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1902.
King, Richard. Orientalism and Religion. London: Routledge, 1999.
Kohn, Livia. Early Chinese Mysticism : Philosophy and Soteriology in the Taoist
Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.
“Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching (175+ Translations of Chapter 1).” Accessed September 6,
2014. http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/tao-te-ching.htm.
Li, Chenyang. The Tao Encounters the West: Explorations in Comparative Philoso-
phy. New York: State University of New York Press, 1999.
Otto, Rudolf. Mysticism East and West. New York: Macmillan, 1932.
Parkes, Graham, ed. Heidegger and Asian Thought. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i
Press, 1990.
Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1981.
Roth, Harold D. Original Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations of Taoist Mys-
ticism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
Schwartz, Benjamin I. The World of Thought in Ancient China. Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press, 1985.
Sells, Michael A. Mystical Languages of Unsaying. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1985.
Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology: Existence and the Christ. Vol. 2. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1957.
Wu, John C.H., trans. Tao Teh Ching. Boston: Shambhala, 1990.
2 Historical Translation
Pseudo-Dionysius, Thomas
Aquinas, and the Unknown God
Michael P. DeJonge

In After Babel, a classic text on translation, George Steiner writes, “When

we read or hear any language-statement from the past, be it Leviticus or
last year’s best-seller, we translate.”1 We normally think of translation, of
course, as having to do with restating something in another language, the
process of interlingual translation. But here Steiner suggests that under-
standing a past statement, even in our own language, involves what might
be called ‘historical translation,’ the translation of a statement from past to
present. If Steiner is right about this, it implies that the issues and problems
that attend interlingual translation apply to historical translation as well
and that translation theory might shed some light on historical translation.
A noteworthy aspect of Steiner’s claim is one of the examples he uses to
illustrate it. Because Leviticus is generally considered a religious text, Stein-
er’s mention of it brings to mind the prevalence of historical translation in
religion. While the reading of texts from the distant past is certainly not
limited to religious contexts, it does find a special significance there. This is
because religions are traditions, and traditions sustain themselves through
historical translation. Historical translation is a central feature of religion.
The conjunction of the previous two points—that translation theory
might helpfully be applied to historical translation, and that historical trans-
lation is central to religion—suggests the application of translation theory to
the processes of historical translation within religion. This chapter attempts
such an application.
In what follows, I make explicit the view of language that stands behind
Steiner’s judgment that the reading of past statements counts as transla-
tion; I call this view of language linguistic-historical contextualism. Steiner’s
thinking about translation and the linguistic-historical contextualism that
underlies it urge the conclusion that historical translation inevitably involves
change in meaning. Following the case study methodology of this volume,
I use Steiner’s view of language and translation to illuminate the changes
of meaning involved in the great medieval Christian theologian Thomas
Aquinas’s historical translation of Pseudo-Dionysius’s statement that God is
known as unknown. Since Thomas’s translation of Dionysius is one instance
of a process constitutive of Christianity as a historical tradition, it follows
30  Michael P. DeJonge
that the Christian tradition, viewed through the lens of Steiner’s view of
language and translation, perpetuates itself through constant change.

HISTORICAL TRANSLATION

Steiner suggests that understanding a past statement, even in our own lan-
guage, involves translation. What does he mean? What does he assume about
the nature of language, history, and translation to arrive at this conclusion?
Steiner argues for a broad notion of translation, claiming that “a human
being performs an act of translation, in the full sense of the word, when
receiving a speech-message from any other human being.”2 Therefore, the
term translation, argues Steiner, should not be restricted to “interlingual
exchanges.” Rather, translation should be a “way of designating a working
model of all meaningful exchanges, of the totality of semantic communica-
tion.”3 Steiner’s broad account of translation is based on the interpretive
nature of all language use: “[t]o understand is to decipher. To hear sig-
nificance is to translate.” Therefore, “every act of communication, in the
emission and reception of each and every mode of meaning, be it in the
widest semiotic sense or in the more specifically verbal exchanges” involves
translation.4 Translation in the narrower, interlingual sense, then, is not an
absolutely unique kind of communication but rather “a special, heightened
case.”5 Steiner understands translation broadly, as something involved in
any emission and reception of meaningful messages.
Having defined translation broadly, Steiner continues by delineating
three kinds of translation, relying on an influential essay, “On Linguistic
Aspects of Translation,” by the structuralist linguist and semiotician Roman
Jakobson.6 One kind of translation Jakobson discusses is the most famil-
iar, “interlingual translation or translation proper,” which he defines as the
“interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language.” Another
kind of translation is “intersemiotic translation or transmutation,” the
“interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of a nonverbal sign sys-
tem,” as when, for example, a symphony is adapted from a novel. A third
kind of translation is “intralingual translation or rewording,” the “interpre-
tation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language.”7 This
occurs, for example, in definition, commentary, and explication within a
single language. When Steiner describes the interpretation of past statements
as a translation, he is pointing to its character as intralingual rewording.
Steiner’s claim that the interpretation of past events involves intralingual
translation rests on two further assumptions about language, assumptions
that are central to linguistic-historical contextualism. The first of Stein-
er’s assumptions is that the meaning of a word is its relationship to other
words.8 In contrast to alternative theories that locate meaning in purport-
edly extralinguistic thoughts in the mind that words are said to express or
objects in the world to which words are said to refer, Steiner recognizes that
 Historical Translation 31
any account of expression or reference must also be cast in language. In
this way, the meaning of a word cannot be separated from the other words
around it but depends on its linguistic context. It follows from this theory
that transporting a word from one linguistic context into another necessar-
ily changes its meaning.
That this change in meaning happens in historical translation is guaran-
teed by a second assumption: language is constantly changing. Language’s
constant change is what makes today’s language different from yesterday’s
and is what erects boundaries between the past and present, thereby making
historical translation analogous to interlingual translation. This is easiest
to see when we look at large segments of time; Shakespeare’s English cer-
tainly feels quite foreign to contemporary English speakers. But it is also
true across smaller segments of time. Language is very much like Heracli-
tus’s river; linguistic change guarantees that no one utters the same state-
ment twice. As Steiner says, even verbatim repetition guarantees no meaning
equivalence.9
Steiner’s linguistic-historical contextualism—the broad definition of trans-
lation, the adoption of Jakobson’s typology, the location of meaning in lin-
guistic context, and the convictions regarding the flux of language—allows
him to draw the conclusion with which this chapter began, namely, that the
interpretation of past statements, as intralingual translation, is like interlin-
gual translation. Here again is Steiner, this time at length:

When we read or hear any language-statement from the past, be it

Leviticus or last year’s best-seller, we translate. Reader, actor, editor
are translators of language out of time. The schematic model of trans-
lation is one in which a message from a source-language passes into
a receptor-language via a transformational process. The barrier is the
obvious fact that one language differs from the other . . . Exactly the
same model—and this is what is rarely stressed—is operative within a
single language. But here the barrier or distance between source and
receptor is time.10

Translation broadly speaking carries a message across a boundary. In inter-

lingual translation, the boundary is linguistic; in historical translation, the
boundary is temporal.
With Steiner’s linguistic-historical contextualism in place, I  can define
more clearly the vocabulary I use in this chapter. Following Steiner’s adop-
tion of Jakobson, I use interlingual translation to name translation between
natural languages. I use historical transplantation to refer to the act of lifting
a segment of text from a past linguistic-historical context and planting it in
the present. Historical transplantation happens, for example, when an older
text is quoted in a newer one. Given linguistic-historical contextualism,
such historical transplanting necessarily involves a change in meaning. This
change remains implicit, however, until made explicit through intralingual
32  Michael P. DeJonge
translation or rewording. This is the interpretation, explication, commen-
tary, elaboration, and so on of the transplanted segment of text that both
integrates it into its new context and makes manifest the change in meaning
it has undergone in that transition. These latter two moments—the histori-
cal transplanting of a text-segment and its interpretation—together consti-
tute what I call in this chapter historical translation.11

AN AUTHORITATIVE PAST

Historical translation connects directly with the concept of tradition.12 In

tradition, something is handed down across the temporal boundaries that
stand between generations or even epochs. Christianity is a tradition in a
descriptive sense because various practices and beliefs are handed down
from generation to generation so that Christianity maintains approximately
similar beliefs and practices throughout time.13 But Christianity is also a
tradition in a normative sense because it invests the past with authority for
the present.14 It is especially this sense of an authoritative past that gives
Christianity the pronounced character of a tradition. And it is in turn the
traditional character of Christianity that undergirds the various repetitions
of past words as meaningful in the present. Because Christianity is a tradi-
tion, it requires historical translation.15
Thomas’s retrieval of Dionysius makes for an interesting case study of
historical translation in large part because this interplay of authority, tradi-
tion, and historical translation that is constitutive of Christianity in general
is especially prominent in Thomas’s writing. Thomas wrote in the medieval
scholastic context characterized by deep deference to authority and tradi-
tion.16 As the then common image of dwarves on the shoulders of giants
suggests, medieval scholars—not just in theology but in all disciplines—were
conscious that whatever insights they gained rested on a firm foundation
of ancient accomplishment. Consistent with this awareness, each medieval
academic discipline began thinking about its subject matter in conversation
with authoritative texts. In logic, for example, Aristotle was the recognized
authority. In law, it was Justinian. In theology the authority was above all
the Bible. Of course, it was not in treating the Bible as an authority that
scholastic theology distinguished itself from other kinds of theology. Rather,
what was distinctive about scholastic theology was its focus on the medi-
ation of the Bible’s authority through tradition.17 Thomas and his fellow
scholastic theologians interpreted the bible in the context of its authoritative
tradition of commentary.
The scholastic theologians’ respect for the authority of tradition imprinted
itself on the form or style of their theological writing. Many of the scholas-
tic theological genres involved doxography, the practice of organizing vari-
ous authoritative statements around a shared question.18 This doxographic
style is on display in the ‘article,’ a basic unit of scholastic writing. Thomas
 Historical Translation 33
begins his articles by posing a question— for example, Can the human mind
arrive at knowledge of God?—before introducing a series of preliminary
arguments based on past authoritative statements that bear on the ques-
tion. Only then does Thomas answer the question in his own words, before
closing the article by responding to the preliminary arguments. According
to this form of writing, Thomas deals with a theological question only after
assembling the opinions of the agreed upon authorities, and his own answer
must convincingly negotiate that chorus of authorities. This doxographic
style of writing is remarkable for displaying in its very form the scholastic
theologians’ commitment to doing theology in conversation with traditional
authorities. The scholastic article is a textual instance of the dwarf standing
on shoulders of giants.
From this description it is clear that the various senses of translation
mentioned at the conclusion of the preceding section are at work in doxo­
graphy. The act of lifting authoritative statements from their original context
and placing them in an article’s preliminary argument is an act of histori-
cal transplantation. When dealing with authorities in languages other than
Thomas’s Latin, doxography also requires interlingual translation. And,
although Thomas tends not to call this translation (more on this in the
following), doxography also involves intralingual translation, as when the
theologian interprets or explicates the authoritative statement in the context
of his own theology.19 This kind of historical translation happens all the
time, often unaware, in Christianity. Thomas’s work is an interesting case
study for translation because his doxographic style brings these processes of
historical translation to the forefront.

THOMAS’S HISTORICAL TRANSLATION OF

PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS’S UNKNOWN GOD

One of the most important authorities that Thomas brings into the doxo-
graphy conversation is Dionysius, whose writings Thomas describes as
“almost like the Bible itself.”20 In addition to writing a commentary on Dio-
nysius’s Divine Names, Thomas cites Dionysius more than 2,200 times in
other writings, making him his third-most frequently cited authority behind
Augustine and Aristotle.21 In venerating Dionysius, Thomas follows the ten-
dency of the Christian tradition in general, which holds Dionysius in the
esteem appropriate for one (erroneously, as it turns out)22 thought to be
a disciple of the apostle Paul. But more than this, Thomas finds Diony-
sius worthy of emulation because of the soundness of his basic theological
framework.
One place Dionysius articulates this theological framework is in Mystical
Theology,23 where he offers a twofold concept of God: God is the cause
of all things, yet God surpasses all things. From the twofold concept of
God follows a twofold theological method, affirmation and negation. On
34  Michael P. DeJonge
one hand, because God causes all things, all things are in some way like
God, and we are justified in making affirmative theological statements such
as ‘God is just.’ On the other hand, because God surpasses all things, the
affirmative statements must be balanced by negative ones; because God is
radically other than what we know justice to be, we must say, ‘God is not
just.’ In this way, the twofold concept of God as causing yet surpassing all
things grounds both affirmation and negation. The knowledge of God that
results from this twofold theological method is paradoxical since we both
know God and do not know God. For Dionysius, God is both known and
unknown.
The paradox deepens when we notice that there is a third aspect to Dio-
nysius’s theology hidden within the second or negative moment. Dionysius
signals this when he warns that “we should not conclude that the negations
are simply the opposites of the affirmations.”24 It is not as if by denying that
God is just our knowledge returns to where it was before we affirmed that
God is just. The denial is not a step backward. Rather, it is another step
forward, a paradoxical kind of progress in which we know that we do not
know God. And this knowledge of our lack of knowledge brings us closer
to God than if we stayed with simple, affirmative knowledge. So, imbedded
within the negative moment of Dionysius’s theology is this third, transcend-
ing moment that is the peak of our union with God.25 At this peak, we do
not just know and unknow God; we know God as unknown.
Most of the time, Dionysius describes his theological method in this
twofold way, as affirmation and negation. But there is a passage in Divine
Names where he makes this third moment of transcendence explicit, men-
tioning three approaches to God: by causation, negation, and transcendence
(per causalitatem, per remotionem, and per eminentiam).26 It is this three-
fold articulation of the way to God that came to be called the triplex via and
was especially influential for Thomas and other Western medieval thinkers.
As far as this basic framework of Dionysius’s thinking goes, Thomas is
in full agreement. For Thomas, as for Dionysius, the nature of divine cau-
sality both grounds theological discourse and sets its limits. Because God is
the cause of creation, we have the opportunity to know God. But because
God is a special kind of cause that far exceeds the effect, our knowledge of
God through causation is limited.27 Therefore, and again in agreement with
Dionysius, Thomas says we approach God not only through affirmation
but also through negation and transcendence, with the result that God is
both known and unknown.28 In these respects, Thomas is squarely in the
Dionysian tradition.
Given that Thomas affirms Dionysius’s basic theological framework as
just described, how does he deal specifically with Dionysius’s notion of the
unknown God? One place where Thomas interacts with Dionysius’s notion
of the unknown God is in his commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate. The
question Thomas poses in part 1, q. 1, a. 2 of that work is whether the
 Historical Translation 35
human mind can arrive at knowledge of God. The short answer for Thomas
is yes. But in arguing for that conclusion, Thomas needs to deal with an
objection based on Dionysius’s authority, which appears in that article’s first
preliminary argument. Thomas paraphrases it thus: “[A]t the highest point
of our knowledge we are united to God only as to one who is, as it were,
unknown.” And the conclusion that Thomas draws from this, at least in the
context of this first preliminary argument, is, “in no way, therefore, can we
know God.”29 The challenge for Thomas, then, is to assert the knowabil-
ity of God while maintaining proper deference to Dionysius’s authoritative
claim that we are united to God as unknown.
Thomas answers the challenge in the reply to this preliminary argument,
which I quote in full before discussing:

We are said to know God as unknown at the highest point of our knowl-
edge because we find that the mind has made the greatest advance in
knowledge when it knows that God’s essence transcends everything the
mind can apprehend in the present life. Thus, although what God is
remains unknown, that God is is nonetheless known.30

Thomas begins, in effect, by noting that the preliminary argument over-

states the case. It is not Dionysius’s point that God is totally unknown;
rather, God is in some important way unknown. To elaborate in what
sense God is known and unknown, Thomas then relies on two distinctions:
between what we know of God in this present life and in the next life, and
between knowledge of God’s existence (knowing that God is; quia est) and
essence (knowing what God is; quid est). These two distinctions map onto
each other to answer in what sense God is known and in what sense God
is unknown. God is known insofar as we know in our present life that God
is, that God exists. God is unknown insofar as in our present life we do
not know what God is, God’s essence. But, as Thomas only suggests in this
reply, even this lack of essential knowledge of God is overcome in the next
life, when we will know not only that God is but also what God is.
Thomas finds Dionysius’s thinking worthy of transplanting because of
Dionysius’s authoritative place in the tradition and the soundness of his
theology. This transplanting does pose some challenges, however, as when
Thomas’s desire to affirm the knowledge of God seems to violate Dionysius’s
dictum that God is known as unknown. But after transplanting Dionysius’s
statement about unknowing into a linguistic-historical context that might,
with its stated goal of establishing knowledge of God, appear hostile to the
original statement, Thomas integrates the statement into its new context
through the commentary and interpretation that constitutes intralingual
translation. Thomas makes room for assertions about God’s knowability by
restricting the range of Dionysius’s claim that God is unknown, interpreting
it to mean that God’s essence remains unknown in this life.
36  Michael P. DeJonge
LOSS

If the meaning of words cannot be separated from the words around them to
be referred to some inner thought or external object, then, as Steiner writes,
the “ideal [of meaning equivalence] can never be realized totally.”31 There
might be meaning equivalence in theory, but demonstrating it requires more
rephrasing or translation, thus reopening the question.32 If this is correct in
general, then shifts in meaning can be demonstrated in reference to any case
of historical translation, including Thomas’s retrieval of Dionysius’s notion
of the unknown God.
In a key passage of Divine Names,33 Dionysius distinguishes between
two aspects of God, the God ‘beyond-being’ (hyperousios ousia), and the
‘being-producing (ousiopoios) processions’ of God. I call these the divine
nature and the divine processions, although the terms are not entirely sat-
isfactory. Dionysius’s distinction seems to mean that there is, on one hand,
God’s nature, which is beyond being and is unknown and unrevealed. There
are, on the other hand, the divine processions, which flow from the divine
nature and can in some ways be known. When interpreted in light of this dis-
tinction between God’s nature and processions, Dionysius’s theology takes on
some characteristics that Thomas resists or significantly modifies.34 The first
of these characteristics is the distinction itself, the second is the idea that God
is beyond being, and the third is the radical unknowing that results from this.
First, Thomas resists Dionysius’s distinction between God’s nature and
processions. A central commitment of Thomas’s thinking is that “God is
truly and absolutely simple,”35 in no way divisible or composed of parts.
Absolute divine simplicity entails that whatever is said of God is identical
to God’s essence;36 if God is good, then God’s essence is goodness, other-
wise there would be some part of God called good and some other part of
God called something else, and God would be composed of parts. Another
implication of divine simplicity is that any attribute of God is identical to
every other. If God is good, God is wise, and God has a will, then God’s
goodness is God’s wisdom, which is also God’s will. Given divine simplicity,
any apparent distinction in God is just that—apparent.
Thomas’s commitment to divine simplicity is incompatible with Diony-
sius’s distinction between God’s nature and processions. Dionysius’s dis-
tinction posits not just an apparent but a real distinction in God, since the
things said of God’s processions cannot necessarily be said of God’s nature.37
In other words, Dionysius does not operate with the doctrine of absolute
divine simplicity that is common (though not unchallenged) in Latin scho-
lasticism. This is a significant difference in the ways Dionysius and Thomas
think about God.
But Thomas presents Dionysius as if he shared Thomas’s notion of divine
simplicity. This happens, for example, when Thomas interprets Dionysius’s
divine processions as created beings. Here Thomas offers the interpreta-
tion required by divine simplicity, which entails that anything that is not
 Historical Translation 37
the essence of God is creaturely rather than divine. But this runs against the
grain of Dionysius’s thinking, where divine processions are neither the divine
essence nor creatures. In this way, Thomas covers over his disagreement with
Dionysius by in effect presenting him through the lens of divine simplicity.38
The second aspect of Dionysius’s thinking which Thomas resists is the
suggestion that God, or at least God’s nature, is beyond being and is even
‘non-being.’39 This idea runs counter to a central aspect of Thomas’s under-
standing of God, that God is being itself or absolute being (ipsum esse per
se subsistens, being itself subsisting in itself). Thomas operates with a hier-
archy of being where nonbeings (things that do not exist) are at the bottom,
beings (things that exist but depend on something else for their existence)
are in the middle, and God (who as absolute being exists necessarily and
self-sufficiently) is at the top. On Thomas’s ontology, all classes of things can
be described in terms of being, with God as absolute being. Therefore, while
Dionysius expresses God’s transcendence in terms of nonbeing, suggesting
that God is somehow entirely removed from the hierarchy of being, Thomas
expresses God’s transcendence as the fullness of being, suggesting that God
transcends created beings as absolute being.
Again, when Thomas reads Dionysius on the issue of God’s relationship
to being, Thomas modifies Dionysius to fit his own categories. In order to
argue that a created intellect can see the essence of God, Thomas must deal
with a preliminary argument resting on Dionysius’s authority, which claims
that since the intellect is geared to the knowledge of being, the intellect
knows only existing things. It cannot know God, who is above being and
therefore above the reach of the intellect. Thomas replies succinctly: “God
is not said to be non-existing as if He did not exist at all, but because He
exists above all that exists; inasmuch as He is His own existence.”40 Thomas
resists Dionysius’s notion that God is beyond being with his own account of
God as absolute being.
The issue of God’s relationship to being bears directly on the third point
where Thomas resists Dionysius, the nature of our knowledge of God.
Again, one reason Dionysius calls God unknown is that we only know
being, and God is the good beyond being. As Dionysius puts it, “all knowl-
edge is of that which is and is limited to the realm of the existent.” It fol-
lows that “whatever transcends being must also transcend knowledge.”41
God’s nature, or the ‘beyond-being God,’ is radically beyond our ken. This
means whatever relationship we have with God’s nature, that relationship is
nonintellectual. In the “truly mysterious darkness of unknowing, . . . one is
supremely united to the completely unknown by an inactivity of all knowl-
edge, and knows beyond the mind by knowing nothing.”42 This is ‘knowing’
only in a loose or paradoxical sense of the term. Because God is beyond
being, God is beyond knowledge, and our truest ‘knowledge’ of God is not
knowledge at all.
Since Thomas diverges from Dionysius on the issue of God’s relationship
to being, it follows that he also diverges from him on the knowability of
38  Michael P. DeJonge
God. Indeed, Thomas’s God is supremely knowable, the very paradigm of
knowability.43 It seems to be for this reason that Thomas radically qualifies
Dionysius’s apophaticism and agnosticism by restricting the range of his
claim that God is unknown, applying it to our imperfect knowledge of God
in this life. And in contrast to Dionysius, who portrays union with God in
the next life as something other than knowledge, Thomas thinks our union
with God in the next life is emphatically knowledge; the blessed know the
divine essence.44 Thomas thinks that at our most intimate union with God,
our knowledge is not set aside but rather fulfilled.
When Thomas transplants Dionysius’s authoritative statement about the
unknown God into his own theology, he changes its meaning. As signaled
by the introduction of distinctions foreign to Dionysius, Thomas trans-
forms Dionysius’s statement by incorporating it into a system governed by
theological convictions in tension with Dionysius’s own. Because Thomas’s
reading of Dionysius is governed by a concept of God as the absolutely sim-
ple fullness of being, Dionysius’s notion of the unknown God transmutes
into something close to its opposite. For Dionysius, God is ineffable, and
believers find union with God by setting aside their knowing faculties. For
Thomas, God is the very paradigm of knowability, and ultimate union with
God consists in the knowledge of God’s essence.
This change in meaning is to be expected given linguistic-historical con-
textualism. Historical translation removes some segment of text—a word,
a sentence, a book—from its linguistic context and therefore strips it of the
very thing that helps give it meaning. To explicate that text is to provide it
with a new linguistic context and, therefore, a new meaning. Translation
always involves a loss of original meaning.

TRADITION

The foregoing account of loss in historical translation is too simple, how-

ever, since Thomas does not transplant Dionysius’s statements directly from
the sixth century into the thirteenth. Rather, Thomas stands as part of a tra-
dition that transmitted Dionysius incrementally. Temporal distance “is not
a yawning abyss but is filled with the continuity of custom and tradition, in
the light of which everything handed down presents itself to us.”45 Tradition
renders the loss associated with Thomas’s historical translation of Dionysius
more gradual, thereby also hiding the translational character of Thomas’s
appropriation of Dionysius.
At its most basic level, tradition means a traditum,46 a thing passed down
from one generation to another. In our case study, Dionysius’s statement
about the unknown God is a traditum, and by placing that statement in his
preliminary arguments, Thomas performs not just an act of historical trans-
plantation but also an act of tradition.
A broader sense of the term tradition comes into view when these acts
of tradition accumulate over time, generating a tradition in the temporal
 Historical Translation 39
sense, a chain of reception that is understood to have something approx-
imately identical through time.47 It is this sense of the word tradition that
we employ when we talk about, for example, the Kantian, the democratic,
or the Protestant tradition. The Western scholastic tradition is one that
has been formed in part through the repeated acts of passing down the
statements of Dionysius and those of other authorities. It is this cumulative
Western scholastic tradition that is so succinctly imaged in the doxographic
features of the scholastic article.
When a temporal tradition is well established, it functions as a context for
interpretation, supplying the assumptions, vocabulary, and rules for inter-
preting and understanding particular statements. This is important because
meaning depends on context, or, in the language of hermeneutics, the mean-
ing of any part is in its relationship to the whole. The gradual incorporation
of Dionysius into the Western scholastic tradition provides members of that
tradition with the context for interpreting Dionysius.
As Steiner argues, this requires translation, in part because what is foreign
must be made familiar. But a well-established tradition performs this trans-
lation through a long, gradual process in which the tradition-as-context and
the meaning of the traditum reinforce each other. In our case, the reading
of Dionysius helps to form the tradition, and the tradition in turn gradually
domesticates Dionysius’s foreignness by removing him from his original con-
text and integrating him into the tradition. In this way, a well-established
tradition obscures the translational character of interpreting past statements.
The fact that Thomas reads Dionysius in the Western scholastic tradition, in
a context that has already been formed by readings of him, urges Thomas
to read him as continuous with that tradition. To make sense of Dionysius,
Thomas does not need to avail himself of the vocabulary and grammar of
Dionysius’s original context but can rely on the vocabulary and grammar
of his own context, as he does, for example, when employing the quia/quid
distinction. The tradition in which Thomas participates allows him to forget
some degree of Dionysius’s foreignness. The foreignness has been eliminated
through the cumulative effect of earlier acts of translation; the boundary has
already been crossed.48 One could even say that, from Thomas’s point of
view, the reading of Dionysius is no longer translation.49
Furthermore, traditions are not neutral contexts; they exert normative
pressure toward uniformity and continuity. Thomas’s understanding of
the tradition as one in which various participants share the same faith
urges him to find, consciously or unconsciously, common ground between
Dionysius and himself through “reverential interpretation.”50 Not doing
so would open the door to disastrous considerations that the tradition
has been mistaken, that Dionysius is not a true member of it, that God
has been unfaithful in maintaining its purity, or that Thomas himself does
not fully belong to it. This normative pressure exerted by the tradition
encourages Thomas to downplay the translational nature of his engage-
ment with Dionysius. Steiner is right to say that we do not often see the
retrieval of past statements as translation because we are not attentive to
40  Michael P. DeJonge
it.51 But it should be added that the force of tradition can encourage this
inattentiveness.

GAIN

According to the ideal of meaning equivalence, any change in meaning is

a negative development, a loss. But if the ideal of meaning equivalence is
abandoned, as Steiner’s linguistic-historical contextualism seems to require,
then we are freed to talk about loss and gain. Translation also involves gain,
since the translated text gains meaning through the new linguistic context
that builds—by explanation, elaboration, commentary, and so on—around
it. In translation, certain elements of the original meaning are lost while
others are gained.
Under the ideal of meaning equivalence, loss has a double meaning, nam-
ing both the loss of meaning and the evaluation of that loss as a negative
development. Abandoning the ideal of meaning equivalence decouples these
two meanings; a loss of meaning need not necessarily be judged negatively.
Instead, both losses and gains in meaning are open to interpretation as pos-
itive or negative developments.
But this raises the issue of evaluation. By what criteria can a change in
meaning be described as a loss or a gain? The emerging consensus in trans-
lation studies is that all such evaluations are context bound.52 In historical
translation, too, evaluations of changes in meaning are made from particu-
lar positions, from particular linguistic contexts, and from within particu-
lar traditions. Changes in meaning are losses or gains only for a particular
tradition.
This can be illustrated by noting that the changes in meaning that occur
in Thomas’s translation of Dionysius are experienced as losses by the Byz-
antine or Eastern Orthodox tradition of Christianity, which resists the
absolutely simple concept of God. Thinkers such as John Damascene and
Gregory Palamas, for example, posit three aspects of the divine: essence
(ousia), person (hypostasis), and energy (energeia). The latter two—the per-
sons of the Trinity and the energies that flow from God—are fully divine but
not identical with the divine essence.53 This is a concept of God alternative
to Western accounts of divine simplicity, one that reaches back to Diony-
sius’s distinction between the divine nature and processions. The Orthodox
tradition finds Dionysius’s distinction worth preserving precisely because it
reinforces the unknowability of God. In these ways, the various aspects of
Dionysius’s thinking that were lost in Thomas’s translation are the features
of his thought that are valued and cultivated in the Byzantine or Eastern
Orthodox tradition of Christianity.
But it is precisely these losses that are gains for Thomas’s Western scho-
lastic tradition of Christianity. Thomas’s reading of Dionysius, precisely
by pushing Dionysius toward greater clarity and simplicity, can be seen as
 Historical Translation 41
generating gains in metaphysical precision.54 By introducing concepts and
distinctions unavailable to Dionysius, Thomas brings Dionysius’s insights to
fruition through a more differentiated and developed technical vocabulary.
While the Orthodox tradition sees this as a loss of apophaticism, the West-
ern scholastic tradition sees it as a gain in metaphysical precision.

CONCLUSION

Steiner’s thinking about translation and the linguistic-historical contextual-

ism that informs it urge the conclusion that the retrieval of past authoritative
statements central to the life of religious traditions inevitably involves both
loss and gain. This chapter has used Steiner’s view of language to illuminate
the loss and gain involved in Thomas Aquinas’s restatement of Dionysius’s
claim that God is known as unknown. The implications of this rather nar-
row case study are broad since Thomas’s historical translation of Diony-
sius is a synecdoche for Christianity as a whole. Christianity is a historical
tradition; it is constituted by acts of historical translation. It is essential
to Christianity—its liturgy, its preaching, and its theology—that statements
from the past are repeated as meaningful in the present. Therefore, the issues
that attend this one instance of Thomas historically translating Dionysius
repeat virtually ad infinitum in the tradition as a whole. This suggests that
the Christian tradition itself is constant translation, constant negotiation of
loss and gain. Despite the connotations of stability and continuity evoked
by the term tradition, traditions perpetuate themselves by constant change.

NOTES

1. George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, 2nd ed.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 28.
2. Ibid., 48.
3. Ibid., 293.
4. Ibid., xii.
5. Ibid., 436.
6. Roman Jakobson, “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation,” in On Translation,
ed. Reuben A. Brower (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959),
232–239. For challenges to Steiner’s interpretation of Jakobson, see, Umberto
Eco, Experiences in Translation, trans. Alastair McEwen (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2001), 65–130. Also, Umberto Eco, Mouse or Rat: Transla-
tion as Negotiation (London: Phoenix, 2003), 123–144.
7. Jakobson, “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation,” 233. Italics in original.
8. Steiner, After Babel, 290–292, 428. Here again Steiner draws on Jakobson,
who himself draws on Charles Pierce. See Jakobson, “On Linguistic Aspects
of Translation,” 232.
9. Steiner, After Babel, 18, 295.
10. Ibid., 28–29. We are all attuned to interlinguistic translation, but historical
translation “inside one’s own native tongue is so constant, we perform it so
42  Michael P. DeJonge
unawares, that we rarely pause either to note its formal intricacy or the deci-
sive part it plays in the very existence of civilization.” Ibid., 29–30.
11. In reality, historical translation often involves interlingual translation, and
interlingual translation is always also historical translation (except, as Steiner
says, in “simultaneous translation as between earphones,” After Babel, 351).
But I focus on the non-interlingual aspects of translation at work in historical
translation.
12. Etymologically, both translation and tradition suggest ‘carrying something
across.’ Tradition = trans + dare (to give); translation = trans + latus (from
ferre, to bear/carry), Josef Pieper, Tradition: Concept and Claim, trans. E.
Christian Kopff (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2010), 13.
13. Edward Shils, Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 13–15.
14. Pieper, Tradition, 23ff.
15. This sense of an authoritative past provides an answer to one of the questions
that organizes the various contributions to this volume: What is translated,
and why is it translated? Whether we are dealing with a preacher reading from
the bible on Sunday morning or Thomas interpreting Dionysius, the past is
translated because it is perceived as authoritative.
16. For this, John W. Baldwin, The Scholastic Culture of the Middle Ages,
1000–1300 (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1971), 59–60,
80–86.
17. For scholastic theologians, the authority of the bible was so intertwined with
its tradition of commentary that the terms revelation and tradition were prac-
tically identical; Pieper, Tradition, 32.
18. Mark D. Jordan, Rewritten Theology: Aquinas after His Readers (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2006), 27.
19. See Jordan, Rewritten Theology, 27.
20. As quoted in Josef Pieper, Scholasticism: Personalities and Problems of Medi-
eval Philosophy (New York and Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 48.
21. John D. Jones, “An Absolutely Simple God? Frameworks for Reading
Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite,” The Thomist 69, no. 3 (2005): 371.
22. In the early sixth century, a corpus of writings was discovered whose author
claimed to be Dionysius the Areopagite, Paul’s convert mentioned in Acts
17:34. Beginning in the Renaissance, scholars have demonstrated that this
Areopagitical Corpus was written under pseudonym, likely by a late-fifth-
or early-sixth-century Syrian monk. For more, see Andrew Louth, Denys the
Areopagite (New York: Continuum, 2002), 1–2. Thomas writes before the
pseudonym was exposed and thus takes the corpus to have been authored by
Paul’s disciple.
23. Pseudo-Dionysius, Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, ed. Paul Rorem,
trans. Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem (New York: Paulist, 1987), 136.
24. Ibid.
25. “Here . . . one is supremely united to the completely unknown . . ., and
knows . . . by knowing nothing”; ibid., 137.
26. “[W]e pass by way of the denial and the transcendence of all things and by
way of the cause of all things”; ibid., 108.
27. Thomas Aquinas, Faith, Reason and Theology: Questions I-IV of his Com-
mentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, ed. and trans. Armand Maurer
(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1987), 21–22.
28. Ibid., 22–23.
29. Ibid., 19.
30. Ibid., 23.
31. Steiner, After Babel, 428.
32. Ibid.
33. Pseudo-Dionysius, Complete Works, 96.
 Historical Translation 43
34. In heightening the contrast between Pseudo-Dionysius and Thomas, I rely on
the work of John D. Jones, though, of course, he cannot be held responsible
for my use of it.
35. Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, 2nd ed.,
trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Ia q. 3 a. 7, pp. 16–17,
accessed May 22, 2013, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/.
36. Jones, “Absolutely Simple God,” 381, 387.
37. Pseudo-Dionysius, Complete Works, 96.
38. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia q. 13 a. 2, p. 63. See Jones, “Absolutely Sim-
ple God,” 398–399; and Jones, “(Mis?)-reading the Divine Names,” 160.
39. Jones’s translation brings out this aspect of Dionysius’s thinking. See
Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names and the Mystical Theology, trans. John
D. Jones (Marquette, WI: Marquette University Press, 1980), 109.
40. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia q. 12 a. 1, p. 52. See also his commentary
on Boethius, q. 6, a. 3: Thomas Aquinas, The Division and Methods of the
Sciences: Questions V and VI of his Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boe-
thius, 3rd ed., trans. Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medie-
val Studies, 1963), 72–79.
41. Pseudo-Dionysius, Complete Works, 53.
42. Ibid., 137. My emphases.
43. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia q. 12 a. 1, p. 51: “Since everything is know-
able according as it is actual, God, Who is pure act without admixture of
potentiality, is in Himself supremely knowable.”
44. Aquinas, The Division and Methods of the Sciences, 65. Aquinas, Summa
Theologica, Ia q. 12 a. 7, 56–57.
45. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer
and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 2004), 297.
46. Shils, Tradition, 12.
47. Ibid., 13.
48. The analogy in translation proper might be translating from French into
English. This is less drastic than translating from Chinese into English, since
the historical interaction of French and English has established similarities in
grammatical structure and cognate vocabularies.
49. This is a point that Klaus von Stosch’s comments on my chapter helped me
to recognize. The participant in the Catholic tradition might understand the
appropriation of Aristotle (who is seen as outside the tradition) as translation
but not the appropriation of Dionysius (who is seen as inside).
50. Walter H. Principe, “Aquinas’ Principles for Interpretation of Patristic Texts,”
Studies in Medieval Culture 59, no. 8–9 (1976): 114–115.
51. We are all attuned to interlingual translation, but the “process of diachronic
translation inside one’s own native tongue is so constant, we perform it so
unawares, that we rarely pause . . . to note its formal intricacy”; Steiner, After
Babel, 29–30.
52. Bassnett, Translation Studies, 17–19.
53. Jones, “Absolutely Simple God,” 382–387. Jones, “(Mis?)-reading the Divine
Names,” 157–161.
54. Fran O’Rourke reads Thomas and Dionysius in this way. See Pseudo-Dionysius
and the Metaphysics of Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University
Press, 2005), 117ff.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aquinas, Thomas. The Division and Methods of the Sciences: Questions V and VI of
his Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius. 3rd ed. Translated by Armand
44  Michael P. DeJonge
Maurer. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1963.
————. Faith, Reason and Theology: Questions I-IV of his Commentary on the
De Trinitate of Boethius. Edited and Translated by Armand Maurer. Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1987.
————. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. 2nd ed. Translated by
Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Accessed May 22, 2013, http://www.
newadvent.org/summa/
Baldwin, John W. The Scholastic Culture of the Middle Ages, 1000–1300. Lexing-
ton, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1971.
Bassnett, Susan. Translation Studies. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Eco, Umberto. Experiences in Translation. Translated by Alastair McEwen. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2001.
————. Mouse or Rat: Translation as Negotiation. London: Phoenix, 2003.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and
Donald G. Marshall. 2nd ed. New York: Continuum, 2004.
Jakobson, Roman. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” In On Translation.
Edited by Reuben A. Brower. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959.
John D. Jones, “An Absolutely Simple God? Frameworks for Reading
Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite.” The Thomist 69, no. 3 (2005): 371–406.
————. “(Mis?)-reading the Divine Names as a Science: Aquinas’ Interpretation
of the Divine Names of (Pseudo) Dionysius Areopagite.” St. Vladimir’s Theolog-
ical Quarterly 52, no. 2 (2008): 143–172.
Jordan, Mark D. Rewritten Theology: Aquinas after His Readers. Oxford:
Blackwell, 2006.
Louth, Andrew. Denys the Areopagite. New York: Continuum, 2002.
O’Rourke, Fran. Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas. Notre Dame,
IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2005.
Pieper, Josef. Scholasticism: Personalities and Problems of Medieval Philosophy.
New York and Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1964.
————. Tradition: Concept and Claim. Translated by E. Christian Kopff.
St. Augustine’s Press, 2010.
Principe, Walter H. “Aquinas’ Principles for Interpretation of Patristic Texts,” Stud-
ies in Medieval Culture 59, no. 8–9 (1976): 111–21.
Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names and the Mystical Theology. Translated by
John D. Jones. Marquette, WI: Marquette University Press, 1980.
————. The Complete Works. Edited by Paul Rorem. Translated by Colm Luib-
heid and Paul Rorem. New York: Paulist, 1987.
Shils, Edward. Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Steiner, George. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. 2nd ed. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
3 Philological Limits of
Translating Religion
Śraddhā and Dharma in
Hindu Texts*
Carlos A. Lopez

In any case, these divisions [of discourse]—whether our own, or

those contemporary with the discourse under discussion—are always
themselves reflexive categories, principles of classification, normative
rules, institutionalized types: they, in turn, are facts of discourse that
deserve to be analyzed beside others; of course, they also have com-
plex relations with each other, but they are not intrinsic, autochtho-
nous, and universally recognizable characteristics.
—Foucault1

Although philology and translation are handmaidens, translation is in many

ways antithetical to the philological method. The goal of philological analy-
sis is to expose all complex contexts that constitute a given text. Like Michel
Foucault’s new historian, the philologist is “confronted with concepts that
differ in structure and in the rules governing their use, which ignore or
exclude one another, and which cannot enter the unity of a logical architec-
ture.”2 Philological analysis attempts to excavate the discursive formations,
the regularities between objects, types of statements, concepts, thematic
choices, and the rules of formation to which these elements are subjected.
Working within the text, the philologist struggles to expose these formations
in order to posit a meaning of the text in situ. The goal of the philologist
is to enter the world of the text and re-imagine the network of discourses
in which meaning is constituted. In this exercise, the philologist articulates
the complex semantic range of the signs in the source text, while carefully
avoiding the simplistic equivalence of signs between two languages.

*  Sanskrit vowels marked with ˉ above the vowel indicate a lengthened vowel: a¯  = apple;
ı̄  = ship; ū = moon; ·r = mother. Aspirated consonants are marked by h following the
consonant—dh, bh, and so on—where h indicates an aspiration following the consonantal
sound, as dh = mad house. Sanskrit ś (palatal sibilant) and s (retroflex or cerebral sibilant)
are pounced like sh, approximately. ˙
The text in parenthesis indicates the referent of the Sanskrit demonstrative pronoun or
a contextual clarification that would otherwise be clear if the portion of the text used here
was translated along with the longer passage to which it belongs. This usage applies to the
rest of my translations throughout the chapter.
46  Carlos A. Lopez
Whereas philology aims to underscore the complexity of discursive con-
texts in which a text was originally produced, translation tends to flatten
these contexts by transferring statements into a discursive space foreign to
the original text. The discursive space of translation into which the sign
of the original text is removed is a distinctively culturally and historically
situated space constituted through particular discursive formations of the
translator’s language. In translation, this foreign discursive formation is the
final destination of signs removed from their original contexts. Thus, trans-
lation is not simply the establishment of the similitude between signs, but it
entails the conveying or removal of something from the discursive space of
the Other into the discursive space of the translator.
In the case of texts that the translator labels as ‘religious,’ the discur-
sive space into which the original text is displaced is constituted through
the network of knowledge termed ‘religion.’ As a culturally and historically
situated discourse of the West, translation is a practice embedded in the
discourse of religion and religion as a discourse produced in the practice
of translation. Translation removes the signs of the Other into the assumed
discursive universal space that the West calls religion. In the Western activ-
ity of translation, religion and religions have been produced through the
obliviation of the discursive formations and rules of formation essential to
understanding the original text in situ under the unquestioned assumption
of the universality of religion, that is, the assumption that religion is a fea-
ture of human existence always and everywhere.
Recalling the etymological meaning of translation—to convey or remove
something from one place to another—discloses the intimate relationship
between the practice of translation and the discourse of religion in the
West. The relationship brings to light the problem of recoding the uniquely
historically constituted network of objects, statements, concepts, and the-
matic choices of the original text and the retrieval of meanings banished
to oblivion by translation. This paper will explore the mutually embedded
nature of translation and religion through the study of the treatment of
two important concepts in Hindu thought, śraddhā and dharma, that have
been transformed through translation respectively into the West’s notion of
‘faith’ and ‘religion.’ In these case studies, we see the assumed universality
of religion at work in translation. To free śraddhā and dharma from the
universal assumptions made in translation, I first unpack the discursive con-
texts in which these two signs are situated. After clarifying each sign and
its discursive space, I explore how translation enacts the swapping of the
discourse of śraddhā and dharma with the discourse of religion. By expos-
ing this switching of discourses, I  also expose the transformation of the
translated text into the primary text for the discipline of religious studies. It
is the translated ‘religious’ text, rather than the original text in its original
language and discursive context, that becomes the primary source of study
in the discipline of religious studies.
 Philological Limits of Translating Religion 47
PHILOLOGY AND TRANSLATION

Classical philology, as it developed in Europe following the Renaissance,

encompasses what today we call linguistics and what Ferdinand de Sau-
ssure referred to as “the picturesque side of a language, that which makes
it different from all others as belonging to a certain people having a cer-
tain origin.”3 Although intimately connected to linguistics, whose object of
study is the structures of language itself, philology (Gk. ‘love for words’)
investigates “the meaning of language forms as these depend on the linkages
of signs to the context in which they occur.”4 Philology is not simply the
study of word-forms, but the study of words as signs in discourse, a network
of relationships that constitutes and is constituted through language. Dis-
course entails the interplay of forms of representation, codes, conventions,
and habits of language that make plausible and possible a discursive forma-
tion, the appearance of objects, statements, concepts, and thematic choices
within a given historical period of a particular civilization.5 The philological
approach requires the use of all available tools—from linguistics proper to
astronomy, biology, history, geology, and so on—to access the world of the
text and to re-present the meaning of the text in its own discursive context.6
In other words, philology is the study of civilization based on texts.
For the student of Ancient Indian civilization, the data available to imagine,
understand, and represent the culture, society, and worldviews of the people
who lived in India circa 1500 to 200 BCE is exclusively textual. Therefore,
the philological method is essential for reconstructing and understanding all
aspects of the civilization that produced these texts. In the case of the study
of ancient texts composed in Vedic, Sanskrit, or other vernacular languages
of South Asia, the factors that constitute the text and its discourse that must
be taken into account in translation must first be unearthed and decoded
before being recoded in the target language. The philologist-as-translator
maps out the network of discursive relationships among objects, concepts,
statements, and themes that constitute the source text and its rules of for-
mation. The grammatical rules of the source language, the context of com-
position (time and place) of the text, the nature of contemporary society, its
realia (natural environment, climate, tools, etc.), the compositional style of
the text (poetry, sūtra-style, prose), parallel texts, native commentary tradi-
tions, and the ‘logic of the Other’ “are the conditions of existence (but also
of coexistence, maintenance, modification, and disappearance)” of that his-
torically specific discursive formation.7 The philologist uncovers the struc-
tures of plausibility that allow particular ideas, concepts, and worldviews to
be conceived in a historically determined discursive context.
Philology and translation are deeply intertwined. As a European disci-
pline, philology always takes place in translation, although the practice of
the philologist is antithetical to the project of translation, as it has been
pursued in the West. Translation has focused on the communication of the
48  Carlos A. Lopez
meaning of a sign in the source text by means of an equivalent sign in the
target language. However, philology is ever aware of the problem of replac-
ing a sign in the source language, which reveals a culturally and historically
situated message, with a sign in the target language that attempts to preserve
the invariant information with respect to the source language’s system of ref-
erence.8 Whereas translation is preoccupied with capturing universal, equiv-
alent meanings, philology is concerned with the problem of loss of meaning.
A philologically sensitive translation evaluates the objects, statements,
concepts, and themes as well as the network of not so strict relationships
among them in relation to possible objects, statements, concepts, and themes
and their rules of formation in the target language. Through a dialogical
process, the philologist refuses to be univocal about the text by employing
a dynamic translation that provides ongoing contextualization of transla-
tional choices. Through paraphrasing and commentary, the philologist aims
to undercut and problematize translational choices by leaving open access
to the semantic network of the sign of the source language. In this way, a
philologically sensitive translation aims to stem the inevitable loss of reg-
ularity of the relationship of objects, statements, concepts, and themes of
the source text and to reduce the danger of reification of signs in the target
language as the essential meaning of the sign of the source text.

TRANSLATION AND RELIGION

The most basic and the most troubling theoretical and methodological ques-
tion in religious studies is, “What is religion?” It is the question that regularly
lurks in the background of any academic study of religion, but is rarely explic-
itly addressed and regularly ignored in favor of the unquestioned assumption
of the universality of religion. Religion is never acknowledged as a ‘network
of discontinuities,’ but as an underlying unity that is taken to ‘exist’ on blind
faith. Rather than pointing to something particular, religion circumscribes a
gigantic assemblage of ideals and facts; a large list, which includes God/gods,
self/soul, prayer, worship, providence, sin, ethics/morals, faith, and rites. The
data of religion and religions are, as Daniel Dubuisson writes, “so obviously
disparate (gestures, attitudes, persons, situations, and so on) that they draw
the contours of an inconceivable galaxy in our mental spaces.”9 It is impos-
sible to identify a common denominator among the items listed as religious
phenomena “beyond a vague intuition in order to utter this word ‘religious,’
which allows us to understand this supposed unity.”10
Religion is nothing but a discourse constituted “in the framework of
strict semantic dependence, one forged in the West around our word ‘reli-
gion,’ in the fashion, if you will, of a poetic convention.”11 As a poetic con-
vention, religion is a discursive choice that says more about the context in
which the convention is produced than about the object that it attempts to
elucidate. Within the discipline of religious studies, as Dubuisson concludes,
“the religious is what the West considers to be religious on the basis of its
 Philological Limits of Translating Religion 49
own religious experience.”12 The religious is a magical circle of faith that
has been etched around the subject and the object of study—religion.
As a universalizing discourse, religion is deeply embedded in the practice
of translation. Like translation, religion “erases all significant differences,
calibrates the concepts to the same standard dimensions and, finally, pro-
motes the fallacious illusion that we are everywhere on ‘familiar ground.’ ”13
In this framework, religion as the essential aspect of human beings (homo
religiosus) constitutes the universal essence through which the West under-
stands the Other as its own reflection.
Questioning the practice of translation from the perspective of its etymo-
logical meaning challenges the very discourse in which translation is embed-
ded, namely, religion. By translation, I do not mean the exercise of matching
one word in the source language to a word in the target language, but rather
the central metaphor expressed by the verb “to translate”—to bear, convey,
or remove something from one place to another—, from Latin trans– (pre-
fix: across, beyond) + latus (borne, carried), and thus from Indo-European
*telə-.14 A  return to this core metaphor compels us to take seriously the
implicit spatiality of discourse. Discourse is not reducible to the signs of lan-
guage but is itself a space constituted through the regularity of signs, which
are constituted in relation to other signs in a web of discursive relations.
A philologically sensitive translation attempts to recode not only the signs
but also the spatiality that makes the source signs plausible and to remove
both into the target language. In order to meaningfully translate the source
sign, the discursive space of the sign must also be excavated and removed
into the target language, which requires the examination of the discourse of
religion in which translation is embedded.

ŚRADDHĀ IN THE VEDA

The history of the translation of śraddhā, one of the central concepts found
in the Veda, into European languages is illustrative of how translation of
texts labeled as ‘religious’ is already deeply embedded in the West’s discourse
of religion. The goal of this section is to articulate the discursive context in
which śraddhā is found in the Veda, the earliest literature of South Asia. By
excavating śraddhā in these early Vedic texts, we will distinguish the net-
work of objects, types of statements, concepts, or thematic choices in which
it was culturally and historically constituted from the discourse of religion
into which it has been moved through translation. This analysis shows how
the practice of translation has cast śraddhā into oblivion and reproduced
śraddhā as “faith” as a reflection of the West’s discourse of religion.
The Veda offers a glimpse into the worldview of the earliest form of
“Hinduism.”15 The hymns of the Rg Veda, the oldest collection, indicate a
˙
sacrificial context that entails offerings of praise and soma, an invigorating
drink, into the fire, personified as the god Agni, who transports the offering
to the gods. After praising the gods, poet-sacrificers ask for wealth (cows),
50  Carlos A. Lopez
fame, progeny (heroic sons), and immortality (an ideal life span in this world
and immunity from death in the next world). The texts assert that correctly
performed sacrifice—the offering of praise and soma—triggers automatic
reciprocity from the gods. The gods are compelled to give something in
return to the poet-sacrificer, rather than acting out of will, choice, or desire.
Reciprocity provides a lens through which to examine the concept
encoded by the Sanskrit word śraddhā. Cognate with Avestan zradda, Latin
credo, Old Irish cretim, and English credit, all derived from Indo-European
*ḱred-dheh, śraddhā, express the basic notion of ‘putting something in the
heart/mind,’ the idea of trust or confidence.16 Verbal forms related to śrad-
dhā point to an attitude of trust or confidence that is primarily intellectual,
as opposed to belief in the sense of the conviction or acceptance of a claim
as truth regardless of supporting or contrary empirical evidence.17 In the
Rg Veda, śraddhā is associated with an aspect of a deity that is empirically
˙
observable. “By seeing his abundant wealth, you have confidence/trust in
the heroism of Indra!”18 The connection of śraddhā to the ability to observe
a result is made explicit in the context of the Full-moon sacrifice:

He looks down upon (the clarified butter). The eye is truth; for, indeed,
the eye is truth. Now, when two people disputing with one another
approach, saying: “I just now saw it. I just now hear.” Therefore, we
should have confidence/trust only in that one who said: “I just now saw
it.” This (clarified butter) is caused to increase only by means of the
truth of that (eye is truth).19

Knowledge obtained directly through the senses, especially sight, is equated

with truth. Truth verifiable by seeing is to be trusted above all. Thus, śrad-
dhā is not simply blind acceptance of some invisible, supernatural power,
but is connected to an empirically observable result.
Śraddhā is inseparable from sacrificial activity. “By means of confident
soma offerings, you made (the demon) Cumuri sleep (= dead) for Dabhı̄ti
O Indra.”20 “He who with confident oblations desires to serve the lord of
brāhmanas, the father of the gods, with his people, with his community, with
˙
his offspring, and with his sons, vigorously obtains treasure (for himself) with
his men.”21 The act of offering oblations together with the intellectual attitude
of confidence/trust produces an observable, empirical result. The efficacy of
the sacrificial offering depends both on the physical performance of the act
and on the intellectual attitude of confidence/trust in the efficacy of the act.
The requirement of śraddhā for the efficacy of the sacrifice is expressed
in the context of the rite of washing hands during the Full and New Moon
Sacrifices. After having sprinkled water toward the north of the sacrificial
altar—symbolically striking down the enemies of the sacrificer—, the ques-
tion arises as to whether the officiating priest can be trusted:

Indeed, those who sacrificed in the past, sacrificed touching (the altar
and the oblation). They were more wicked. But, those who washed their
 Philological Limits of Translating Religion 51
hands, they were more fortunate. Then, mistrust (aśraddhā) took hold
of men, who said: “Those who sacrifice (touching the altar) become
more wicked and those who do not sacrifice (touching the altar) become
more fortunate.” From here, the offerings did not go to the gods. Indeed,
the gods live upon what was given into the fire.22

The hand-washing ritual is an excuse to question the role of the officiating

priest. The Veda enjoins that a priest from each of the four Vedic traditions
must be employed by the yajamāna, ‘the one for whom offerings are being
made’ or the sacrificer. Since the officiating priest is actually making the
offerings, the question arises as to who accrues the benefits of the sacri-
fice. Aśraddhā, the privative of śraddhā, signals this concern. The sacrificer
assumes that his misfortune is due to the officiating priest stealing his merit,
since the offerings made on his behalf do not reach the gods. Because mis-
trust or lack of confidence in the sacrifice as well as in the offering priests
has taken a hold of the sacrificer, offerings to the gods are completely inef-
fective; no food reaches the gods, and the sacrificer accumulates no ritual
merit in heaven.23 Yājñavalkya, the paragon of Vedic ritualism, settles the
question by stressing the need for śraddhā in the sacrifice:

Then, he looks down upon the clarified butter. Indeed, then some
(officiating priests) cause the sacrificer to look down upon the clari-
fied butter. However, Yājñavalkya has said about this: “Now, why do
sacrificers themselves not act as their own officiating priest? Why do
sacrificers themselves not pronounce sacred formulas, as when many
wishes are made? Here, how can there be confidence/trust among the
like of these?” Indeed, whatever wishes the officiating priest asks for in
the sacrifice, that is only for the sacrificer. Therefore, only the officiating
priest should look down upon the clarified butter.24

The passage concludes that merit produced by sacrificial activity is not the
result of the mechanical performance alone, because if that were the case, the
sacrificer could surely perform the ritual himself. Yājñavalkya asserts that even
if the sacrificer knew how to perform the sacrificial acts correctly and how to
recite the mantras for the sacrifice correctly, he would not acquire the merit of
sacrifice. It is the intellectual attitude of confidence and trust in the efficacy of
sacrifice and in the efficacy of the actions of the officiating priest that produces
merit, which is accrued only by the sacrificer. The statement aims to instill
further confidence and trust (śraddhā) both in the sacrifice and the officiating
priest, because they cannot steal the merit that is produced by the sacrifice.
The clearest articulation of śraddhā in the Rg Veda is found in a hymn in
which śraddhā is praised as a goddess: ˙

By means of confidence/trust, the sacrificial fire is kindled. By means of

confidence/trust, the oblation is offered. By means of speech, may we
know confidence/trust at the summit of prosperity (= heaven).25
52  Carlos A. Lopez
Confidence/trust is the prerequisite for the first and most important sacri-
ficial act, the kindling of the sacrificial fires and subsequent offerings. The
correct recitation of poetic formulas is also an essential component of sac-
rifice, through which confidence and trust is produced and which leads to
the desired result:

Protected by Vayu, the gods and the human sacrificer are intent upon
confidence/trust. With resolve in his heart, he is intent upon confidence/
trust. He finds wealth by means of confidence/trust.26

Sacrifice is declared to be effective only if performed with the proper intel-

lectual attitude of confidence/trust, which along with intention (ākūti) is
located in the heart-mind:

In which way the gods among the strong asura-gods made confidence/
trust dear (to themselves); in that way, make dear that one among the
bountiful bestowers. Make dear that which has been uttered by me!27

Among the asuras, the ancient group of deities, the gods (devas) reached
heaven and became immortal, because they sacrificed with confidence/trust
in the efficacy of sacrifice (śraddhā), which the human sacrificer imitates in
order to obtain immortality.
The intimate connection of śraddhā and sacrifice is made explicit in
the last verse of the hymn, in which the three daily sacrificial offering of
soma—the classical Vedic agnistoma—to the gods and especially to Indra
are specifically mentioned.28 The ˙ ˙ object of śraddhā is the offering of words
and deeds made at three specific times, which further instill confidence and
trust in the sacrificer. Thus, in its Vedic context, śraddhā encodes the con-
fidence and intention to perform sacrifice, which not only makes sacrifice
efficacious, but also promotes śraddhā itself. Instilling śraddhā is inextrica-
bly linked to the very activity of sacrifice—lighting of the sacred fire, proper
recitation of sacred speech, the intention to perform specific acts—and the
merit produced by such sacrificial acts.
The expression that best captures the complexity of the Vedic śraddhā is
“the confident intention in the efficacy of sacrifice.” This somewhat awk-
ward translation encodes the inextricable relationship of words and acts,
their connection to confidence and trust, and the intentionality to engage in
sacrificial activity. It also encodes the network of discursive relationships that
make it possible for the very notion of śraddhā to be conceived—sacrifice,
hospitality, reciprocity, the narratives of the various gods, and the nature of
speech. The object of śraddhā is the impersonal power of sacrifice (yajña).29
The poetic formulations of truth (bráhman) contained in the Veda, which
are recited in sacrifice, are effective only when enacted with the intention-
ality and confidence/trust that sacrifice is indeed efficacious. Confidence
or trust is a prerequisite for all sacrificial activity, but the intentionality or
 Philological Limits of Translating Religion 53
resolve to engage in ritual activity is also implicit in the confidence in such
activity. Śraddhā is inseparable from its performative expression in sacrifice,
hospitality, and post-Vedic pūjā.30

PRODUCING ŚRADDHĀ-AS-FAITH

Śraddhā, and whatever may be understood about the civilization that has
been shaped by it, has been obliviated by stroke of the pen of translators,
who equate it with Christian notion of “faith.” In what follows, I  show
how through the practice of translation, already deeply entrenched in the
discourse of religion, the Christian (especially Protestant) notion of faith
has displaced the Vedic discursive context and produced śraddhā-as-faith as
a projection of the West’s discourse of religion onto the source text that is
supported by a false universality. The effect of this sort of translation is to
efface the text’s original contexts.
In the translations of the Bhagavad Gī tā that I have studied, the word
śraddhā and its related verbal forms are consistently equated to the English
word faith. However, as Jaroslav Pelikan points out in the context of the
translation of other religious texts:

Whether or not the term faith appears in those traditions is, at least in
part, a matter of how various terms are translated into modern Western
languages. Faith is used, even in Judaism and Christianity (where it has
been the most successfully domesticated), to cover an entire cluster of
concepts that are related to one another but are by no means identical.31

Even in the West, the word faith is not a univocal concept but stands for a
network of relationships. Pelikan points to a number of discrete concepts
and themes in terms of which faith is articulated: faithfulness, obedience,
work, trust, dependence, experience, worship, tradition, and knowledge.
The collection of these distinct concepts, each with its associated wider net-
work, constitutes ‘faith.’ Taking Pelikan’s approach to describing faith in
terms of various discrete concepts, I examine Barbara Stoler Miller’s trans-
lation of the Bhagavad Gī tā and propose alternative translations that clarify
śraddhā by articulating the discursive contexts in which it is situated.
One discrete concept through which faith is conceived is “faithfulness,”
from the Latin adjective pius, the “reciprocal fidelity that the gods manifest
in their dealings with human beings.”32 However, as confident intention in
the efficacy of sacrifice, śraddhā is connected to an automatic, mechanical
exchange, rather than a conscious reciprocity that results from loyalty or
devotion. Nonetheless, in BhG 7.21, the translation imposes faith as faithful-
ness on the text: “I grant unwavering faith to any devoted man who wants to
worship any form with faith.”33 The translation suggests that Krsna assents
to the request and is responsible for instilling faith in his devotee˙ ˙as
˙ a result
54  Carlos A. Lopez
of worship. However, the Sanskrit text does not suggest such an intimately
personal relationship between Krsna, the ‘devoted man’ (bhakta), and śrad-
˙˙ ˙
dhā. Capturing the relationship among these concepts requires a clear sense
of the term bhakta. As the past participle of the root bhaj ‘to distribute,
to apportion,’ bhakta qualifies someone who engages in a ritualized act of
distributing a share of whatever belongs to him. Worship (arcitum) entails
the act of offering something to a physical manifestation of the deity, which
is efficacious when performed with śraddhā.34 Krsna does not consent to
˙˙ ˙
a request of the bhakta but only dispenses or distributes (vidadhāmi) that
which is automatically produced through sacrificial activity. In other words,
the bhakta’s performance of the act of offering to the physical manifestation
of the deity with śraddhā automatically produces more śraddhā. By means of
confident intention in its efficacy, whoever desires to treat me with respect and
who has distributed a share to my physical manifestation, to that one, I allot
unshakable confident intention (BhG 7.21, Lopez). The choice of faith as the
sign in English that recodes śraddhā, along with ‘devoted man’ for bhakta,
reproduces for a Western reader a notion expected in a ‘religious text.’
The following verse, as translated by Miller, suggests that Krsna bestows
wishes as a result of being propitiated by the devotee: ˙˙ ˙

Disciplined by that faith he seeks the deity’s favor; this secured, he gains
desires that I myself grant.35

The translation imports the notion of faith as dependence, making Krsna the
˙˙ ˙
ultimate cause of the fulfillment of devotees’ wishes. However, this meaning
runs counter to tradition’s understanding of śraddhā.36 In Miller’s transla-
tion, favor (rādhana) is modified by Krsna. However, in the Sanskrit text,
rādhana—accomplishing, satisfying, or ˙fulfilling—is
˙˙ modified by tasyāh, the
feminine singular of the demonstrative pronoun, which can only refer ˙ to
śraddhā, which is also feminine singular.37 Krsna only distributes (vihitam)
that which is produced automatically by means ˙ ˙ ˙ of ritual activity, which
fulfills the desires (kāma) of the devotee offering with the correct mental atti-
tude of confident intention (śraddhā). Endowed with that confident inten-
tion, he is eager for the acquisition of that (confident intention). And then,
he obtains wishes that are distributed only by me (Krsna) (BhG 7.22, Lopez).
Faith also entails a sense of obedience, especially ˙ ˙ ˙in reference to divine
law or will. Miller’s translation ‘without faith’ (aśraddhā) triggers for her
target audience an understanding of faith as obedience to a certain set of
rules, which is not part of the discursive network associated with śraddhā:

Without faith in the sacred duty, men fail to reach me, Arjuna; they
return to the cycle of death and rebirth.38

As translated, the lack of obedience to the rules associated with ‘sacred

duty’ (dharma) is the cause for rebirth. However, this is not what the origi-
nal text suggests. The performative understanding of śraddhā and dharma is
 Philological Limits of Translating Religion 55
essential to fully understand the verse. In part, dharma refers to a particu-
lar set of activities that constitute each of the four social classes (varna).39
The performance of dharma necessarily entails śraddhā, confident intention ˙
in dharma’s efficacy, because it constitutes the actor as a particular class
of person. Confident intention to enact dharmic norms is necessary for the
production of merit and attainment of heaven. Pro forma ritualized activ-
ity without the accompanying intellectual attitude of confident intention is
explicitly equated with ignorance, illusion, or error (tamas), not sacrifice.40
Men having no confident intention in the efficacy of this very sacred duty, not
reaching me, pass over into cyclical wandering after death (BhG 9.3, Lopez).
As shown in the preceding examples, faith does not represent the specific
network in which śraddhā is situated. Although superficially it may seem
that faith clarifies the sign of the source text, the opposite is the case; the sign
in the target language refers to a different network of objects, statements,
concepts, and themes that not only imposes new meaning onto the source
text, but also effaces the original network in which śraddhā is situated. In
order to translate the text contextually, it is necessary to clarify the network
of relationships that inform śraddhā—sacrifice, reciprocity, intentionality,
and nature of the gods—and to articulate these relationships dynamically in
the target language.

UNPACKING DHARMA

Like śraddhā, dharma encodes a wide range on ritualized behaviors and

spectrum of meanings, including, but not limited to, accepted norms of
behavior, ritual actions, rules of procedures, civil and criminal law, rules
of battle, legal procedures and punishments, penances, social institutions
(marriage, adoption, inheritance, contracts), and merit, as well as private
activities (toilet, bathing, eating, sexual intercourse, and etiquette) and atti-
tudes. Often translated as ‘religion,’ dharma articulates much that falls well
outside the concept of religion as understood in the West.
Etymologically, dharma is derived from the Sanskrit verbal root dhr
‘to uphold, support, maintain.’ The earliest form of the word in the Rg˙
Veda (ca. 1200 BCE), dhárman is an agent noun expressing a performative ˙
aspect. As Paul Horsch has discussed, these forms are found in the context
of cosmogonic myths, especially those involving the god Indra’s demiur-
gic activity.41 Dhárman is not a set of commandments, laws, or principles
revealed by a supreme deity, but the active power of maintenance, stability,
and permanence whose very enactment constitutes cosmos. By the Atharva
veda (ca. 1000 BCE), the themes and objects associated with dhárman
became connected to the ethico-social realm and to notions of law, cus-
tom, and tradition. The discursive networks connected to dhárman were
understood to constitute “the universe as a vast cosmic ecosystem, an intri-
cate network of symbiotic relations among interdependent parts, in which
each part has a specific function to perform that contributes to the [ongoing
56  Carlos A. Lopez
maintenance] of the whole system.”42 Therefore, the basic sense of dharma
revolves around the activity of propping, supporting, and maintaining as
articulated in cosmic, ritual, and ethico-social contexts.
Dharma has an ontological and normative dimension.43 Ontologically,
dharma is the impersonal ordering power that maintains the proper func-
tioning of the cosmos at all levels—divine, social, and individual. As a nor-
mative category, dharma is “an all-encompassing ideology which embraces
both ritual and moral behaviors, whose neglect would have bad social and
personal consequences.”44 Human activity as well as the activity of all con-
stituent elements of the cosmos (human beings, animals, gods, cosmic bod-
ies) is correlated to dharma’s ontological dimension. At the human level,
this correlation is expressed in terms of varnadharma, the particularized set
˙
of norms of behavior connected with an individual’s social class (varna).45
Each social class of human beings, as well as other beings and entities ˙ of
the cosmos, is homologized to the body of cosmic man (purusa), whose dis-
memberment constitutes the ordered universe. As such, each group ˙ of beings
is understood to be part of the very fabric of the cosmos.46 Dharma is also
articulated in terms of āśramadharma, the set of norms of conduct associ-
ated with an individual of a specific social class participating in a particular
life option—such as brahmacārin (unmarried, celibate student of the Veda),
married householder, and one of various types of ascetic-renouncers (bhiksu,
samnyāsin, parivrājika), including the forest dweller (vanaprastha).47 ˙
˙

PRODUCING DHARMA-AS-RELIGION-AS-HINDUISM

The mutual embeddedness of religion and translation is observable in the

treatment of the most ubiquitous conceptual category in Indian thought,
dharma. Although the term conveys a complex web of statements, concepts,
objects, and themes, translation has tended to recode dharma in terms of
the Christian-centered discourse of religion. Dharma is a multivalent sign
that simultaneously recalls several concepts that the West considers to be
distinct and independent. In studies of dharma, even when the term is not
translated as ‘religion,’ dharma is often identified with one of the disparate
items that regularly constitute the discourse of religion. The assumed iden-
tity of the discursive network between the Christian West and India has
produced dharma-as-religion-as-Hinduism, mirroring the core of the West’s
self-identity, namely religion, in spite of the glaring disjunctions and contra-
dictions that the evidence suggests.
The production of dharma-as-religion-as-Hinduism through translation
can be seen in statements found in many standard textbooks and studies on
South Asian civilization and religions. The explanation of dharma put forth
by Franklin Edgerton, one of the most renowned American Indologists of
the first half of the twentieth century, implicitly relies on the assumption
that there must be something like religion in other cultures.
 Philological Limits of Translating Religion 57
Dharma is propriety, socially approved conduct, in relation to one’s
fellow men or to other living beings (animals or supernatural powers).
Law, social usage, morality, and most of what we ordinarily mean by
religion all fall under this head.48

He transforms dharma into a loose conglomeration of objects, statements,

concepts, and themes that do not share a common denominator but reflects
the fragmentary character of the discourse of religion.49
Even studies that highlight the complexity of dharma operate under the
same implicit assumptions of the universality of religion. Klaus Klostermai-
er’s treatment of Hinduism, in which “Hindus will recognize it as their own
tradition,”50 acknowledges the problem of translation, but remains ensnared
in the search for religion in India:

Translation can sometimes be quite revealing. If we try to find an Indian

synonym for religion—admittedly difficult to define even within the
Western tradition!—we have to choose from a variety of terms, none of
which coincide precisely with our word. The most common and general
term is dharma, usually translated as “religion.” Another important
aspect of religion is expressed by the term sādhana, frequently rendered
in English as “realization” . . . The representation of Hindu religion will
differ again according to the affiliation of the writer with regard to caste
or position in society.51

Although Klostermaier acknowledges the difficulty of finding a Sanskrit

word that is equivalent to religion, he operates under the assumption that
there is in India—ancient or modern—something that is identical to the
West’s notion of religion, even though that religion is understood differ-
ently by different segments of the ‘tradition.’ In other words, underlying
the explicit context-specific character of dharma, Klostermaier works under
the unquestioned and unchallenged assumption that dharma must be some
species of the West’s notion of religion, despite his own admission that the
term religion is fraught with problems.
The power of the discourse of religion to co-opt dharma has been so
effective that it has been adopted as identical to dharma in the discourses
of modern Hindu thinkers, who “abandoned the traditional emphasis of
varnāśramadharma [norms associated with an individual’s social class and
˙
participation in a specific life option] and attempted instead to ‘ethicize
and universalize dharma’ (Halbfass 1988: 333) by invoking the universal
principles of sādhārana­dharma as well as the related notion of sanātanad-
harma as the “eternal ˙ religion” that is universal in scope.”52 As has been
pointed out by Wilhelm Halbfass, the intellectual response of Neo-Hindu
thinkers, under the sway of European colonial influence, was to adopt the
West’s discourse of religion to counter missionary claims of the Christian
religion’s supremacy over their own cultural, social, and political discourses.
58  Carlos A. Lopez
The resulting product was the indigenous discourse of Hinduism-as-reli-
gion “as the eternal, universal, all-encompassing dharma within which all
specific religions—including Christianity—are subsumed.”53 In Neo-Hindu
discourses of the colonial period and after, Hinduism-as-religion became
integral to ‘Hindu’ identity, an identity that mirrors the West’s reflection.
The swapping of the discourse of dharma with the discourse of religion
can be detected in the translations of one of the classic texts dealing explic-
itly with dharma, the well-known Mānavadharmaśāstra (MDhŚ), The Law
Code of Manu. Manu, as the text is normally referred to in academic circles,
was one of the better known and most authoritative works already by circa
the fifth century among specialists on the science of dharma.54 As a text
dealing in part with ‘law,’ Manu was the first Sanskrit text translated by Sir
William Jones in 1874 as part of the arsenal of tools of British judges in the
administration of justice to be used on the indigenous population. It was
retranslated by George Bühler for the Sacred Books of the East in 1886.
The two most recent translations of Manu by Wendy Doniger and by
Patrick Olivelle provide different perspectives into the problematic relation-
ship of religion and translation. Doniger and Olivelle take two different
approaches to the problem of translating difficult words, such as dharma,
brahman, karma, and others. The audience of both scholars is the gen-
eral reader primarily, rather than a specialized Indological audience. Both
agree that every word must be translated in a way that is meaningful to
the audience, rather than leaving certain difficult terms untranslated. Fail-
ing to translate every word in the text “is no translation at all, and leads
to no thought in the mind of the English reader, however much it might
allow someone in the Indological know to savour the many meanings of
dharma.”55 Noting the tendency of Sanskrit for polysemic words for which
there is no simple one to one identity in other languages, Doniger translates
dharma by various English words—duty, law, justice, right, religious merit,
and religion—but does not indicate that each of these words in the target
language refer to the same word in the source text. Olivelle takes the oppo-
site strategy and consistently translates dharma with English “Law,” which
“accurately captures a wide slice of its semantic spectrum, especially if we
take into account the use of ‘law’ in such contexts as natural law, divine law,
moral law, law of gravity, and Jewish law.”56 When the meaning ‘Law’ is
not comprehended from the context, Olivelle indicates in parentheses that
dharma is the word in the original text.
While Doniger’s translation is generally sensitive to the context of the
text, in numerous places where she translates dharma by religion or some
variant thereof, the meaning of the original text is obfuscated rather than
clarified. Doniger is well aware of the objection that the translation of
dharma as religion “may be too vague and too European a word to ren-
der such a quintessentially Hindu concept, but it is precisely the vague-
ness of the term that seems to me to resonate with the pervasive nature of
dharma.”57 In these cases, Doniger’s translation seems more concerned with
 Philological Limits of Translating Religion 59
the assumed nebulous identity between dharma and religion than with the
discursive scope of dharma in the text. Olivelle’s consistent translation of
dharma as law is not free of difficulties because at times it restricts dharma
primarily to a sense of positive law, “law enacted by a properly constituted
authority for the government of society . . . [that] are based on normative
values or find expression in the exemplary behavior of specific groups.”58
Olivelle’s drive for a consistent translation of dharma as law often places
greater emphasis on dharma’s normative dimension at the expense of its
ontological dimension.
Perhaps the most general understanding of dharma is found in MDhŚ
1.81. After having addressed its origin, Manu situates dharma within the
larger ontological context of time, particularly the system of four cosmic
cycles (yuga), while still pointing to its normative dimension:

In the Winning Age, religion is entire, standing on all four feet, and so is
truth; and men do not acquire any gain through irreligion.59

For a reader unfamiliar with major concepts of South Asian culture, such
as the cultural value of the cow, dicing, conceptions of time, and even the
notion of truth, this verse makes little sense. Dharma is intimately connected
to the sequence of four cosmic cycles (yugas) of time—krta, tretā, dvāpara,
and kali. In the sequence of yugas, dharma is understood ˙ to become less
stable as the duration of each cycle diminishes in subsequent yugas.60 The
name of each of the cosmic cycles is identical to the names of the rolls of the
dice in the ancient Indian dice game.61 Krta represents the perfect, winning
roll, which is connected with the notion of˙ complete stability of dharma and
success. Subsequent rolls decline in value, with kali being the least valuable
and losing roll. The names of the throws reflect a decline in dharma in the
sense of luck and auspiciousness.
The progressive decline in the stability of dharma is also expressed
through the image of the cow, which represents auspiciousness. In the first
age, dharma, like a cow standing on four legs, is completely stable; it is
truth. In each subsequent age, dharma becomes progressively unstable,
until, in the Kali yuga, it is like a cow standing on one leg, unstable and des-
tined to fall. Thus, in each subsequent age, dharma deteriorates at the onto-
logical and normative level simultaneously. The deterioration of dharma at
the ontological level—shorter cosmic cycles—is reflected at the normative
level in terms of sickness, lack of auspiciousness, shortened life span of the
individual, and breakdown of the structure of society.
Doniger’s translation of dharma as religion and of its privative, adharma
as irreligion, is especially confounding. Here, adharma refers to the means
by which men are unable to acquire property (āgama) in the age when
dharma, as the moral order of society, is completely stable and fully oper-
ative. It is not simply the opposite of dharma as morality, but the onto-
logically opposite condition. The following verse (1.82) specifies that
60  Carlos A. Lopez
acquisition of property by improper means—theft, speaking falsehood, and
deception—is possible only when dharma is no longer stable in subsequent
yugas.62 These means of acquiring property are viable only in subsequent
yugas, when the dharma becomes progressively unstable and social values
decline. In this verse, dharma calls to mind both its ontological and norma-
tive dimension simultaneously, as each subsequent yuga is equated with a
progressive decline of the cosmic and social order and the progressive rise
of chaos. And only in the age of completeness, the cosmic order, supported
on four feet, is truth. No property comes to any man by improper means
(MDhŚ 1.81, Lopez). Doniger’s play with religious and irreligious brings to
mind for the reader the fuzziness of religion, rather than revealing some-
thing of the concreteness of the Hindu notion of dharma.
The polysemic nature of the term dharma can be observed in a series of
verses that address the topic of dharma as merit and its importance for one’s
continuing existence in the next world:

Refraining from oppressing any living being, so that they might become
his companions in the other world, he should gradually pile up religious
merit just as ants pile up an anthill.63
For there (in that world) father, mother, wife, son, and relative do not
endure as his companion; religion alone endures.64
Therefore, he should constantly and gradually pile up religious merit
so that it may become his companion (in the other world). For with reli-
gion as his companion he crosses over the darkness that is hard to cross.65
Quickly (that companion) leads to the other world the man to whom
religion is pre-eminent and whose offences have been annihilated by
inner heat, glittering in his astral body.66

To the Western reader, the relationship of ‘merit’ to religion, as system of

beliefs, practices, worldview, and associated attitudes and feelings, will cer-
tainly seem quite sensible, since it is by adherence to the totality of the
religious tradition that merit and its associated results are produced. How-
ever, Doniger’s translation swaps out the specificity of discourse of dharma
regarding merit and immortality for the discourse of religion thus introduc-
ing a fuzzier understanding of merit and religion.
These verses address the accumulated merit and its relationship to immor-
tality, which is understood as life in the next world (heaven). Manu’s con-
ception of the next world and immortality is not informed by the popular
Hindu notion of release (moksa) from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth
˙
(samsāra), but by the older Vedic goal of immunity from death (amrta) in
˙ ˙
the next world (svarga), which is achieved through sacrificial activity. 67

According to the Veda, a man attains immortality only by the accumula-

tion of various merit-substances produced from the correct performance of
sacrifice. These substances are accumulated in heaven, where the sacrificer
will continue to subsist on them after his death. In Manu, dharma encodes
 Philological Limits of Translating Religion 61
a broad notion of merit produced through the correct performance of ritu-
alized activity, especially that of men belonging to the upper three varnas in
their respective stages of life (āśrama). ˙
Doniger’s translation of 4.238 frames the text’s emphasis on dharma as
merit through the lens of the notion of non-harming (ahimsā), signaled by
the phrase ‘unharmed living beings,’ which become a man’s ˙ companion in
heaven. Grammatically, this reading is problematic, since ‘living beings’
(sarvabhūtāni—accusative plural neuter) cannot be qualified by ‘compan-
ions in the next world’ (paralokasahāyārtham—accusative singular). It
is dharma as merit, which is accumulated while not harming (apī dayan),
which accompanies a man to the other world.68 The adjective religious ˙ in
Doniger’s translation is superfluous and only points to her assumption that
merit is inherently ‘religious’ through its connection to ahimsā. Gently, not
˙ piles together
hurting all creatures, he should pile together merit, like an ant
an anthill, for the sake of going together (with that merit) to the highest
world (MDhŚ 4.238, Lopez).
Contextually, the meaning of dharma in the verses that follow is also
merit, which is accumulated and stored in the next world. In MDhŚ 4.239,
the enduring nature of dharma as merit is contrasted with the most import-
ant and permanent human relationships. However, in relation to dharma,
these human relationships are transient; they come to end at death and do
not continue in the next world. A man builds his heavenly world and his
own immortality through sacrificial activity and the accumulation of merit,
which persists in the next world. His dharmic acts produce merit for himself
only but not for his relatives. In this context, merit is not transferable to
others! After having translated dharma a ‘religious merit’ in the first half
of the verse, there is no contextual support for Doniger to then translate
dharma as religion, since it is clear from the preceding verse (2.238) that it
is dharma as merit that is accumulated and accompanies a man to the next
world. Indeed, his father and mother do not abide in the next world for the
sake of companionship. His son, wife, or his relations do not abide there.
Only his merit abides there (MDhŚ 4.239, Lopez).
As in 4.238, where the translation stresses the notion of non-harming
(ahimsā), in 4.239 Doniger similarly imposes the notion of an eternal reli-
gion˙ onto the text. The translation of dharma as religion suggests to the
reader that religion, like dharma as merit, is a substantial, eternal (4.239)
companion (4.242) that is preeminent (3.423) in the life of the individ-
ual, even after death. Religion as the eternal companion of a human being
becomes the central point in the translation of 4.242. Although it is dharma
as merit that is accumulated and that accompanies a man to heaven in the
first part of the verse, Doniger ignores the context of the preceding verses
by translating dharma as religion and importing the notion that ‘religion
saves’ into the text. It is not religion that saves or makes man immortal,
but rather the accumulated merit that results from ritual that makes him
immortal. Therefore, gently he should pile together merit continually for
62  Carlos A. Lopez
the sake of going together (with it) to the next world. Indeed, together with
that merit, he crosses over the darkness (= death) that is difficult to cross
(MDhŚ 4.242, Lopez).
The same analysis holds for 4.243, which fills out the picture of immor-
tality in the next world. On death, a man for whom dharma has been most
important attains heaven. Here, dharma is both the obligation to perform
sacrifice and the merit that results from that performance. Merit and sacri-
fice are embedded in the discourse of dharma. The indiscriminate swapping
of religion for dharma instead of ritual obligation forces the translated text
to fit into the West’s discourse of religion. Quickly, that (merit) leads the
man for whom sacrificial obligation is supreme, whose offenses have been
destroyed by penances, to the other world, having luminous heavenly body
(BhG 4.242, Lopez).
As the preceding cases suggest, the choice of a particular word in the tar-
get language can disrupt the entire discursive network to which the source
text belongs and produce a new text that is other than the original. The
distorting effect of translation can be seen in passages from the eighth and
ninth book of Manu, which deal with the application of jurisprudence. In
this context, dharma regularly has a sense of rule, legal injunction, or legal
duty. In other words, the normative character of dharma’s semantic field is
especially stressed. The topic of the section is the conditions under which a
gift or donation that has been promised need not be delivered:

If someone should ask someone else for, and be promised, money to be

used for the sake of religion, but afterwards it is not so, it should not
be given to him.69
But if out of pride or greed he tries to get it back, the king should
make him pay one gold piece as redemption for his theft.70

The context of the verse is the enumeration of the eighteen grounds for
litigation, listed in Manu 8.4–7. In this context, dharma is generally under-
stood as positive law that the king is to adjudicate. Dharma is to be applied.
Doniger’s translation ‘for the sake of religion’ (dharmārtha) assumes
that the promised gift (money) being sought is for a very specific ‘religious’
usage. “The religious purpose might be a sacrifice or wedding; if it’s not
used for this purpose, either the money is promised and then not given, or it
is given and then taken back.”71 However, there is no context that suggests
any particular usage, let alone a religious one. The imposition of religion
onto the context may be in part influenced by the verb yacate, ‘to ask for,’
through which both Doniger and Olivelle read a context of begging for alms
and renunciation, an activity that is considered religious by both translators.
According to Manu, the obligation to beg for food is enjoined on cer-
tain individuals at particular life stages (āśrama), such as Veda-student and
homeless wanderer.72 In such cases, verbal or nominal forms derived from
the noun bhaksa, ‘food’ are used to indicate begging.73 That the obligation
˙
 Philological Limits of Translating Religion 63
to beg is not the concern of 8.212 is indicated by the use of yāc, ‘to ask
for,’ instead of a form derived from bhaksa. Furthermore, the context does
˙
not indicate begging to fulfill a legal injunction, as suggest by Olivelle’s
translation,74 nor any broadly conceived ‘religious’ purpose, as proposed
by Doniger. Rather, as the preceding section (MDhŚ 206–211) dealing
with grounds of litigation among partners (sahakartr) suggests, the issue
at hand is the contractual grounds under which delivery ˙ of the gift may be
annulled.75 Both Doniger and Olivelle read a network of concepts, objects,
and themes of the discourse of religion onto dharma—begging, asceticism,
and reciprocity—that is not suggested by the context of the source text.
Although not explicitly using the English word religion, Olivelle’s phrase, “a
man who begs,” signals to the reader a context of asceticism, which is part
of the West’s discourse of religion. He should not deliver that which was
promised for the purpose of fulfilling an obligation to someone who asks
for a gift and afterwards may not use it in that way (MDhŚ 8.212, Lopez).
Furthermore, the main concern of the verse is not the recipient of the gift,
but the donor. The obligation to deliver a promised gift (dhatta) is annulled,
if there is evidence that the recipient has no intention to use that gift for
the purpose that was indicated at the time of the agreement; his obligation
(dharmārtham) is to the donor and not to religion. Dharma refers to an
obligation that need not be assumed to be ‘religious’ in nature. Indeed, the
next verse (8.213) establishes that the recipient of the gift has no legal stand-
ing to enforce delivery. If he should cause that (payment) to be made out of
pride or greed at any time; by the king, a piece of gold should be made to be
paid as restoration for theft by that one (MDhŚ 8.213, Lopez). By reading
begging for alms as an act connected to asceticism and religion into dharma,
Doniger and Olivelle reimagine an entirely different set of discursive rela-
tionships and detach the verse from the explicit context of litigation and
re-locate it in the West’s discourse of ‘religion.’

CONCLUSION

Foucault has argued that the assumption of underlying cross-cultural, uni-

versal unities flies in the face of the disruptions or discontinuity that we con-
stantly experience. He challenges us to embrace discontinuity as meaningful.
The metaphor of motion and space implicit in the concept of translation
provides a powerful tool to embrace discontinuity and to critique both the
practice of translation and the discourse of religion. Motion and spatiality
implicit in translation reminds us of the embedded relationship of a sign and
its discursive space. A sign is constituted within a discursive space, which
is constituted by that sign. The sign and its discursive space are mutually
embedded; they are in a network of relationships. It is this relationship that
a philologically sensitive translation attempts to recode by making explicit
the relation of sign and discursive space, and by removing and repositioning
64  Carlos A. Lopez
both through the signs and discursive network of the target language. Atten-
tion to the implicit spatiality and motion of the core metaphor of translation
may dislocate the mutual embeddedness of the discourse of religion and the
practice of translation in the West. In dislocating religion from translation
and translation from religion, their mutual embeddedness is exposed.
The translation of texts that are labeled as ‘religious’ is deeply embed-
ded within the West’s discourse of religion. The product of translation taps
into the conglomeration of discontinuities that is conventionally named
‘religion.’ In the cases discussed, the source sign (śraddhā, dharma) was
imported into the West’s network of objects, statements, concepts, or the-
matic choices that constitute religion and was substituted by a sign in the
target language (faith, religion) that makes it impossible to retrieve the
sign’s original discursive context and meaning. Detached from its original
discursive network, the sign seamlessly finds its natural place in the target
language as a religious concept. In this way, the discursive uniqueness of
the source sign is effaced without a trace in translation. The production of
śraddhā-as-faith and of dharma-as-religion-as-Hinduism only reinforces the
universality of a discourse that is only produced through translation.
If by translation we understand simply the communication of the uni-
versal meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent tar-
get language, then translation will necessarily reproduce and reify the very
assumptions that we project onto the Other. The scholar who does not
problematize translation as a practice embedded in the discourse of religion
and religion as a discourse produced in translation will “look at the text
with the blind admiration of a mystic adept and those who regard mysticism
as just plain silliness not capable of rational exploration.”76 In other words,
without simultaneously questioning both the practice of translation and the
discourse of religion, the scholar will only discover his own reflections in the
text and will never be able to free himself or the text from this vicious circle.

NOTES

1. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith

(New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), 22.
2. Ibid., 37.
3. Calvert Watkins, “What Is Philology?,” Comparative Literature Studies 27,
no. 1 (1990): 23.
4. Ibid.
5. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, 32–33.
6. See Michael Witzel, “How to Enter the Vedic Mind? Strategies in Translating
a Brāhmana Text,” in Translating, Translations, Translators: From India to
the West, ˙ed. Enrica Garzilli (Cambridge, MA: Department of Sanskrit and
Indian Studies, Harvard University, 1996), 163.
7. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, 38.
8. Susan Bassnett, Translation Studies (London: Routledge, 2002), 29.
 Philological Limits of Translating Religion 65
9. Daniel Dubuisson, The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge,
and Ideology, trans. William Sayers (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press, 2003), 41.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., 24.
12. Ibid., 10.
13. Ibid., 42.
14. Calvert Watkins, ed., The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European
Roots (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1985), 60.
15. The earliest literature of South Asia is the Veda, the authoritative texts that
were orally composed and transmitted in the context of sacrificial perfor-
mances, consisting of four collections of distinct poetic material—Rg Veda (ca.
1500–1200 BCE), Yajur Veda, Sāma Veda, and Atharva Veda (ca. ˙1000 BCE).
16. See Watkins, The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, 30; and
Stephanie W. Jamison, Sacrificed Wife/Sacrificer’s Wife: Women, Ritual, and Hos-
pitality in Ancient India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 176–184.
17. Belief is cognate with Old Frisian gelōve, Old Dutch gilōvo, Old Saxon
gilōbo, Old English gelēafa, bilēafa, Old High German giloubo and Gothic
galaubeins, all which are derived from Proto Germanic *galaubō < IE *leubh.
See Watkins, The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, 37.
18. RV 1.103.5ab tád asyedám paśyatā bhū́ ri pustám śrád índrasya dhattana
˙ ı̄ryā ́ ya; RV 10.147.1 śrát te dadhāmi prathamā
v  ˙ ́ ˙ya˙ manyávé ‘han yád vrtrám
náryam vivér ˙ apáh / ubhé yát tvā bhávato ródas ı̄ ánu réjate śúsmāt prthiv  ˙
˙   ı̄ cid
adrivah ˙  : I have confidence/trust
˙ in your first wrathful (deed), when ˙ ˙   killed
you
(the demon) ˙ Vrtra, the work for humanity. When both heaven and earth offer
to you, even the ˙ earth trembles under you, because of your strength, O posses-
sor of the pressing stones (= Indra).
19. ŚB 1.3.1.26: só ‘veksate satyam vai cáksuh satyam hi vai cáksus tásmād yád
idānı̄m dvaú vivádamānāv ˙ ˙  ́ tām ahám
eyā ˙ ˙ adarśam ˙ ˙
ahám aśraus am íti yá
evá brūyā ́ d ahám adarśam íti tásmā eva śráddadhyāma tát satyénaivaìtat ˙
sámardhyati.
20. RV 6.26.6ab: tvám śraddhā́bhir mandasānáh sómair dabhı̄́taye cúmurim indra
˙ vap.
sis ˙ ˙
21. R˙V 2.26.3: sá íj jánena sá viśā ́  sá jánmanā sá putraír vā ́ jam bharate dhánā
˙ bhih / devā ́ nām yáh pitáram āvívāsati śraddhā́manā havísā bráhmanas pátim.
nr´
22. ŚB ˙
˙     1.2.5.24: sa˙ ye hā́
˙ gra ı̄jire té ha smāvamárśam yajante ˙ te pā ́ pı̄yā
˙ msa āsur
átha ye nèjire te śréyāmsa āsus tató ‘śraddhā manus ˙ yān viveda ye˙ yájante
pā  ́ pı̄yāmsas té bhavanti˙yá u na yájante śréyāmsas té bhavant  ˙ ı̄́ti táta itó devā ́  n
havir ná ˙ jagāmetáh pradānād dhí devā ́  upaj ı̄́v˙anti.
23. Carlos Lopez, “Food ˙ and Immortality in the Veda: A Gastronomic Theology,”
Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 3, no. 3 (1997). Accessed October 9, 2014.
http://www.ejvs.laurasianacademy.com/ejvs0303/ejvs0303article.pdf.
24. ŚB 1.3.1.25: athā ́ jyam áveksate tad dhaíke yájamānam ávakhyāpayanti tád
u hovāca yā ́ jñavalkyah katha ˙ m nu ná svayám adhvaryávo bhávanti kathám
svayam nā ́  nvāhur yátra˙ bhū ́  yasya ˙ ivāśísah kriyánte katham nv esām átraivá śrad- ˙
˙
dhā́ bhavatı̄́ ti yām vai kā ́  m ca yajñá ˙r tvíja ˙ ˙
āśísam āśā ́ sate ˙
yájamānasyaiva sā
tásmād adhvaryúr ˙ evā ́ veks˙ eta. ˙  ˙
25. RV 10.151.1: śraddháyāgníh ˙ sám idhyate śraddháyā hūyate havíh / śraddhā́m
˙
bhágasya ˙
mūrdháni vácasā ́ vedayāmasi. ˙
26. RV 10.151.4: śraddhā́m devā  ́ yájamānā vāyúgopā úpāsate / śraddhā́m
˙ ddayyàyā ́ kūtyā śraddháyā
hr ˙ vindate vásu. ˙
27. R˙  V 10.151.3: yáthā devā ́ ásuresu śraddhā́m ugrésu cakriré / evám bhojésu yájasv
˙   ́ kam uditám krdhi.
asmā ˙ ˙ ˙
˙ ˙ ˙
66  Carlos A. Lopez
28. RV 10.151.5: śraddhā́m prātár havāmahe śraddhā́m madhyámdinam pári /
˙ m sū́ ryasya nimrúci śráddhe śrád dhāpayehá nah. We˙ invoke confi-
śraddhā́
˙ in the morning. We invoke confidence/trust at˙midday. We invoke
dence/trust
confidence/trust at the disappearance of the sun. O confidence/trust, cause us
to have confidence.
29. See Jan Gonda, Some Observations on the Relations between “Gods” and
“Powers” in the Veda a Propos of the Phrase Sūnuh Sahasah (S’Gravenhage:
Mouton, 1957). ˙ ˙
30. See Jamison, Sacrificed Wife/Sacrificer’s Wife.
31. Jaroslav Pelikan, “Faith,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., ed. Lindsay
Jones (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005), 2954.
32. Ibid., 2955.
33. Barbara Stoler Miller, trans., The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna’s Counsel in Time
of War (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1986), 73. BhG 7.21 = MHB 6.29.21: yo
yo yām yām tanum bhaktah śraddhayārcitum icchati / tasya tasyācalām śrad-
dhām˙tām ˙eva vidadhāmy.
˙ ˙ ˙
34. In the˙ Hindu ritual of pūjā, the devotee makes an offering, usually of food, to
the consecrated icon (mūrti, arca) of the deity. The deity is believed to accept
the offering and return the remaining portion (prāsad) to the devotee.
35. Miller, The Bhagavad-Gita, 74. BhG 7.22 = MHB 6.29.22: sa tayā śraddhayā
yuktas tasyā rādhanam ı̄hate / labhate ca tatah kāmān mayaiva vihitān hi tān.
36. My analysis of Miller’s translation is based on ˙ the machine-readable text by
M. Tokunaga of the critical edition of the Mahābhārata by V. S. Sukthankar
(Poona, 1937–1964) that is available through TITUS. In her introduction,
Miller does not explicitly indicate what edition of the text she has followed.
37. Rādhana cannot belong to the deity, because as a masculine singular object,
Krsna, cannot be the reference of the pronoun tasyāh, which is feminine. It is
˙˙ ˙
possible that Miller is reading tasyā as the metrically ˙ lengthened tasya (mas-
culine, singular) due to the iambic pattern of the epic anustubh. However,
this reading seems to be driven by the desire to force a possessive ˙ ˙ relationship
between rādana and krsna.
˙˙ ˙ 83. BhG 9.3 = MHB 6.31.3: aśraddadhānāh purusā
38. Miller, The Bhagavad-Gita,
dharmasyāsya paramtapa / aprāpya mām nivartante mrtyusamsāravartmani. ˙ ˙
˙
39. This is the major dilemma ˙ as the Great˙  War is
faced by Arjuna ˙ about to begin
at the opening of the Bhagavad Gītā. In BhG 2.31–33, Krsna articulates the
positive result (heaven) of engaging in activity that is connected ˙ ˙ ˙ to dharma of
each particular varna, as well as the negative results of failing to perform such
activity (shame, loss ˙ of honor, evil).
40. BhG 17.13 = MHB 6.39.13: vidhihı̄nam asrstānnam mantrahı̄nam adaksinam /
śraddhāvirahitam yajñam tāmasam paricaks ˙  ˙ ˙ ate. ˙A  sacrifice offered without
˙ ˙
following ritual˙ injunctions,
˙ ˙
without food ˙being distributed, without man-
tras, without giving a gift, and without confident intention in its efficacy is
acknowledged as an error.
41. Paul Horsch, “From Creation Myth to Worldview: The Early History of
Dharma,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 32 (2004): 423–428.
42. Barbara Holdrege, “Dharma,” in The Hindu World, ed. Sushil Mittal and
Thursby (New York: Routledge, 2004), 213.
43. Ibid., 213–214.
44. Gavin D. Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1996), 53.
45. The tradition counts four varnas—the priestly class (Brahmins), warriors
(ksatriyas), merchants (vaiśyas),˙ agriculturalist and broadly those who belong
to˙ neither of the two preceding varnas (vaiśya), and those who support and
serve the upper three varnas (śudra).˙
˙
 Philological Limits of Translating Religion 67
46. See Rg Veda 10.90.
˙
47. See Patrick Olivelle, The Ā  śrama System: The History and Hermeneutics of a
Religious Institution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
48. Franklin Edgerton, “Dominant Ideas in the Formation of Indian Culture,”
Journal of the American Oriental Society 62, no. 3 (September 1942): 151.
49. Similarly, Barbara Stoler Miller’s identification of dharma as religion is a mat-
ter of convention. “The epics are repositories of myths, ideals, and concepts
that Hindu culture has always drawn upon to represent aspects of dharma
. . . The rituals of the warrior life and the demands of sacred duty define the
religious and moral meaning of heroism throughout the Mahabharata. Acts
of heroism are characterized less by physical prowess than by the fulfillment
of dharma, which often involves extraordinary forms of sacrifice, penance,
devotion to the divine authority, and spiritual victory over evil.” Miller, The
Bhagavad-Gita, 3.
50. Klaus K. Klostermaier, A Survey of Hinduism, 3rd. ed. (Albany: State Univer-
sity of New York Press, 1989), 5.
51. Ibid., 46.
52. Holdrege, “Dharma,” 244.
53. Ibid., 245.
54. See Patrick Olivelle, trans., The Law Code of Manu (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2004).
55. Wendy Doniger, The Laws of Manu (London: Penguin Books, 1991), lxxvii.
56. Olivelle, The Law Code of Manu, xliv.
57. Doniger, The Laws of Manu, lxxvi.
58. Richard Laraviere, “Dharmaśāstra, Custom, ‘Real Law’ and ‘Apocryphal’
Smrtis,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 39, no. 5–6 (2004): 612.
˙
59. Doniger, The Laws of Manu, 12. MDhś 1.81: catuspātsakalo dharmah satyam
caiva krte yuge / nādharmenāgamah kaś cin manus ˙ yān upavartate. ˙ ˙
60. There ˙are various enumerations ˙ of˙ the duration˙ of each cycle. The most
common states that the krta yuga lasts 1,728,000 human years; tretā yuga,
1,296,000; dvāpara yuga, ˙864,000; and kali, the present yuga, 432,000.
61. See Harry Falk, Bruderschaft und Würfelspiel: Untersuchungen zur Entwick-
lungsgeschichte des vedischen Opfers (Freiburg: Hedwig, 1996).
62. MDhŚ 1.82 itaresv āgamād dharmah pādaśas tv avaropitah / caurkānrtamāy-
˙
abhir dharmaś cāpaiti pādaśah. But, ˙ because of such improperly
˙ ˙
acquired
property, the cosmic order is taken ˙ down foot by foot in the other ages; and
by means of theft, speaking untruth, and deception, the cosmic order vanishes
foot by foot.
63. Doniger, The Laws of Manu, 96. MDhŚ 4.238: dharmam śanaih samcinuyād
valmīkam iva puttikāh / paralokasahāyārtham sarvabhūtāny ˙ ˙ ayan.
apı̄d ˙
˙
64. Ibid. MDhŚ 4.239: nāmutra hi sahāyārtha˙ m pitā mātā ca tis˙ thatah / na
putradāram na jñātir dharmas tisthati kelavah˙. ˙˙ ˙
65. Ibid., 92. ˙MDhŚ 4.242: tasmād˙ ˙dharmam sahāyārtha
˙ m nityam samcinuyāc
chanaih / dharmena hi sahāyena tamas tarati ˙ dustaram.˙ ˙ ˙
˙ MDhŚ ˙ 4.243: dharmapradhānam purusam tapasā hatakilbisam /
66. Ibid., 96.
paralokam nayaty āśu bhāsvantam khaśarı̄rin ˙ am ˙ ˙ ˙
67. See Lopez,˙ “Food and Immortality ˙ in the Veda:
˙ A Gastronomic Theology.”
68. Doniger reads paralokasahāyārtham adverbially with apīdayan. However, in
4.242, sahāyārtham clearly qualifies ˙ dharmam. It seems more natural to take
paralokasahāyātham, even though it is in the second quarter of the verse, to
qualify dharma at the beginning of the verse.
69. Doniger, The Laws of Manu, 176. MDhŚ 8.212: dharmārtham yena dattam
syāt kasmai cid yacate dhanam / paścāc ca na tathā tat syān na ˙ deyam tasya ˙
tad bhavet. ˙
68  Carlos A. Lopez
70. Ibid. MDhŚ 8.213: yadi samsādhayet tat tu darpāl lobhena vā punah / rājñā
dāpyah suvarnam syāt tasya˙ steyasya niskrtih· ˙
71. Ibid. ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙  
72. See MDhŚ 2.49: bhavatpurvam cared bhaiksam upanı̄to dvijottamah / bhavan
madhyam tu rājanyo vaiśyas ˙tu bhavad uttaram ˙ An initiated Brahmin˙ should
wander ˙around begging for food, placing ‘Madam’ first when begging from a
Brahmin; placing ‘Madam’ in the middle for a Ksatriya; placing ‘Madam’ at
the end for a Vaiśya. ˙
73. See MDhŚ 2.48 pratigrhyepsitam dandam upasthāya ca bhāskaram / pra-
˙  
daksinam parı̄tyāgnim cared bhaiks ˙
˙ am ˙yathāvidhi. After taking his chosen staff
and˙ after
˙ ˙ having approached
˙ ˙ ˙ (for worship), after having gone around
the sun
the fire clockwise, he should go begging for food; MDhŚ 6.55 ekakālam cared
bhaiksam na prasajjeta vistare / bhaikse prasakto hi yatir visayesvapi˙ sajjati.
˙ ˙ go begging for food once daily.
He should ˙ He should not be ˙attached
˙ to large
quantities. Indeed, being attached to food, an ascetic is attached to sensual
enjoyments.
74. MDhŚ 8.212 “When someone has pledged a monetary gift to a man who begs
in order to fulfill the Law but who later does not follow through, he is not
obliged to deliver that gift”; Olivelle, The Law Code of Manu, 138–139.
75. The capping verse makes it clear that the central issue is the non-delivery of a
solicited gift rather than how the gift is to be used. MDhŚ 8.214 dattasyasoditā
dharmyā yathāvadan apakriyā / ata urdhvam pravaksyāmi vetanasyāpakriyām ˙
Addressing thus the nondelivery of that gift ˙ in accordance
˙ with obligation,
from this point forward, I speak about the nondelivery of wages.
76. Paul Thieme, “Isopanisad (= Vajasaneyi-Samhita 40) 1–14,” Journal of the
American Oriental Society 85, no. 1 (1965): 97.

BIBLIOGRAPHY **

Bassnett, Susan. Translation Studies. London: Routledge, 2002.

Bühler, George. The Laws of Manu. Vol.  25. Sacred Books of the East. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1886.
Doniger, Wendy. The Laws of Manu. London & New York: Penguin Books, 1991.
Dubuisson, Daniel. The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge, and
Ideology. Translated by William Sayers. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press, 2003.
Edgerton, Franklin. “Dominant Ideas in the Formation of Indian Culture.” Journal
of the American Oriental Society 62, no. 3 (September 1942): 151–156.
Falk, Harry. Bruderschaft und Würfelspiel: Untersuchungen zur Entwicklungs­
geschichte des vedischen Opfers. Freiburg: Hedwig, 1996.
Flood, Gavin D. An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996.
Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by A. M. Sheridan
Smith. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.
Gonda, Jan. Some Observations on the Relations between “Gods” and “Powers” in
the Veda a Propos of the Phrase Sūnuh Sahasah. S’Gravenhage: Mouton, 1957.
˙ ˙

**  Textual citations of verses from the Rg Veda (RV), Ś  atapatha Brāhmana (ŚB), Mahābhārata
(MHB), Bhagavad Gītā (BhG) and ˙Mānavadharmaśāstra (MDhŚ) come ˙ from Thesaurus
Indogermanischer Text- und Sprachmaterialien (TITUS). Accessed October 9, 2014. http://
titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/indexe.htm.
 Philological Limits of Translating Religion 69
Halbfass, Wilhelm. India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1988.
Holdrege, Barbara. “Dharma.” In The Hindu World. Edited by Sushil Mittal and
Thursby, 213–248. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Horsch, Paul. “From Creation Myth to Worldview: The Early History of Dharma.”
Journal of Indian Philosophy 32 (2004): 423–428.
Jamison, Stephanie W. Sacrificed Wife/Sacrificer’s Wife: Women, Ritual, and Hospi-
tality in Ancient India. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Klostermaier, Klaus K. A Survey of Hinduism: Third Edition. Albany: State Univer-
sity of New York Press, 1989.
Laraviere, Richard. “Dharmaśāstra, Custom, ‘Real Law’ and ‘Apocryphal’ Smrtis.”
Journal of Indian Philosophy 39, no. 5–6 (2004): 611–627. ˙
Lopez, Carlos. “Food and Immortality in the Veda: A Gastronomic Theology.” Elec-
tronic Journal of Vedic Studies 3, no. 3 (1997): 11–19. Accessed October 9, 2014.
http://www.ejvs.laurasianacademy.com/ejvs0303/ejvs0303article.pdf.
Miller, Barbara Stoler, trans. The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna’s Counsel in Time of War.
Toronto: Bantam Books, 1986.
Olivelle, Patrick. The Ā  śrama System: The History and Hermeneutics of a Religious
Institution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
———, trans. The Law Code of Manu. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Pelikan, Jaroslav. “Faith.” In Encyclopedia of Religion. 2nd ed. Edited by Lindsay
Jones, 29–54. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005.
Thieme, Paul. “Isopanisad (= Vajasaneyi-Samhita 40) 1–14.” Journal of the Ameri-
can Oriental Society 85, no. 1 (1965): 89–99.
Watkins, Calvert, ed. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1985.
———. “What Is Philology?” Comparative Literature Studies 27, no.  1 (1990):
21–25.
Witzel, Michael. “How to Enter the Vedic Mind? Strategies in Translating a Brāh-
mana Text.” In Translating, Translations, Translators: From India to the West.
˙ by Enrica Garzilli, 163–175. Cambridge, MA: Department of Sanskrit
Edited
and Indian Studies, Harvard University, 1996.
4 Translating Religion between
Parents and Children
Andrea Schulte

THE STORY OF THE HOLY SPIRITS

I would like to start my chapter with a short story a mother told me about
an incident with her daughter, who was three years old at the time:

We are in a church, standing in front of a painting which depicts the

Holy Trinity. You can see God the Father as an old man holding the
globe in his hand. God the Son, a young man, is sitting to the right of
his Father, in one hand holding up the cross, with his other hand sup-
porting a book which lies wide open on the knees of the Father and Son.
The Holy Spirit is shown as a large dove hovering above their heads,
its wings forming a link between them. My daughter stands in front
of the painting and shows a great interest in it. She asks me: “What
is this?” I reply, “This is a painting of God. The old man is God the
Father who created the world. Next to him you can see his son, Jesus,
carrying the Cross. The two are very close to each other and like each
other very much. Look, they share this book.” My daughter asks a
second question: “Why is there this large bird in the painting? Is it also
a God?” I reply, “The large bird is a dove. It shows the bond between
Father and Son, for both are God. They want the same, they think the
same, and they feel the same. We can also say: They have one Spirit, the
Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God, too. But normally we cannot see a
‘Spirit’. The artist still wants to show us that it is there, and therefore he
painted the dove. And the wings of the dove connect all three together:
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” It seems as if the girl is satis-
fied with this explanation. Later she discovers a couple of doves in the
roof of the church. Full of excitement she exclaims: “Look, mom, look
at the roof! There is a whole lot of Holy Spirits!”

This is an instance of the pedagogical potential of conversations between

parents and their children as acts of religious communication. The mother
and daughter visit a Christian church. A painting represents the classical
theological topic of God’s Trinity in conventional symbolic forms. The
 Translating Religion between Parents and Children 71
mother, incidentally one of my colleagues, is familiar with broader religious,
and more specifically Christian, semantics. Thus, she explains to her daugh-
ter what she sees in the painting. She provides further information about the
relationship between God the Father and the Son. Her daughter points out
the dove to her and wants to know what the large bird is. Her mother does,
in fact, know about the symbolic meaning of the dove in Christian theol-
ogy and explains it to her daughter by relating abstract teachings about the
Holy Spirit to the concrete representation of a “dove.” She seems to be very
successful with this: the little girl is satisfied. Later, she makes her discovery
on the roof of the church. She applies her new knowledge to it and identifies
the doves as “holy spirits.”

REFERENCES TO BASIC THEORIES

In the words of my academic language we can say that the mother and
daughter have different foundations for understanding and different hori-
zons of understanding. Because they occupy different stages of cognitive
development, they think differently. The mother thinks more abstractly, the
daughter more concretely. The daughter wants to understand the religious
content, that is, the religious language or semantics, of the painting. The
mother knows about its symbolic meaning or the characteristics of the reli-
gious language. She also knows that a painting cannot be explained to a
three-year-old child in the same words as to an adult.
Can we use the phrase “translating religion” when we reflect on forms
of religious communication between parents and their children? If so, how
is such translation work carried out between parents and children with the
expected goal of reaching agreement on religion? In my opinion, parents
and children alike trust that the best possible understanding of religious
matters will be reached. The child is interested in understanding religious
semantics and contexts. Parents want their children’s (religious) educational
needs to be fulfilled. Can we therefore say that religious content is “trans-
lated” because of the different cognitive levels of development of adults
and children? Furthermore, what happens to religious content when it is
translated to another cognitive level? A lot of questions but no answers yet.
Thanks to recent insights into the cognitive and religious development
of children, teenagers, and adults and the reception of these insights in the
area of religious education, we no longer condemn these questions as being
absurd and academically dubious. For a further discussion of my subject
I take these results as foundational. At least for the time being, they seem to
be broadly accepted and credible.
With his concept of human mental development, the Swiss psychologist
Jean Piaget (1896–1980) pioneered research that, in the field of religious
education, was carried further by Fritz Oser, Paul Gmünder, and James
Fowler. In his “constructivist” theory of development Piaget distinguished
72  Andrea Schulte
four levels of cognitive development.1 His basic thesis is that all human
beings are challenged to develop their cognitive abilities in their response
and attitude toward the world and humanity in general. This process of
development always comes into play when some actual facts cannot be
assimilated with the help of a given cognitive concept. In this case some
accommodation is necessary in order to reconstruct an equilibrium between
the formerly familiar cognitive horizon of understanding and the new cog-
nitive challenges in understanding. This process also works in the field of
religious cognitive development because even this is driven by cognitive con-
flicts and doubts.
Piaget’s concept of development comprises four levels: the sensomotoric
phase (from birth up to the age of two), the phase of pre-operational and
concrete thinking (from two up to the age of seven), the phase of concrete
operations (from seven up to roughly eleven), and the phase of formal oper-
ations (from eleven up to adulthood).
Despite the criticisms that have been directed against Piaget’s theory of
development, his investigations remain stimulating for academic research
even today. Some all-too-rigorous assumptions about the necessary sequence
of the developmental phases, the definitions of age clusters, or indeed the
problem of previous knowledge of the children and teenagers, which Piaget
ignores qualify and limit the value of the theory. However, the universal
principles of development formulated by Piaget are still helpful.
Oser, Gmünder, and Fowler transfer Piaget’s basic assumptions as well as
his concept of developmental phases to the field of religion.2 They confirm
and emphasize the core idea that children and adolescents are themselves
actively involved when it comes to their religious development. When learn-
ing they actively adopt religious content and assimilate it according to the
state of their cognitive development. In this process cognitive structures are
developed and adapted or accommodated to a new level of consciousness.
As a consequence of this research, the study of religious education in the
German-speaking world has seen an enormous increase. Meanwhile there
are several important contributions concerning empirical research into
religion and the religious development of children. They draw our atten-
tion to the children’s personal religion and religious beliefs. Thanks to this
approach, children are being encouraged to form their own distinctive views
about faith and religion, life and the world. They receive support for devel-
oping their own identity and their own orientation in life.
Children have their own, specific religious beliefs and views. Today we
have a considerable understanding of how children talk about God and the
world. We have become more sensitive to children’s utterances. We take such
childlike utterances more seriously, and we trust the children to be experts
as it were and competent conversation partners in the area of religion at
their respective level of cognitive development. Based on these insights new
research has been established on the issue of ‘doing theology with children.’
This research is interested in how children address theological questions,
 Translating Religion between Parents and Children 73
how they conduct a conversation about theological matters, and how they
do this either among themselves or with so-called professionals in the field
of religious education (teachers and educators).3
Recently the project of ‘children’s theology’ has been initiated in schools
and preschools. Petra Freudenberger-Lötz, the pioneer and founder of this
line of research, considers her practice of conducting theological conversa-
tions with children to be right at the center of religious education at school.4
However, the family, as a system in which parents communicate with their
children and use religious language, has so far not come into focus. Cur-
rently, we know almost nothing about family communication at home. We
know far too little about how children communicate with their parents and
vice versa about God and the world. The family environment as a setting
for such God-talk in addition to conventional situations in church or school
is rather unknown to us.
This is so even though in 1997 the British educationist John Hull had
encouraged parents to lead religious conversations with their children.5 It
would only be right for parents, as Hull claims, to pay more attention to their
children when it comes to ‘religion’ and to have more confidence in the chil-
dren’s expertise on such matters. However, what abilities and competences
are required of parents in order to pursue such religious communication?
Hull suggests a program to coach, as it were, children in the use of reli-
gious language. As a consequence, parental competence would concentrate
on taking seriously the children’s individual diction as their individual
expression of religion, on understanding what they express, and on helping
them to find their own religious language. No doubt, religious communi-
cation between parents and children must rely on dialogical (mutual) rela-
tionships. Hull is convinced that such conversations will make it possible to
enhance religious vocabulary and to develop, in an interactive way, religious
images and ideas that will in turn enable children at their respective level of
development to themselves deal with questions and experiences that arise
from talk about God. In this process, children will become more autono-
mous. Their moral, social, and religious development will advance. Con-
versation is the means to support the children’s growth toward thinking for
themselves.6
At present, we have reached the following results in the field of religious
education: research on religious development has led to a better under-
standing of how children understand religion. Doing theology with chil-
dren, that is, the Kindertheologie (children-theology) or the Theologisieren
mit Kindern (theologizing with children) has directed our attention to the
theological competence of children. We have come to know more exactly
how children among themselves or with professionals exchange theological
views. Last but not least, Hull has shown us the importance of religious
communication in the family
However, Hull’s conversations with his children about images of God
and concepts of God hardly give us any information about the parents’
74  Andrea Schulte
religion. This means that the question concerning whether these conversa-
tions reveal something about the parents’ religion, as well as the children’s,
has not yet been asked. And it has not been asked whether we can speak
of reciprocal translation work. Can we say that adults, as well as children,
translate and use religious content transmitted in conversation according to
their cognitive development? Do they use a specific vocabulary according to
their individual frame of understanding?
The metaphor ‘translating religion’ opens up a new perspective in the
field of religious education. With its help, religious communication could
then be analyzed linguistically. Conversations between parents and children
would then focus on the following assumption: adults and children use two
different languages, which need to be translated in the process of commu-
nicating. ‘Translation’ would then be a powerful image to understand that
parents and children speak different languages.
For the following I use the metaphor of ‘translation’ as an aid in deep-
ening our understanding of certain communication processes. Against this
background I classify the language used at a particular cognitive stage as
someone’s own or specific language, which has to be translated when com-
municating with persons at other stages. Therefore, I am using the account
of different languages at work at different developmental stages, and this
can somehow be seen as translation.

METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES AND STATISTICAL DATA

In preparation for this article I asked my students at the University of Erfurt

for their support. I put my questions to students who already have children.
I asked them to write down any short conversations about religion that they
had with their children, as well as to note down later, from memory, earlier
conversations they could remember. The children should be between three
and ten years of age. All the students involved were planning to become
teachers of religious education and to take up their profession in a few
years. Generally speaking, we must say that they were quite familiar with
the Christian religion and that some pedagogical and didactic intuitions had
already been acquired. As a consequence, we will see that, because of the
people I was asking, the parents are defining what ‘religion’ is. This should
be kept in mind in what follows.
As a result I now have the reports of about twenty-five short conversa-
tions at hand. Only female students were involved and wrote down what
they could remember. The children were between three and seven, with
three girls and twenty-two boys.
I mainly refer to the examples I obtained from my students. I should also
add that my students knew about my research interests. Therefore, there is
a direct link between the conversations and what I am interested in, which
is rather helpful with regard to my own sensitivity and motivation. My data
 Translating Religion between Parents and Children 75
are, therefore, not comprehensive. Nevertheless, I gained some provisional
insights and can now specify certain assumptions that I would like to add to
the discourse. I also move on to frame a couple of theses that, I hope, I can
use for further work on the topic. With this I come to a brief outline of the
results.
In almost all cases, the children started a conversation by asking ques-
tions. They used incidents of everyday life as ‘door openers.’ In addition,
family rituals (such as prayers in the evening) or media for children (such as
bedside stories or readings from a children’s Bible) turned out to have been
appropriate occasions. I will give you some examples. A girl is watching a
bad accident in the street. Then she asked about dying and death. Or a boy
is observing the passing clouds in the sky. After an evening prayer he asked
about God’s home (“Where does God live?”). Another boy asked his mother
early in the morning about God’s visual appearance (“What does God look
like?”). While playing in a sand box a boy is suddenly interested in the
origin of the world (“How did the world come about?”). Some children
are visiting a church together with their parents. Notably the very young
children, around three or four, become rather upset when looking at Jesus
on the Cross. They ask about his suffering (“Does this not hurt him?”). All
in all, most conversations dealt with questions about God. From examples
like these, I draw my first conclusion: normally all conversations need some
initial stimulus in order to become acts of religious communication.

SOME FIRST GENERAL IMPRESSIONS AND OBSERVATIONS

In most cases that the mothers could remember, the children initiated the
conversations. They sprang up spontaneously at moments that were neither
foreseeable nor predetermined. The children asked about what struck them
and what they did not understand in religion. They want to learn and know
more about this. Everyday life and familiar surroundings become contexts
in which to raise such questions, which are appropriate circumstances and
important occasions for the children’s learning process. A mother writes,
“I was very much surprised by the unexpected twist of the conversation.”
Even in the course of unexceptional conversations that the parents feel they
can easily handle, it can come to unexpected turning points. In many cases
the parents react to this with silence; they are helpless and they avoid even
attempting to answer. Generally the adults become very confused. They feel
helpless, and they are uncertain whether they answered “properly.” They feel
overpowered by the sudden “religious attack.” A mother comments critically,
“In my opinion my answers are often too abstract for my little boy.” I take
this as an adequate proof of what I mentioned earlier. In the mother’s opinion
religion seems to be an abstract construction of theological doctrines, which,
as a consequence, can only be expressed in an abstract language that can
hardly be understood by “nonprofessionals” or “newcomers” to religion.
76  Andrea Schulte
The children do not always understand everything, but they strive toward
understanding and comprehension. They pick up those pieces of the adults’
answers that they feel they understand. They remain true to their individual
phase of development. The children in my data pool are between the ages
of three and seven. Thus according to Piaget they are at the stage of preop-
erational, concrete thinking or in the transition toward concrete and oper-
ational thinking. Their perceptions of God are mainly anthropomorphic.
The children want to know or learn something new about religion from
the adults. They demand the adults’ expert knowledge and they expect real
answers from them. They ask for things that they do not know or under-
stand. This reminds us of learning a foreign language. If someone who
learns a foreign language does not have a certain word or if the person does
not understand something he or she asks, “What is the word for . . . ?” or
“What is the meaning of . . . ?”

INTERPRETATION AND ANALYSIS OF THE CONVERSATIONS

Possible Traces of the Parents’ Religion

Let us again look at my opening example. The mother is familiar with the
Christian religious tradition, and she does, of course, employ the familiar
religious or rather theological language game (i.e., Sprachspiel) about God’s
trinity, colored by her subjective understanding. The daughter accepts her
mother’s explanation. She asks about the “large bird” that she is not famil-
iar with: “Is it a God, too?” In her imagination many Gods are possible. Her
mother gives an abstract and ambitious answer. First of all, she calls a dove
a dove. Then she goes on to address the deeper, symbolic meaning of the
dove and sets out to explain the trinity of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.
The girl seems to be satisfied with this answer. When seeing some doves on
the roof of the church she adapts her mother’s explanation to her own hori-
zon. She ‘translates’ it and comes to the conclusion that every dove is a Holy
Spirit. Therefore, many doves are many Holy Spirits. “Is this also a God?”
the girl had first asked. The question corresponds to her final logical con-
clusion. There are many gods in her religious imagination. Alternatively, she
translated her mother’s explanation to herself: God, and Jesus, and the Holy
Spirit they are all a god, and her conclusion can consistently build on this.
I will give you another example. One evening before going to sleep, a
six-year-old girl talks with her mother about the crucifixion of Jesus. The
girl wants to know, “Does it hurt Jesus when he hangs on the Cross? Surely,
he is God and he can see to it that it does not hurt him.” Her mother
answers, “I believe that it really hurts him very much for he is also human.”
The mother goes on: “I think that Jesus has accepted all his pains. Although
he is God he wants to know about the pains which humans can suffer. Then
he understands how we feel when something terrible happens to us and he
can help us.”
 Translating Religion between Parents and Children 77
Let me advance this point: Parents employ an abstract, advanced, specifi-
cally religious or theological language game with close links to the Christian
religious tradition. They are experienced in moving within the domain of
‘religion.’ They express the theological or religious content with great flu-
ency. This means that because they know about the symbolic meaning of
religious language, their linguistic performance is practiced at an advanced
level of abstraction. Speaking of a process of translating, the parallel is that,
just like communicating in a foreign language, the one using a foreign lan-
guage absorbs the utterances that he understands and then continues his
communication at this level. The competent native speaker in religion, that
is, the parent, confers the work of translation to the children.
What follows from this for the parents’ religion? Parents express their
religion by employing an abstract, advanced, and religious-theological lan-
guage game (Sprachspiel) that they simply hand over to the children for
translation. And in addition, in the given example of Jesus’s suffering at the
cross, it looks as if the mother also translates; at least she somehow tries
to put the traditional abstract dogma into a simpler language and hori-
zon of understanding. The girl’s question about Jesus’s real suffering on the
cross, which obviously roused the girl’s compassion, provokes the mother
to give not a ‘classical’ theological answer about the meaning of Jesus’s
death (e.g., salvation), but to interpret Jesus’s suffering as an expression of
his compassion with humans. Through this she gives a ‘translation’ that is
much more comprehensible and intelligible for her daughter. As a conclu-
sion, on one hand, adults try to teach children what ‘religion’ is. And on the
other hand, the parents themselves learn something new about their own
views and ideas about religion and their ways of understanding religion.

Possible Traces of the Children’s Religion

Playing in the sandbox a five-year-old boy asks his mother about the world’s
beginning. His mother answers, “God created the world.” And the boy asks,
“But how has he built all this around us, mom, where does all this come
from?” His mother is slightly unnerved. She answers, “He has not built it.
But I really don’t know how he has managed it. I am not God.”
“God created the world”—thus the mother’s initial answer. In theologically
correct terms she speaks about God as the “creator of heaven and earth.” The
boy translates this utterance into the concrete and clear profane term “to
build”; that is, the boy is also translating (perhaps without realizing it) when
characterizing God as a “craftsman.” The mother does not like the answer:
Actually, you cannot talk of “building.” Just like in translating or learning a
foreign language she, as a ‘native speaker of religion,’ tries to correct her son’s
language game and in doing so she defines ‘things religious.’ But at the same
time, her religion or religious view is also changed through the conversation
with her son. Being ‘provoked’ by his translation, she has doubts about the
meaning of a theological dogma that has been familiar to her up to now.
78  Andrea Schulte
Consider another situation: when being asked why we celebrate Easter
a seven-year-old boy explains to his parents and his younger brother: “We
celebrate Easter because the Romans crucified Jesus. Then he died and after
three days he got up again and all were cheerful, and that’s why we celebrate
Easter.”
The children express their religious beliefs by using a clear and concrete
idiom. They use the everyday language with which they are familiar. Chil-
dren express their religion by using a plain and profane vocabulary (‘get up’
instead of ‘be resurrected’). They have a concrete or operational thinking.

How Do Children Learn to Use Religious Language?

A neighbor of the family has died. After the funeral the adults talk about
their memories of the neighbor. While he was still alive, he liked to sit in the
garden under a cherry tree. The six-year-old son asks, “Is Mister D now in
heaven with God?” The mother confirms this. “Is there also a cherry tree
and a garden?” The mother thinks hard and confirms this, too. Now the
eight-year-old son intervenes. He asks, “Mom, if Mister D is with God now,
can he also play football?” His mother agrees again. He goes on: “Does
God play football with him?” His younger brother pipes up: “What a stupid
question! Sure he plays football with God, and God also sits together with
him under the cherry tree when he needs a break. With God he is not left
alone.”
These children express their religious beliefs about the afterlife. Accord-
ing to their concrete thinking, the neighbor simply continues his previous
earthly life when he is in heaven with God. There he has a garden, too,
complete with his beloved cherry tree. Even there he can continue his leisure
activities of playing football and God is his new teammate. The parents do
not intervene or correct their children. They confirm their children’s cur-
rent religious beliefs. According to their cognitive development the children
express their beliefs in everyday language. The parents send out the signal:
we talk to you at your current level of proficiency in religious language.
We can, in fact, communicate about religion at the level of your current
linguistic competence. And furthermore, the children help the parents see
something they do not see anymore. Because of the comforting image of
the neighbor’s ‘good life’ in heaven in which his former earthly life finds
its somehow concrete continuation the mother lets herself be touched and
emotionally enriched. This is again an example that through their children’s
‘translation work,’ parents gain a different perspective on religion.
A three-year-old boy asks his mother, “Mom, what does God look like?”
His mother asks back, “How do you imagine God?” He is a bit uncertain.
He hesitates with his answer. His mother encourages him: “Well, try to
imagine what he looks like in your view?” His mother’s encouragement
leads to a puzzling answer: “He is red, yellow, orange, and very bright.” His
mother answers: “Oh, this is a lovely image.”
 Translating Religion between Parents and Children 79
The mother cleverly modifies her son’s question by drawing it into a
theological context. We cannot make any reliable, assured statements about
God. But we can express our personal and subjective beliefs about God. The
mother translates her son’s religious question into the theological semantics
of subjective beliefs about God. She challenges him to give an autonomous
religious answer. She trusts the boy’s capacity for this and stimulates his
religious (linguistic) competence, which culminates in an abstract and sub-
jective idea of God. Notice that the boy is able to give an abstract answer
because his cognition is challenged. His answer does not fit into Piaget’s
theory. Thus, any strict assumptions about an absolutely necessary sequence
of stages of cognitive development are qualified. We are encouraged to be
more flexible in handling this theory.

How is the Children’s Religion Translated into

the Parents’ Religion?
After a serious accident which a mother and her daughter witnessed in the
street, the six-year-old girl, still moved by what she has seen, asks, “Mom,
if you have an accident and you die and you get into heaven and I live
on—what will happen then?” Her mother answers, “Then your dad and
your grandparents will take care of you. You are not alone!” The girl
answers, “No, I do not mean that. I want to know how I will find you in
heaven when I get to heaven much later than you!” Her mother is surprised.
She did not expect this turn in the conversation. She keeps silent. Now the
daughter gives herself the answer: “I know, I will simply look around in
heaven and find a nice place, and you must be there.” The mother feels a bit
uneasy about this answer. She asks, “Don’t you think that it is nice all over
in heaven?” The six-year-old girl accepts her mother’s objection, and replies,
“Well, then we’ll do it like this. In heaven there are God and Jesus and we
meet each other near God and Jesus.” “That is a good idea!” her mother
answers, agreeing.
The girl’s religious knowledge about the afterlife leads to an easygoing
attitude toward a possible early death of her mother. She is sure about meet-
ing her mother again in heaven close to God and Jesus. What puzzles her is
the problem of where to find her mother because surely heaven must be vast.
Her mother hesitates, which motivates her daughter to give an adequate
answer herself; her mother must be in some nice place. Her mother feels a
bit uncomfortable on religious grounds, because according to the Christian
tradition heaven cannot be divided into pleasant and unpleasant places. Her
daughter can cope with this answer and suggests meeting near God and
Jesus, those who ‘own’ heaven.
The six-year-old girl has solid beliefs concerning the afterlife that she han-
dles in a creative and linguistically clever way. Thanks to this, her mother’s
silence does not lead to an abrupt end of thinking and communicating. On
the contrary, the girl goes on employing the language game that she already
80  Andrea Schulte
knows. A further point, however, is that the mother has doubts regarding
her daughter’s religious beliefs concerning distinct places in heaven. This is
because she translates her daughter’s thoughts into the traditional symbolic
semantics concerning heaven and then sees a conflict. In addition, this is
another example of how the children’s use of their own religious language,
their translation of traditional religious language, has a great influence on
the parents. The mother feels inspired by her daughter’s creative view and,
in a way, opens her traditional semantics for new and undogmatic views.

FINAL QUESTIONS

Is “Translation” a Suitable Concept for Categorizing Conversations

about Religion between Parents and Children?
In a broad sense we speak of ‘translating’ with regard to the process by
which some utterance is transferred from one language into another, either
literally or with generous freedom. Furthermore, we use ‘translating’ to
make a technical language more easily understood. Thus, we ask, for exam-
ple, “Can you translate for me these technical terms?” In both cases we are
dealing with the same linguistic process of understanding each other con-
cerning ‘things religious.’
The examples I used in this chapter refer to such linguistic processes.
We are talking about religious communication between parents and their
children. The medium for this communication is language. It is certainly
appropriate to speak of ‘translating’ when our basic assumption is that we
are confronted with two different languages in any act of parent–child com-
munication about religion. The one language is translated into the other. Is
this assumption justified? On one hand, there is the religious language of
the adults. They use it to express their individual religious beliefs, which
are mainly informed by the Christian tradition. And they identify religious
language as a symbolic language. On the other hand, there is the children’s
everyday language. They rely on it for their ‘concrete thinking,’ and depend-
ing on what their previous knowledge is, they use it to express their religious
beliefs. Just like in the process of learning a foreign language, children are
well on the way to learning and understanding a religious language.
For the adults, religious language is predominantly abstract and sym-
bolic. The children, in contrast, use a concrete everyday language according
to their age. The children try to understand the religious content expressed
by language. Just like learning a foreign language, they ask for the meaning
of a given religious content. Essentially, they ask, “Can you translate this or
that technical term of the religious language for me?” “Can you translate
it into a language which I understand?” and “Can I translate it like this?”
The parents have two options. Either they can try to confirm the children’s
religious utterances: “Surely, you can translate it for yourself in this way.”
Or they correct, complement, or elaborate on what was said.
 Translating Religion between Parents and Children 81
Against this background, conversations between parents and children
must be seen as efforts to achieve a mutual understanding in a religious
language and as a process of religious communication. The children wrestle
with the problem of meaning. They are trying to make sense of religious
communication by practicing basic religious semantics. The aim of trans-
lating is to arrive at some kind of shared understanding in religion through
discovering a common language and eventually speaking a common lan-
guage. This is an attempt at opening the semantic contents of traditional
Christian language games for children in order to support them in finding
their religious identity.
However, there is one aspect that must not be overlooked. In the exam-
ples I have quoted, there is no fundamental lack of understanding. Parents
and children already share a common basis of understanding each other.
With the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein we can say that they use their
individual language games (Sprachspiel) but the games have a certain sim-
ilarity or ‘family resemblance’ (Familienähnlichkeit).7 From the beginning,
mutual understanding is facilitated by the fact that the language games
in question are open to each other at their respective margins, as it were.
Therefore, concerning the given examples, we must admit that the children
in question already have a concept of ‘religion’. They do not see “God” in
the same category as “E.T.” or their current favorite fantasy heroes. God is
part of a ‘family construction’ called trinity. He is in relationship with Jesus
and the Holy Spirit. He is in close contact with all human beings, during
their lifetime as well as during their afterlife. He remains human so that peo-
ple can always trust in him. And, last but not least, he is not an omnipotent
hero who can successfully manage all dangerous adventures. Like humans,
he can suffer and fail.

What Is Translated, and How?

From a linguistic point of view we can say that the technical terms of the
language (of) ‘religion’ are translated into an everyday language which chil-
dren can understand and vice versa. Parents translate the religious utter-
ances of their children into the technical language (of) ‘religion’. In these
acts of translating, religious contents and religious propositions, that is, a
basic knowledge about specific religious beliefs, should be taught (conveyed
to the children based on what they themselves express). The children in turn
try to translate the mostly symbolic and abstract language of their parents
into a concrete language in an attempt to get closer to religion and to give
some meaning to religious images and beliefs. In a corresponding process,
the parents try to translate what is abstract into what is concrete. Thus, they
try to make the traditional Christian language game, which, to a certain
extent, is always shaped by their own personal way of relating to it, acces-
sible for their children by expressing their own subjective interpretation of
religion or theology. In trying to use their own language the children man-
age not to imitate the adults’ language but to produce their own. In doing
82  Andrea Schulte
so, the children reflect the parents’ attempts at translating. As a result, the
parents start learning much about themselves and their ‘religion.’
How does translation work? I assume that parents try to give their chil-
dren an understanding of religious propositions in an elementary and sim-
plified way. They are the ones who know about the children’s individual
horizon of understanding. As one mother put it, “How do I explain the
crucifixion of Jesus to a three-year-old child?”

What Is Lost? What Is Gained?

Being ‘new citizens’ in the world, children make their discoveries from day
to day and get familiar with the world bit by bit. Thus, they also want to
discover the unknown world of religion or even religions. In my view, it is a
great bonus if they are supported on this way to exploring what is unknown
by parents who make an earnest effort to enable them to get closer to an
understanding of ‘things religious’ through a fair and serious communi-
cation process. With this, parents contribute to a circulation of religious
traditions between the generations and advance their children’s religious
development and socialization.
I cannot, at this stage, provide a final and definite judgment on what may
be lost in this communicative translation of religion. If we consider symbols
to be the essential language of religion, we must reflect on the problem of
what happens to the symbolic contents of religion and of religious language
when parents translate their religion to children and vice versa. Therefore,
further investigation is necessary to explain the whole role of symbols in
translation.

General Conclusions Concerning Translating Religion

I suggest that we draw the following general conclusions from my present
insights:

1. Translating religion requires an increased awareness of hermeneutic

differences. We must give much attention to the presuppositions of a
translation process. Who is involved in the process (i.e., the question
of ‘senders’ and ‘addressees’)? My research focuses on the face-to-face
communication between parents and children. The respective address-
ees are of different ages, and therefore according to their cognitive
development, they contribute different preconditions for understand-
ing and different levels of knowledge about religion to the translation
process.
2. Translating religion is a communicative process or a performative
act of speaking. My research addresses communication in language.
The parents are confronted with unexpected twists of conversations
in which they are challenged to do some work of translation. So they
 Translating Religion between Parents and Children 83
must react spontaneously and use their competence in translation ‘live
on stage.’ Perhaps it would be helpful to introduce the term performa-
tive translation to qualify their endeavor to invite their children into
their system of religion.
3. Translating religion has something to do with the self-commitment of
those who are involved in the translation process. Everyone involved
should aim for a consensus about certain ‘things religious.’ This
aim should be agreed upon between the participants. But this is not
always the case when translating religion. Sometimes translations fail
because of misunderstandings for various reasons (i.e., the cognitive
differences of the communicative partners). Furthermore, what is to
be translated and understood always includes the subjective view or
interpretation of those participating in the translation process. There-
fore, the children’s subjective view of how to talk about God has some
influence on the parents. They themselves learn something new about
their own views and ideas of religion and their ways of understanding
religion.

In religious conversations parents know about their children’s understand-

ing and from the start they try to take their children’s level of understand-
ing into account. Many translation processes can be seen as at least partial
successes. However, there is a risk that the adults keep to their own adult
language game.
In the course of my current studies it has become obvious that compe-
tence in translating religion is bound to particular occasions and can only
be acquired in particular situations. Meanings arise from interaction. Devel-
opmental stages of the children do matter. We can realize the importance of
parents’ competences mainly in situations when understanding of religious
traditions, of religious praxis, and religious language is not yet available
to the children and needs to be acquired. Here the social nature of com-
munication comes to the fore. Let me conclude by emphasizing that the
aim of communication is to come to mutual understanding. Only then is
communication meaningful; only then can it produce meaning; only then
can it preserve meaning. Its liberating value consists in engaging children in
producing meaning.

NOTES

1. Jean Piaget, Meine Theorie der geistigen Entwicklung, ed. Reinhard Fatke
(Weinheim: Beltz, 2003).
2. Fritz Oser and Paul Gmünder, Der Mensch—Stufen seiner religiösen Entwick-
lung. Ein strukturgenetischer Ansatz (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus,
1996); and James W. Fowler, Stufen des Glaubens. Die Psychologie der men-
schlichen Entwicklung und die Suche nach Sinn (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Ver-
lagshaus, 1991).
84  Andrea Schulte
3. The cognitive direction of this project mainly reveals a narrow concept of reli-
gion. In the following I do not want to reduce religion to knowledge for there
are also experiences, rites, feelings, and so forth. But because of my particular
concern with communication processes based on language, I am focusing on
religious content and religious propositions.
4. Petra Freudenberger-Lötz, Theologische Gespräche mit Kindern. Untersu-
chungen zur Professionalisierung Studierender und Anstöße zu forschendem
Lernen im Religionsunterricht (Stuttgart: Calwer, 2007).
5. John M. Hull, Wie Kinder über Gott reden! Ein Ratgeberf für Eltern und
Erziehende (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1997).
6. It is important to mention that general and religious linguistic competences
are not identical. This also refers to the linguistic ability to understand religion
and to speak in a religious language. The German academic Anke Edelbrock
emphasizes that there is a close connection between language and knowledge
in the field of religion. Children are not able to name and describe things if
they do not know them. There is also a clear link between linguistic compe-
tence, knowledge, and experience. Therefore, deficiencies in language can be
seen as direct consequences of deficiencies in knowledge. See Anke Edelbrock,
Friedrich Schweitzer, and Albert Biesinger, eds., Wie viele Götter sind im Him-
mel? Religiöse Differenzwahrnehmung im Kindesalter (Münster: Waxmann,
2010), 34.
7. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen, Werkausgabe 2
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977), 57.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Edelbrock, Anke, Friedrich Schweitzer, and Albert Biesinger, eds. Wie viele Göt-
ter sind im Himmel? Religiöse Differenzwahrnehmung im Kindesalter. Münster:
Waxmann, 2010.
Fowler, James W. Stufen des Glaubens: Die Psychologie der menschlichen Entwick-
lung und die Suche nach Sinn. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1991.
Freudenberger-Lötz, Petra. Theologische Gespräche mit Kindern: Untersuchungen
zur Professionalisierung Studierender und Anstöße zu forschendem Lernen im
Religionsunterricht. Stuttgart: Calwer, 2007.
Hull, John M. Wie Kinder über Gott reden! Ein Ratgeber für Eltern und Erziehende.
Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1997.
Oser, Fritz, and Paul Gmünder. Der Mensch—Stufen seiner religiösen Entwicklung:
Ein strukturgenetischer Ansatz. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1996.
Piaget, Jean. Meine Theorie der geistigen Entwicklung. Edited by Reinhard Fatke.
Weinheim: Beltz, 2003.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophische Untersuchungen. Werkausgabe 2. Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977.
5 Thick Translation of Religion
between Cultures
The Basel Mission in Ghana
Ulrike Sill

In the case of Africa, translating religion in the literal sense of ‘transferring’

a religion from A to B appears to be a success story when one looks at the
sheer numbers.1 It seems that in Africa it has been possible successfully to
introduce non-native religions. So in the twenty-first century both Islam and
Christianity are major religious traditions in Africa. But translation is also
important in another sense. In both religions a holy book plays a major role.
With regard to translation in the narrow sense of translating from a source
language to a target language, there are notable differences between Islam
and Christianity. The Qur’an has to be read, recited, and memorized in
Arabic, whereas the Bible has been translated into many local African lan-
guages. Lamin Sanneh, in his seminal study “Translating the Message,” has
argued that Christianity has, therefore, maintained links with pre-Christian
local notions and ideas2—one can say in short that according to him it has
retained links to African cultures—because otherwise a successful transla-
tion would not have been possible. He also emphasized African agency, that
is, the agency of people with African origins, as a major factor in ‘trans-
lating Christian religion’ understood in the narrow sense of translating a
text, namely, the Bible, as well as in the broader sense of the transferring
of an entire religion.3 We should be cautious of the stereotypical view that
the spreading of Christianity in Africa has in all cases alienated Africans
from their cultural roots. While various case studies indicate that this is too
broad a generalization, this stereotype sensitizes one to the issue of power
relations—such a stereotype reflects the experiences of European colonial-
ism in its different shapes.
The following case study focuses on a pre- to early colonial setting on the
Gold Coast/southern Ghana, roughly from the 1820s to the 1880s, and on
an important and famous Protestant missionary society, the Basel Mission.4
It draws on Kwame Anthony Appiah’s approach of thick translation,5 which
focuses on the process of negotiating meaning rather than on losses and
gains. Yet, it can be used for our purposes because this approach also raises
the issue of the potential consequences of translating between cultures. If a
translation matters, it can hardly be without consequences. And one may,
86  Ulrike Sill
then, consider from the perspective of those involved in this process of trans-
lation where potential losses and gains might be.
Even now the Basel Mission’s 19th-century linguistic work is recognized
in Ghana. Examples of such work include the collection of 3,600 Akan (Twi)
pro­verbs, published 1879,6 and then the Akan dictionary, put to print in
1881,7 which contains a wealth of linguistic and ethnographic information.
With regard to the Basel Mission’s historic translation enterprise, and not
least the translation of the Bible, Cephas Omenyo a few years ago asked the
pertinent question that if the Basel missionaries had completely rejected the
local culture, how could it then be that this translation work reflects local
Ghanaian cultural, societal, political, and religious realities.8 On the one
hand, this is hardly surprising since the objective of this missionary society
was not so much to translate the Christian religion, understood as a collec-
tion of doctrines, but rather to translate it as a faith that might be lived. On
the other hand, the Basel Mission was a European organization set up to
propagate Christianity overseas and was highly Eurocentric. This complexity
is reflected in the fact that the sources available for reconstructing the story
of this enterprise are multifaceted. The many European missionaries, one
Ghanaian missionary, and from the 1870s the few Ghanaian pastors were
duty bound to report to Switzerland. The final decision on any matter was in
the hands of the Basel committee. But the sources also provide insights into a
Ghanaian discourse. This is partly due to the objective of the Basel Mission
but also partly due to the proto- to early colonial setting on the Gold Coast,
which was largely determined by Ghanaian actors, patterns, and structures.
Until the 1880s the Basel Mission had to largely act within these.
One can regard these reports as polyvalent texts that offer different read-
ings: “Mission reports thus become vivid platforms to study the negotiation
of meaning—meaning that seems to be stable and predetermined by Euro-
pean subject, but only at a first glance.”9 The enterprise of translating reli-
gion, in the broad as well as narrow sense, is a case in point. To reconstruct
some aspects of this story I choose the approach of thick translation pro-
posed by Kwame Anthony Appiah,10 because it can be situated at the inter-
face of language and culture. Appiah originally developed this approach
for teaching (African) literature in the context of American academia using
Akan proverbs as an example. Thus, his article is itself an attempt at trans-
lating between cultures, that is, from the oral forms of an African primary
language, Akan, to literary teaching in America. His first tenet is that literal
translation is, with rare exceptions, possible between cultures.11 The purpose
of thick translation goes beyond that and is, as he emphasizes, political: “To
offer our proverbs to American students is to invite them, by showing how
sayings can be used within an oral culture to communicate in ways that are
complex and subtle, to a deeper respect for the people of pre-industrial soci-
eties.”12 Or, to put it more broadly, the objective of such thick translation is
to create “genuinely informed respect for others.”13
 Thick Translation of Religion between Cultures 87
The thick translation suggested by Appiah builds on Clifford Geertz’s
approach of thick description, developed in the field of anthropology, inso-
far as thick translation attempts to understand an ‘utterance’ within the
original context and then aims not only to make this intelligible in another
context, but also to carry across its specific value:14

So that the reason why we cannot speak of the perfect translation here
is not that there is a definite set of desiderata and we know they cannot
all be met; it is rather that there is no definite set of desiderata. A trans-
lation aims to produce a new text that matters to one community the
way another text matters to another: but it is part of our understanding
of why texts matter that this is not a question that convention settles;
indeed, it is part of our understanding of literary judgement, that there
can always be new readings, new things that matter about a text, new
reasons for caring about new properties.15

Christianity, as the Basel Mission attempted to introduce it on the Gold

Coast, can be understood as such a ‘text’ that matters to one community
and where translation meant to produce a new ‘text’ which mattered in the
same way for another. The approach of thick translation rejects the notion
of a preconceived set of desiderata to decide on the success or failure of any
given translation; rather, it focuses on that which matters for the commu-
nities involved, which itself in turn emerges in the encounter between the
two communities. Yet, as Appiah states, his objective of translating ‘what
matters’ will not be without consequences. In his case it should lead to “gen-
uinely informed respect for others.”16 One may then wonder what the con-
sequences of translating religion in our case might be.
In our case and regarding translation in the narrow, textual sense, for
one involved community, the Basel Mission, the Bible was one thing that
had to matter, and the mission’s objective was to translate this text for the
communities on the Gold Coast. To translate the Bible, which itself reflected
the cultures of specific communities, into the context of other communities
would demand as a prerequisite a thick translation on the level of text. And
the collections of proverbs, as well as the Akan dictionary are cases in point
that such a thick translation eventually took place. Yet in our case the rele-
vant communities, one of which was the Akan already mentioned, and the
other the Ga, had no ‘literature’ other than oral at the beginning of the nine-
teenth century. While they did have a long history of encounters on the coast
with the transatlantic world, with a few exceptions no attempts at trans-
lating texts, as texts, into local African languages were made or sustained.
Rather, over the centuries a group of people emerged as ‘go-betweens’ or
middlemen and -women whose competence included the ability to act as
interpreters. This leads to the point that translating itself informs segments
of cultural patterns and precepts.
88  Ulrike Sill
For the Basel Mission, translating the Bible was seen as mandatory for
translating the Christian religion. But for other communities translating
texts as texts may not matter in the same way. This appears to have been
so for the societies on the Gold Coast well into the nineteenth century. In
its first part this chapter addresses this issue. It focuses on the patterns of
translating in the specific setting of the nineteenth-century Gold Coast. The
second part looks at how new patterns evolved in the context of the emerg-
ing Basel Mission communities, which eventually led to the thick translation
mentioned earlier.
While the Bible played a crucial role for Christianity as the Basel Mis-
sion understood it, equally important for this missionary society was that
the message of the biblical text translated into life as lived by individu-
als, as well as by a Christian community. Thick translation presupposes a
close look and close encounters to discern ‘what matters’; it is a relational
enterprise. But precisely where it focuses on ‘what matters’ and attempts
to translate this, it takes into account that this may affect the communities
involved in some way or other. The third part of the chapter deals with this
aspect, the potential consequences. It looks at one example where the Basel
Mission’s project of translating Christianity also into life-as-lived not only
added to the already plural religious landscape on the Gold Coast but also
affected what had been there and what had mattered before the arrival of
the mission. And it will sketch a few potential assessments of what could be
perceived as losses and gains in this process.

TALKING ABOUT ‘GOD’ IN A MULTILINGUAL

AND RELIGIOUSLY PLURAL SETTING

Appiah sees his own multilingual background as a motivating factor in his

theorizing about translation. For the region known today as southern Ghana
and known in the nineteenth century as the Gold Coast, multilingualism is
a consistent feature, consisting of both a great number of African languages
and languages from other parts of the world, especially Europe.17 There,
translating from one language into another is and was nothing extraordi-
nary. This also applies to terms concerning religion.
The collection of Akan proverbs published in 1879 illustrates how trans-
lating from one language into a second and third, appears to have been per-
ceived as quite unproblematic.18 This collection contains cross-references
to similar proverbs in another, earlier collection of proverbs from another
local African language, that the collection of Ga proverbs that were included
into the Grammatical Sketch of the Akra- or Ga-Language of 1858.19 This
collection also offered English translations for the Ga-proverbs. So, for
example, for the Akan proverb “Obi kyere abofra onyame,”20 the 1858
Ga collection offers the Ga equivalent and an English translation “Nobody
 Thick Translation of Religion between Cultures  89
shows heaven (or God, as whose face [i.e., visage], outside, heaven is con-
sidered) to a child (because it will see or know him by itself).”21 The Ga
term translated as ‘God’ here is given as Nyonmo and its Akan ‘equivalent’
is given as Onyame—both terms refer to ‘heaven/sky’ as well as to a spir-
itual power which in the Akan dictionary of 1881 is explained as being
at the apex of the spirit world; therefore, it often also is translated into
English as ‘Supreme Being’.22 The collections of proverbs thus reflect the
thick translation into which simple literal translations of single terms were
embedded. Thick translation, like thick description, involves close encoun-
ters. After 1847 a number of long-term survivors among the European
Basel Missionaries, some West Indians, and a number of Ghanaians, all
worked closely together with the Basel Mission’s official linguistic experts
in the translation project. Yet when the first European missionaries were
sent from Basel to the Gold Coast in 1828 this future development was
not as self-evident as it may appear from ‘Western’ perspective. The objec-
tive of the Basel Mission can be summarized as translating ‘the Message’
both in a narrow and in a broad sense, because for the missionaries it was
self-evident that this mattered because translating was not restricted to,
but included, translating texts, most prominently the Bible. Translating in
itself, however, forms part of cultural patterns and practices, and what may
appear as self-evident to one community may be an alien notion to another.
In the case of the Gold Coast one might say that not only words were
considered translatable, but to some extent translating religion could quite
literally also take place insofar as a source of spiritual power related to a
deity (Akan: obosom) might be brought from A to B and be installed there
in a shrine.23 Just as such a source of spiritual power might move from A to
B, so people might travel from various other places C, D, E, and so forth
to B to visit this shrine in order to draw on its spiritual resources. But they
might just as well, or in addition, go and visit another shrine of another
deity in another place. Depending on its ‘success,’ a shrine might flourish or
fall into decline, and it might become popular again at a later stage. Indeed,
one gets the impression of a fluid and acutely plural religious situation.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, in some of the coastal trading
forts or in their neighboring settlements, small groups of Christians existed,
many of their members being of Euro-African descent. But while there
had been attempts to translate a few important texts of Christian religious
practice, such as the “Lord’s Prayer” into local African languages, usually
Christian books in European languages were used. There existed a rich oral
culture in Ga and Akan, of which the proverbs bear witness, but hardly any
texts in local African languages existed that were studiable in a traditional
European sense, that is, linguistic entities with which Europeans would be
familiar. So from a European perspective the effort of translation lacked its
prerequisite—existing literature. And locally there appears to have been no
sustained interest in changing this situation.
90  Ulrike Sill
Because of the coast’s long history of contacts across the Atlantic, patterns
developed that employed local middlepersons to negotiate contacts between
Europeans and Ghanaians. This also applied to the first Basel missionaries;
they were restricted to the sphere of influence of the Danish on the coast and
they hardly survived for a longer time. When in 1835 Andreas Riis made his
historic move to Akuropon, the capital of the small Akan hinterland state
of Akuapem, this was largely due to and directed by a Euro-African middle-
man, George Lutterodt.
As opposed to the established patterns on the coast, the policy of the
Basel Mission was to use what was called the ‘mother tongue’ in church
and school. The missionaries were supposed to learn what were considered
‘local’ languages in the areas where they were active. In accordance with
this, in Akuropon Andreas Riis sampled a word list of the local form of
the Akan language, Akuapem-Twi, before he was called back in 1839 to
Basel for consultation with the Home Board. He returned to Akuropon in
1843 together with a few other European Basel missionaries and a group of
Christian settlers from the Caribbean, recruited there from liberated slaves.
It soon became clear that Riis’s sample word list and an initial Akan primer,
based on that list, were of no practical use. This did not invalidate the Basel
policy with regard to the use of local languages, but Riis’s word list and the
primer did indicate that an effective implementation of this policy on the
Gold Coast was not, at first, possible. Locally this appears not to have posed
any serious problems in Akuropon. Negotiated again by middlepersons from
the coast, the Basel group had been accompanied by an interpreter, George
Reynolds, a Methodist from the Fante area, where a form of Akan was
also spoken. The first Basel Mission school in Akuropon was conducted in
English, the first Christian sermons, prayers and hymns were in English, and
where necessary these were translated into Akan by George Reynolds. From
a Gold Coast perspective, it might have looked as though the Basel Mission
was adhering to the then established patterns.
As opposed to the Basel policy of favoring what it considered local lan-
guages, the use of English corresponded with local Gold Coast interests at
that time. While the local African religion was associated with local African
languages, in the 1840s and 1850s Christianity largely appears to have been
associated with the emerging modern elite and with English.24 This social
group developed among the middlemen and -women, many of whom were of
Euro-African descent, which is also reflected in family names such as Hesse,
Lutterodt, VanderPuye, Reindorf, and Reynolds. This social group incorpo-
rated elements of European culture into their lifestyle: wearing a European
style of dress, at times combined with local styles, European-style education
as a social marker, and speaking European languages, especially English,
as well as local African languages. From the 1850s onward they played a
crucial role in generating a public sphere on the coast with locally owned
English newspapers with a largely local readership, which gradually spread
into the hinterland. It is hardly surprising, then, that the Basel Mission was
 Thick Translation of Religion between Cultures  91
requested, in 1843, to establish an ‘English school’ in Christiansborg, the
Danish trading fort, and neighboring settlements. In Akuapem, the Akuro-
pon elders, and others expressed a similar interest in establishing a mission
school that would teach English.
In the 1840s and 1850s people on the Gold Coast appear to have seen no
necessity for the translation of Christian texts into local African languages.
The role of English is reflected in the draft for the regulations of the Basel
Mission’s congregations from 1852. It stipulated that “Natives who speak
English but understand their country’s language as well cannot demand that
the English language be used during the baptism of their children. Their
mother tongue shall be used especially on behalf of the witnesses of the
baptism and the congregation, who usually do not understand English.”25
The prerequisite of this rule is that a sufficient number of English-speakers
existed who wanted to use this language in public, for example, on occa-
sions such as a baptismal service. A report from the end of the same year,
1852, documents the importance of the Euro-Africans in the small Chris-
tiansborg congregation, with about 50 percent of its members coming from
this group.26 The interest in using English for an occasion such as a baptism
indicates that by the mid-nineteenth century competence in English was no
longer only a business asset but also a social marker.27
For the Basel Mission, the use of English in regions where this was not
the mother tongue was contrary to its perceptions of language in general
and also specifically of language and Christianity. Against Ghanaian notions
and the patterns that had locally emerged, the ‘language work’ of the Basel
Mission that focused on local African languages and was supposed to priv-
ilege them in church and in school, frustrated the expectations of the local
actors on the Gold Coast.28 The following paragraphs provide a sketch of
how, against this background, a Christian linguistic practice in local African
languages could emerge.

TRANSLATING IN THE CONTEXT OF A NEW COMMUNITY

From the mid-1840s, women and men of the Gold Coast were shaping the
new collective identity of the Basel Mission community. This process involved
appreciation, rejection, adaptation, incorporation, and innovation in relation
to the cultures of the people among whom the community was emerging.
Translating as part of a multilingual setting, which also changed over time,
predates the first European missionaries and is still an ongoing process. But
now we see the emergence of a ‘home base’ for a Christian linguistic practice
associated with local African primary languages with Basel Mission involve-
ment, and thus potentially linked to important aspects of local cultures. It
also translated a variety of Akan (Akuapem-Twi), as well as Ga, into what
was then state-of-the-art European conceptions of languages, creating gram-
mars, dictionaries, and the attendant emerging literature.
92  Ulrike Sill
The context of the linguistic efforts of the Basel missionaries was the
multilingualism of the Gold Coast and its dynamic linguistic landscape.
A suitable model to describe and explain the situation for Accra and the
surrounding areas (which incidentally also covers the area of the first Basel
Mission communities), is the patron–client or host–guest relationship, for
which Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu convincingly argues in her sociolinguis-
tic history of Accra. It is “enacted as the relationship between host and guest
that historically pervades economic and political relations and, indeed, can
be viewed as embodying the ‘speaking rules’ of a cultural area—in a very
broad sense its rules of performance.”29 Interactions should be carried on
in such a way as to reach the “ultimate goal of strengthening that relation-
ship.” Kropp Dakubu explains how the client/guest approaches the patron/
host and that therefore the patron/host determines the course of the com-
munication: “The visitor or client (or employee or subordinate of any kind)
who cannot respond in the language chosen by the host, loses face or polit-
ical ground.”30 Therefore, in formal and semiformal situations intermediary
speakers or interpreters were involved. Knopp Dakubu explains how, there-
fore, Portuguese and English had to acquire a ‘home base’ to continue to
exist permanently in a context in which they were at first unknown.
In the case of the newly emerging mission community the mission sta-
tion in Akuropon, Akuapem (quickly followed by Aburi) became its first
‘home base’ in an Akan-speaking community. In a complex process full of
conflicts and involving many various actors, this community emerged as a
distinct socioreligious sphere with its own set of norms, values, and source
of spiritual power, Onyame. This space had to be negotiated according to
local terms. The efficacy of the new spiritual resource introduced by the
Basel missionaries, which they called Onyame like the Supreme Being at the
apex of the Akan pantheon, was also put to the test in the context of local
knowledge and practices. A descendant of an Okuapemhene in the male line
(oheneba) and the first, and for a long time the last, Ghanaian Basel mission-
ary, David Asante, experimented with a food taboo during his time at the
catechist training seminar to find out about the power of the new spiritual
option for himself.31 One woman turned to Christianity and consequently
took on the name Hanna, because after her family had already urged her to
leave her husband (because the couple had no children), she became preg-
nant and had a safe delivery after visiting church services.32 Healing also
played a prominent role. Because dreams were a locally known medium for
messages from the spirit realm, Amadi Otutu asked for baptism after an
illness and a dream that he understood as a message from ‘God.’33 Onyame
was introduced by the European missionaries in a process of continuous
exchange and of trial and error and translated into local Akuapem religious
practices and notions, that is, into aspects that mattered according to local
Akuapem perceptions.
After 1843, missionary households and, to a lesser extent, schools gradu-
ally fostered personal, friendly relationships between members of the Euro-
pean staff and people from the local communities. These were important
 Thick Translation of Religion between Cultures  93
because they allowed for a closer exchange on linguistic matters in gen-
eral. In the face of inherent ambiguities in the host–guest relationship of the
missionary community, these friendships provided the opportunity for an
exchange on more open and equal terms, because they were taking place in
an environment that offered ‘informal’ space in which negotiable exchange
could take place. They were mostly found among members of the same sex.
Examples include relationships between David Asante and the Basel Mis-
sion’s official expert for Akan, Johann Gottlieb Christaller; between The-
ophil Opoku, one of the first Ghanaian pastors of the Basel Mission, and
Johann Adam Mader, its second and highly influential inspector of schools;
and between Julie Mohr, the second headmistress of the Aburi Girls Board-
ing School, and Rosann Miller, the senior teacher there. It was in this con-
text that linguistic and other discoveries about the respective communities
were made and documented.
The efforts to learn local languages implied an effort to translate in two
directions, one of adapting the local languages to European patterns of lan-
guage perception and the other of adapting European perceptions to these
languages. David Asante finally made Christaller aware of a phenomenon,
which turned out to be absolutely vital. Christaller wrote in 1855,

In the past in relation to this question [i.e., work on the Akan language]
it has been as though we were travelling by night in a tropical land and
imagining our surroundings to be like European ones. David Dieterle
[Asante] . . . said to me: ‘What would always provide the most diffi-
culties for us would be the accentuation [of the words]. Only after this
comment did I realise the importance of the issue.34

Only after Asante had given Christaller this crucial hint about what we
now call tonality in Akan did his linguistic work become calculable and
capable of systematization. At the same time because of the slowly emerging
capacity in Akuapem-Twi of other European missionaries, they gradually
were able to develop a deeper or ‘thicker’ knowledge of local notions and
practices. So, for instance, during a lesson at the ‘middle school,’ the pupils
and the European missionary teacher discovered the similarities in electing
the head of an Akan state with electing a German king, where in both com-
munities the electing had to heed the ‘blood,’ that is, descent.35 They also
understood better what, for example, osofo meant. This Akan term used to
designate both the missionaries as well as a local category of priest.36 Sim-
ilarly, the missionaries were also able to communicate more clearly what
mattered to them about Christianity.

TRANSLATING ‘WHAT MATTERS’

This newly introduced religious option offered new opportunities and not
merely as an addition to the already diverse religious landscape. In the
94  Ulrike Sill
context of the new community there was not only continuity, but also inno-
vation. For example, in this new mission community any source of spiritual
power apart from Onyame/God was demonized;37 literacy in an African
language was mandatory because of its relevance in the religious sphere;
new family patterns and new models of conjugal life were introduced; there
were new notions of individual rights and their limits; and women gradu-
ally gained access to the production of a new, additional type of clothing
(while cloth production until then had been a male domain). One can won-
der about the potential gains or losses of such innovations, but one may also
in retrospect assess potential losses and gains in translating religion between
cultures.
In 1843, there appears to have been a group of people in Akuapem
already interested in innovations, voicing interest, for example, in an
‘English School’; others, however, at first expected local deities to have
members of the mission group killed by large predators, which, however,
never came to pass. Instead after a few years the surrounding non-Christian
community appears to have drawn on the mission group to find out about
breaching a local taboo: In 1848 one of the elders, whose name is not on
record, not only encouraged them to use stone as a building material, which
the mission group until then had been explicitly forbidden, but also supplied
the material. Yet, while the European missionaries expected that acts like
this indicated that the ‘credibility’ of local deities was about to be seriously
undermined and that they would eventually collapse, this did not happen
either. Still there were instances where the attempt to translate ‘what mat-
tered’ led to changes in local, non-Christian practices.
So-called six-fingered children were a notable case where translating ‘what
mattered’ to the European missionaries translated into a new practice not
only for Christians but also for the surrounding community. These children
were born with an appendix resembling a sixth finger. At the beginning of
the nineteenth century in the Akan communities of Akuapem, for example,
Aburi and Akuropon, such children were customarily put to death—in all
likelihood because their presence appeared to be a threat to the well-being of
the community.38 In the course of learning the local language, the European
missionaries found out about this practice, and—one can deduce from their
reports on its change—they voiced reservations about it. General, personal
rights were a sensitive topic for the Basel Mission. (Through its connections
to the British missionary movement it was associated with abolitionism, and
it had a very clear stance on the issues of slave trade and slavery.) The topic
appears in the Akan primer of 1859 in two pieces, one addressing slave
trade, the other mortuary slaying, and both topics were still issues in Akua-
pem at the time. In the primer, the understanding of humans as ‘God’s own’
was introduced to ground personal rights in any given situation. This, one
can assume, must also have applied to the killing of six-fingered children.
Until the 1850s the European missionaries were never informed about
the birth of such children in time for an intervention. It was only when the
 Thick Translation of Religion between Cultures  95
first young women in Akuropon, whose names are not on record, officially
turned to Christianity in 1854 that they began to inform local mission-
ary women about such births. After negotiations that involved the senior
women and men of the ‘house’ it was decided that the infant could live at
the mission station with the Widmann family without posing a threat to
the community.39 This was almost immediately followed by a second case.
There were, however, some reservations, as the attitudes of some of the
non-Christian girls and young women living in the missionary household
of the Widmann’s show. These young women and girls were reluctant to
touch the child and two families had the young woman belonging to them
removed from the mission station. Yet after the baptism of these children,
non-Christian women from Akuropon came to the mission station: one
woman put one of the children to her breast, a number of senior women
‘blessed’ Rosina Widmann, and some stated that from now on they would
always bring such children to the mission station.40 From such instances one
can deduce that in all likelihood the intervention of the young Christian
women had been prenegotiated with some influential, senior persons of the
local community.
The ‘translation’ of six-fingered children to the mission station was the
beginning of a new pattern for the Christian as well as for the non-Christian
community. It comprises the aspect of translation as transfer in a literal
sense, as well as ‘translation’ as an interpretation in a conceptual sense. In
the case of the mission station both aspects converge. This new socioreli-
gious sphere, which involved European missionaries, West Indian settlers,
Akuapem ‘commoners,’ and Akuropon elders, was associated with a new
linguistic practice, the translation of relevant Christian texts, most notably
the Bible, into Akuapem-Twi, as a local African language. In the context
of this the relevant spiritual entity, ‘God’ had been ‘translated’ as Onyame
and had been resemanticized as a spiritual power that cares for all human
beings, including the previously mentioned children.
After the initial case of the six-fingered children, other children consid-
ered problematic could be placed in the context of the new socioreligious
sphere of the mission station and later the Christian quarter (Salem), rather
than being put to death. That is, the new space offered room for the ‘trans-
lation’ of the existing practice; instead of removing these children via death,
they could be removed by being placed in a different, alternative space.
After their baptism, which connected them with ‘God/Onyame,’ they were
understood to belong, both socially and spiritually, to the new Christian
community.
Translating what mattered, as the example of the six-fingered children
shows, was not without consequences, and one can consider from different
perspectives the possible losses and gains. For the European missionaries
it might be seen as a success story, and the missionary discourse with its
emphasis on the part the Europeans played underscores this. Yet one can
speculate about another potential way of reading this story, namely, that
96  Ulrike Sill
it highlights how the stereotypically ‘dark’ Africa of European discourse in
actual fact was not so ‘dark’ after all, since it was capable of such a swift
‘humanitarian’ innovation. But while Christaller in his preface to the collec-
tion of Akan proverbs, for example, refers to the ‘sparks of truth’ entrusted
to Ghanaians before the advent of Christianity,41 I have as yet not found a
reference to the change of practice concerning six-fingered children arguing
along this line.
For people in Akuropon the changed practice meant the discontinuation
of an existing practice, and from that perspective it is a loss for the local
religion and culture—potential gains notwithstanding. It created new inse-
curities, especially in those families who initially had their young women
withdrawn from the mission station as a consequence of six-fingered chil-
dren living there. Yet there were also gains; new economic as well as spiritual
options became available. Since the European missionaries were prepared
to pay for the nursing of the six-fingered children brought to the mission
stations, the altered practice also offered quite tangible gains. (The actual
numbers of such children living on the Akuapem Basel Mission stations first
in Akropong and later in Aburi, as well, were never high. At the Akuro-
pon mission station it varied from four to six children between 1855 and
1872, and at the Aburi mission station it varied from two to four children
for the years from 1860 to 1871).42 Through negotiations and discussion,
‘God/Onyame’ emerged as a spiritual resource related to ‘problematic’ chil-
dren for Christians and non-Christians in general. This can be deduced from
the statements made by a number of women from Aburi who, in 1860,
encouraged the mother of a six-fingered child to nurse the child on the Aburi
mission station after its transfer there to secure the child’s survival and thus
insure assistance from ‘God/Onyame’ for a future pregnancy.43
From an Akan perspective the ideas introduced by the new mission com-
munity in some respects also could be conceptualized according to local
patterns, where it was known that a deity has specific likes and dislikes.
Some shrines of deities also could serve as alternative options. (Though for
six-fingered children there appears to have been no available alternative
prior to the mission station.) The mission station as a socioreligious sphere
related to ‘God/Onyame,’ who disliked the killing of six-fingered children,
may have helped to resolve a conceptual strain. The previously mentioned
exception of six-fingered children notwithstanding, in general children were
considered precious and sought after. Not to have children was a serious
threat to any marriage. A couple and their families would invest much to
secure reproduction. The birth of a six-fingered child, therefore, meant a
severe loss in several respects, the loss of a child, and, with it, the loss of all
the resources, material and immaterial, invested in securing the pregnancy
and a safe delivery. To some extent the new practice might alleviate some
of these losses.
Summing up, one can look at the mission station and the surrounding
Christian quarter as offering new options in the context of existing patterns.
 Thick Translation of Religion between Cultures  97
And this change in a local practice also shows that innovation was a part
of the culture, which, in the course of an emerging local modernity, came
to be labelled ‘traditional.’ Finally, this and other changes also affected the
local non-Christian religion, since some of its prescripts and practices were
discontinued and modified. Therefore, one may ask whether Onyame as
part of the religious cosmos of Akan religion and Onyame as propagated by
the Basel Mission were really still discernibly different or were getting closer
in some respects.
The project of translating ‘what mattered’ in Christianity, as the Basel Mis-
sion envisioned it, affected local practices which can be interpreted as inno-
vation in the context of local culture. In the case of the so-called six-fingered
children, through innovation a practice that seemed to violate the concept
of the universal value of humanity was abolished. And this seems to be a
precondition for postulating ‘humanity’ as foundational for Akan concepts
and notions. Since the change in practice involved the non-Christian sur-
roundings of the mission station as well, one might say that to some extent
it also changed potential perceptions of local African non-Christian religion.
The stereotype of its ‘darkness,’ at least in this instance, would no longer
fit. Thus, the loss of specific practices, instigated by one enterprise of trans-
lating one of the world religions to another community, may enable local
protagonists to negotiate new collective identities that retain some links to
the past and cast it into a ‘modern’ form. This, then, could be propagated
and contribute to other cultures, even to a dominant culture, thereby chal-
lenging its hegemony.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The concept of thick translation challenges one to take into account the
various terms of encounter, not least of which is the concept of power rela-
tions. This is especially relevant for European Christian Missions and Afri-
can Christian communities, between which, on the macro scale, there is a
clear asymmetry. On the micro scale, however, tables might be turned, and
looking at the longue durée they certainly are. But the disparity in textual
representations of the African engagement as compared to the (supposed)
relevance of the European contribution, presents us with the challenge of
translating the disparity in representation into providing sign posts as to the
actual (major) role of local Ghanaian actors. Translating the Bible was one
vital aspect of the Basel Mission’s project on the Gold Coast, but the Chris-
tian faith, for which this text was seen as pivotal by the Basel Mission, was
supposed to inform the whole life of any Christian, where, as Appiah puts it,
“new readings, new things that matter about the text, new reasons for caring
about new properties” would always come up.44 This is an ongoing process.
A literal translation, as Appiah suggests, is possible when the intentions of
an utterance are clear to all involved—that is in a setting, such as contemporary
98  Ulrike Sill
southern Ghana, where a known pattern exists. Thus, Christianity as a local
religion, is easily translated, as Appiah himself does in the collection of prov-
erbs he has coedited and where ‘God’ serves as an English term to translate
Onyame.45 Yet to people not familiar with Ghanaian situations, it has to be
explained that Onyame is used by Akan speakers for the Christian God as
well as for the Supreme Being at the apex of what is called local African
traditional religion (ATR).46 References to Onyame are part of Akan ATR
practices, such as the pouring of libation when Onyame is first invoked prior
to the Earth (Asase Yaa), deities, and ancestors. Onyame is also part of Akan
Christian practices, in Christian prayers, hymns, and the Akan Bible. There
are more cases in point, like the term osofo, which is often translated as “pas-
tor” or “missionary,” but also designates a priest of ATR who ‘owns’ a deity.
In a linguistically, culturally, and religiously plural setting of which Chris-
tianity forms one among other religious options, such literal, everyday trans-
lation may seem unproblematic. Yet when the process began this was not
so obvious. In this case, thick translation arose precisely because it was not
obvious. It took outsiders who did not know, yet perhaps inadvertently,
became involved in local, multilingual patterns of communication. As far as
texts were concerned Christianity was at the time associated with European
languages, and for (oral) translations into local African languages the use of
interpreters was the established pattern. But when Basel Mission actors, who,
had different translating objectives, entered the scene, these patterns changed
and Christianity was translated into local languages and cultures. This had
consequences and not simply for the religious landscape. Depending on one’s
standpoint one will understand and assess the losses and gains differently.
Even this kind of question it is a political issue, since it is related to the
negotiating of collective identities against a history of, in various respects,
asymmetrical power relations—not least of which is European colonialism.
Various issues then become pertinent: What is necessarily African? What
is necessarily Christian? Where could or where should Christianity change
in its practices and notions? Where could or should Ghanaian practices
and notions change? Where have changes associated with the translation
of Christianity lead to an alienation of cultural roots, and where have such
changes helped to ‘translate’ these roots into a modernising society and cul-
ture? In the admittedly potentially controversial example chosen here one
can say that both apply. Listening to philosophers such as Kwame Anthony
Appiah, one might conclude that to participate in a virtually global dis-
course one has to pay a certain cultural price, and such losses and gains
should be discussed in the political arena as well.

NOTES

1. In the case of this article a note of thanks is due. Erika Eichholzer, a linguist
who has considerable experience with the Akan language, has offered me
translations of some key terms and helped me with the linguistic aspects of
the topic. Dorothy Yeboah-Manu has answered many questions. Paul Jenkins
 Thick Translation of Religion between Cultures  99
in many stimulating discussions has shared his profound knowledge of Gha-
naian and Basel Mission history. Finally, the conference in Mainz on “Trans-
lating Religion” provided inspiring exchanges. A special note of thanks goes
to the editors and their helpful suggestions—they certainly displayed maieutic
skills. Any faults of course are still the author’s. This chapter is based on my
doctoral dissertation research. Ulrike Sill, Encounters in Quest of Christian
Womanhood: The Basel Mission in Pre- and Early Colonial Ghana (Leiden:
Brill Academic Publishers, 2010).
2. Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture,
2nd ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009), 218.
3. Ibid., 199–211.
4. Erika Eichholzer provides some insight into the complexities of the Basel Mis-
sion’s ‘language work.’ See her “Missionary Linguistics on the Gold Coast:
Wrestling with Language,” in The Spiritual in the Secular: Missionaries and
knowledge about Africa, ed. Patrick Harries and David Maxwell (Grand Rap-
ids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 72–99.
5. Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Thick Translation,” Callaloo: On “Post-Colonial
Discourse”: A Special Issue 16 no. 4 (1993): 808–819.
6. Johann Gottlieb Christaller, Twi Mmebusem Mpensa-Ahansia Mmoano:
A Collection of Three Thousand and Six Hundred Tshi Proverbs in Use
among the Negroes of the Gold Coast Speaking the Asante and Fante Lan-
guage (Basel: Basel German Evangelical Missionary Society, 1879).
7. Johann Gottlieb Christaller, A Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language: Called
Tshi, Chwee, Twi (Basel: Basel German Evangelical Missionary Society, 1881).
8. Personal communication, Cephas Omenyo.
9. Patricia Purtschert, “Looking for Traces of Hybridity: Two Basel Mission
Reports and a Queen Mother: Philosophical Remarks on the Interpretation of
a Political Deed,” Journal of Literary Studies 18, no. 3 (2002): 293.
10. Appiah, “Thick Translation.”
11. Ibid., 817.
12. Ibid., 818.
13. Ibid.
14. Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Cul-
ture,” in The Interpretations of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic
Books, [1973] 2006), 3–30. References are to the 2006 reprint.
15. Appiah, “Thick Translation,” 816.
16. Ibid., 818.
17. Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu, Korle Meets the Sea: A Sociolinguistic History of
Accra (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
18. Christaller, Twi Mmebusem Mpensa-Ahansia Mmoano.
19. Johannes Zimmermann, A Grammatical Sketch of the Akra- or Gã Language:
With Some Specimens of It from the Mouth of the Natives and a Vocabulary
of the Same (Stuttgart: Steinkopf, 1858).
20. Christaller, Twi Mmebusem Mpensa-Ahansia Mmoano, 10, proverb no. 227.
21. Zimmermann, A Grammatical Sketch of the Akra- or Gã Language, 164,
proverb no. 71.
22. Christaller, A Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language, 342. For the
notion of a commensurability of both spiritual entities, Nyonmo (Ga) and
Onyame (Akan), the cross-references between the proverb collections, like the
one mentioned here, bear evidence.
23. According to Michelle Gilbert, in Akuapem, a small Akan state near the coast,
authorities even encouraged the acquiring of new sources of spiritual power.
See her “Sources of Power in Akuropon-Akuapem: Ambiguity in Classifica-
tion,” in Creativity of Power: Cosmology and Action in African Societies, ed.
W. Arens and Ivan Karp (Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1989), 70.
100  Ulrike Sill
24. According to Kwame Arhin, because of the accumulation of wealth a ‘dual
ranking system’ emerged in the coastal Fante areas, where since the first half
of the nineteenth century, ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ elites had come to coex-
ist in the coastal towns; Kwame Arhin, “Rank and Class among the Asante
and Fante in the Nineteenth Century,” Africa 53 (1983): 2–22. Peter Haenger
has described changes in the system of wealth accumulation during the nine-
teenth century for the area where the Basel Mission was active. He shows that
Arhin’s analysis also can be applied there; Peter Haenger, Slaves and Slave
Holders on the Gold Coast: Towards an Understanding of Social Bondage in
West Africa (Basel: Schlettwein, 2000), 62–73.
25. “Protokoll der Generalkonferenz vom 9.-15.Juni 1852 in Usu.” (Ussu, 1852),
D-1, 4a, Nr 6, Archive Mission 21, holdings of the Basel Mission.
26. “Johannes Stanger 3.Beilage zum 1. Semestralbericht Ussu (Christiansborg)”
(Ussu, 1852), D-1, 4b Nr 142, Archive Mission 21, holdings of the Basel
Mission.
27. On the spreading of English in general see Kropp Dakubu, Korle Meets the
Sea, 150–160.
28. S. Abun-Nasr, “Von der ‘Umbildung heidnischer Landessprachen zu christli-
chen’: Die Anfänge von Schrift und Schriftlichkeit in Akuapem, Goldküste,”
in Wege durch Babylon. Missionare, Sprachstudien und interkulturelle Kom-
munikation, ed. Reinhard Wendt (Tübingen: Narr, 1998), 181–200.
29. Kropp Dakubu, Korle Meets the Sea, 166.
30. Ibid.
31. “Briefe (Letters) from David Dieterle (Asante), John Powell Rochester, Wil-
liam David Hoffmann (Irenkyi), Daniel Sekyama, Jonathan Palmer (Bekoe)”
(Akuropon, n.d.), D-1, 4a Nr. 15–17, Archive Mission 21, holdings of the
Basel Mission.
32. “Quartalsbericht (Quarterly Report), J. Dieterle, Aburi 19.07.1871.” (Aburi,
1871), D-1, 23 Aburi Nr. 6, Archive Mission 21, holdings of the Basel Mis-
sion. The report is in German.
33. Amadi Otutu/Edward Samson was baptized in 1854. He then became a cat-
echist and later one of the first Ghanaian pastors of the Basel Mission; he
published a history of Akuapem, which also contains his life story: Edward
Samson, A Short History of Akuapim and Akropong (Gold Coast) and Auto-
biography of the Rev. Edward Samson of Aburi, Native Pastor (Aburi, 1908).
34. “J. G. Christaller 30.09.1855” (Akropong, 1855), D-1, 6 Akropong Nr. 33,
Archive Mission 21, holdings of the Basel Mission. The report is in German.
35. “Quartalsbericht (Quarterly Report), J.A. Mader 23.03.1867” (Akropong,
1867), D-1, 19b Akropong Nr. 9, Archive Mission 21, holdings of the Basel
Mission. The report is in German.
36. Ibid.
37. Birgit Meyer for the Ewe has shown how this can produce rather the opposite
of the European missionaries’ intention—as the title of her monograph puts it;
Birgit Meyer, Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity among the Ewe
in Ghana (Edinburgh: Africa World Press, 1999).
38. David Asante, “Ein jammervolles Stück westafrikanischen Heidenthums,” in
Der evangelische Heidenbote (Basel: Baseler Missionsbuchhandlung, 1869),
68–69. “Bericht (Report by) David Asante, Date [Larteh] 08.02.1869”
(Larteh, 1869), D-1, 21b Akropong Nr. 8, Archive Mission 21, holdings of
the Basel Mission. The report is in German. For Asante Empire the famous
anthropologist Robert Sutherland Rattray states that children born with cer-
tain anomalies were also put to death, among them he lists children with a
sixth toe (id., Religion and Art in Ashanti [Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1927], 56).
 Thick Translation of Religion between Cultures 101
39. The reconstruction of the events is based on two reports, one by Rosina Wid-
mann and one by her husband, Johann Georg Widmann: “Bericht (Report by)
Johann Georg Widmann, Akropong 20.06.1854” (Akropong 1854), D-1,5
III. Nr. 22. Archive Mission 21, holdings of the Basel Mission. The report is
in German. Rosina Widmann’s report was printed in the 15. Schreiben des
Frauenvereins zu Basel für weibliche Erziehung in Heidenländern (Basel:
Baseler Missionsbuchhandlung, 1854), 22–25. The manuscript on which the
printed version was based has not been located up to now. (This is because
of the relations between the Basel Mission and Basel Women’s Mission at the
time, which results in primary sources being scarce. Only in 1858 after the
Basel Women’s Mission had become fully incorporated into the main society
of the Basel Mission, and when a Protestant women’s group in St. Peterburg,
Russia, related to the Basel Mission had offered to support one of the girls’
schools, was the until then exclusively male duty to report on a regular basis
to the home committee extended to the few women in charge of girls’ schools.)
40. Rosina Widmann, in 15. Schreiben des Frauenvereins zu Basel, 25.
41. Christaller, Twi Mmebusem Mpensa-Ahansia Mmoano, XI.
42. These figures are from the annual accounts: “Jahresrechnungen (Annual
Accounts). 1842–1873” (Gold Coast, 1842–1873), D-6–3,1; and “Jahresrech-
nungen (Annual Accounts). 1873–1882” (Gold Coast, 1873–1882), D-6–3,2,
Archive Mission 21, holdings of the Basel Mission.
43. “Bericht (Report) Friederike Dieterle 06.11.1860.” (Aburi, 1860). D-1 11
Aburi Nr. 18, Archive Mission 21, holdings of the Basel Mission. The report
is in German.
44. Appiah, “Thick Translation,” 816.
45. The same proverb mentioned on page 7 is translated and explained as fol-
lows: “Obi nkyerε ab fra Nyame. No one needs to show a child God. (A
c
child has pre-natal inherent knowledge of God and does not need to be per-
suaded of His existence. You do not need to point out the obvious.)”, in Ivor
Agyeman-Duah, Peggy Appiah, and Kwame Anthony Appiah, Bu Me Be:
Proverbs of the Akans (Accra: Ayebia, 2007), 37, proverb no. 563.
46. The term traditional religion or African traditional religion is current in pres-
ent day Ghana. In using it I do not intend to associate with it any notion of an
immutability of traditional religion—as this article also should illustrate.

ARCHIVAL SOURCES

Mission 21 (Basel), Basel Mission Archive, Ghana Archive

a. Series D-1 (Incoming Correspondence):
“Protokoll der Generalkonferenz vom 9.-15. Juni 1852 in Usu.” D-1, 4a, Nr 6.
“Briefe (Letters) from David Dieterle (Asante), John Powell Rochester, William
David Hoffmann (Irenkyi), Daniel Sekyama, Jonathan Palmer (Bekoe).” No
Date. D-1, 4a Nr. 15–17.
“3. Beilage zum 1. Semestralbericht, Johannes Stanger Ussu (Christiansborg).” D-1,
4b Nr 142.
“Bericht (Report by) Johann Georg Widmann, Akropong 20.06.1854” (Akropong
1854), D-1,5 III. Nr. 22.
“Bericht (Report), J.G. Christaller 30.09.1855.” D-1, 6 Akropong Nr. 33.
“Bericht (Report), Friederike Dieterle 06.11.1860.” D-1, 11 Aburi Nr. 18.
“Quartalsbericht (Quarterly Report), J.A. Mader, 23.03.1867.” D-1, 19b Akropong
Nr. 9.
102  Ulrike Sill
“Bericht (Report), David Asante, Date [Larteh] 08.02.1869.” D-1, 21b Akropong
Nr. 8.
“Quartalsbericht (Quarterly Report), J. Dieterle, Aburi 19.07.1871.” D-1, 23 Aburi
Nr. 6.
b. Series D-6 (Financial Documents):
“Jahresrechnungen (Annual Accounts). 1842–1873” (Gold Coast, 1842–1873),
D-6–3,1.
“Jahresrechnungen (Annual Accounts). 1873–1882” (Gold Coast, 1873–1882),
D-6–3,2.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abun-Nasr, S. “Von der ‘Umbildung heidnischer Landessprachen zu christlichen’:

Die Anfänge von Schrift und Schriftlichkeit in Akuapem, Goldküste.” In Wege
durch Babylon. Missionare, Sprachstudien und interkulturelle Kommunikation.
Edited by Reinhard Wendt, 181–200. Tübingen: Narr, 1998.
Agyeman-Duah, Ivor, Peggy Appiah, and Kwame Anthony Appiah. Bu Me Be: Prov-
erbs of the Akans. Accra: Ayebia, 2007.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “Thick Translation.” Callaloo: On “Post-Colonial Dis-
course”: A Special Issue 16, no. 4 (1993): 808–819.
Arhin, Kwame. “Rank and Class among the Asante and Fante in the Nineteenth
Century.” Africa 53 (1983): 2–22.
Asante, David. “Ein jammervolles Stück westafrikanischen Heidenthums.” In Der
evangelische Heidenbote, 68–69. Basel: Baseler Missionsbuchhandlung, 1869.
Christaller, Johann Gottlieb. A Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language: Called
Tshi, Chwee, Twi. Basel: Basel German Evangelical Missionary Society, 1881.
———. Twi Mmebusem Mpensa-Ahansia Mmoano: A Collection of Three Thou-
sand and Six Hundred Tshi Proverbs in Use among the Negroes of the Gold
Coast Speaking the Asante and Fante Language. Basel: Basel German Evangelical
Missionary Society, 1879.
Eichholzer, Erika. “Missionary Linguistics on the Gold Coast: Wrestling with Lan-
guage,” In The Spiritual in the Secular: Missionaries and Knowledge about
Africa. Edited by Patrick Harries and David Maxwell, 72–99. Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2012.
Geertz, Clifford. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” In
The Interpretations of Cultures: Selected Essays, 3–30. New York: Basic Books,
(1973) 2006.
Gilbert, Michelle. “Sources of Power in Akuropon-Akuapem: Ambiguity in Clas-
sification.” In Creativity of Power: Cosmology and Action in African Societies.
Edited by W. Arens and Ivan Karp, 59–90. Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1989.
Haenger, Peter. Slaves and Slave Holders on the Gold Coast: Towards an Under-
standing of Social Bondage in West Africa. Basel: Schlettwein, 2000.
Kropp Dakubu, Mary Esther. Korle Meets the Sea: A Sociolinguistic History of
Accra. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Meyer, Birgit. Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in
Ghana. Edinburgh: Africa World Press, 1999.
Purtschert, Patricia. “Looking for Traces of Hybridity: Two Basel Mission Reports
and a Queen Mother: Philosophical Remarks on the Interpretation of a Political
Deed.” Journal of Literary Studies 18, no. 3 (2002): 284–294.
Rattray, Robert Sutherland. Religion and Art in Ashanti. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1927.
 Thick Translation of Religion between Cultures 103
Samson, Edward. A Short History of Akuapim and Akropong (Gold Coast) and
Autobiography of the Rev. Edward Samson of Aburi, Native Pastor. Aburi, 1908.
Sanneh, Lamin. Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture. 2nd
ed. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009.
Sill, Ulrike. Encounters in Quest of Christian Womanhood: The Basel Mission in
Pre- and Early Colonial Ghana. Leiden: Brill Academic Pub., 2010.
Widmann, Rosina. In 15. Schreiben des Frauenvereins zu Basel für weibliche Erzie-
hung in Heidenländern, 22–25. Basel: Baseler Missionsbuchhandlung, 1854.
Zimmermann, Johannes. A Grammatical Sketch of the Akra- or Gã Language: With
Some Specimens of It from the Mouth of the Natives and a Vocabulary of the
Same. Stuttgart: Steinkopf, 1858.
6 Habermas’s Call for
Translating Religion into
Secular Language
Christiane Tietz

For more than ten years, a new paradigm of translation has been under
discussion in political philosophy and theological social ethics, a transla-
tion of religious language into secular language. The debate was initiated
by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas in 2001 in his acceptance
speech for the Peace Price of the German Book Trade. Habermas gave his
lecture, titled “Faith and Knowledge,”1 shortly after the terrorist attack on
the World Trade Center, and he has repeated his idea several times since
then. The most well-known instance was his 2004 conversation with Joseph
Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI.2
This chapter deals with Habermas’s paradigm because I consider it a
helpful concept for the current situation of religious pluralism in a secular
state.3 In the first part of the chapter, I present Habermas’s idea. I interpret
his concern, sketch the different versions of his argument, and analyze the
terms he uses in it. In the second part, I try to give the contour of Haber-
mas’s concept of translation against the background of the current debate
concerning Habermas.

HABERMAS’S IDEA OF TRANSLATING RELIGIOUS

LANGUAGE INTO SECULAR LANGUAGE

The Situation That Necessitates Translation

I start my analysis by describing the situation in which Habermas calls for
translation. He actually sees an essential need for translating religious lan-
guage into secular language because of our current societal situation.
Habermas’s whole argument starts with the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
In those attacks the “tension between the secular society and religion . . .
exploded.”4 Habermas understands the terrorist’s attacks as a consequence
of that basic tension, which is unavoidable in a secularized society. This
tension is particularly strong if secularization misunderstands itself as a
“zero-sum game” between secular, modern economics, science, and tech-
nology, on one hand, and the conservative forces of religion, on the other.
 Habermas’s Call for Translating Religion 105
“Zero-sum game” is the assumption that either modernity will win, at the
expense of religion, or that modernity will lose as long as religion is still
present.5 Habermas diagnoses the situation of contemporary society as
“post-secular.”6 Such a “post-secular society” accepts the fact that even in a
secular environment, religious communities will persist.7
In this post-secular context, religious people have to deal with three dif-
ferent epistemological challenges:8 (1) their religious consciousness has to
handle the cognitive dissonance that arises through the encounter with other
religions, (2) they have to accept the authority of methodologically atheistic
sciences that represent a monopoly on world knowledge, and (3) they have
to accept the constitutional premises of the state that have derived from
profane morality. All three challenges confront religious people with world-
views in some regards different from their own and force them to develop a
new epistemic attitude toward their own convictions.
Yet in a post-secular society, nonreligious people also have to deal
with the existence of religious people. As there are still religious people in
a post-secular society, nonbelievers bump into believers in every societal
debate; they, too, experience the pluralism of Weltanschauungen9 (world-
views) and have to deal with the observation that a nonreligious existence
obviously is not convincing for everyone. Nonbelievers are challenged in
their worldview by the fact that there are modern, epistemologically sophis-
ticated people who are still religious.
In a pluralized society both believers and nonbelievers have to deal with
the confusion of encountering different worldviews. Thus, both need to
realize the possibility of “their own fallibility.”10 This is the starting point of
the project of translating religious language into secular language.

Secularization as a Process of Translations

Interestingly, Habermas understands the target language of this translation
as already shaped by the source language, as secular language is already
shaped by the religious one. More precisely, Habermas describes the process
of secularization as a more or less successful, already accomplished transla-
tion from religious to secular language.
He mentions Immanuel Kant as a good example of such translation.11
Kant is the “first big example for a secularizing and at the same time sav-
ing deconstruction of religious truths.”12 Kant, for example, transforms the
authority of divine laws into the unconditional validity of moral duties.
He critically adapts the religious content by changing the absolute divine
authority into the unconditional authority of human reason. At the same
time, Kant negates one element of the religious concept, namely, the idea of
humans as children of God, with his concept of autonomy through which
everybody binds him- or herself by his or her own reason.
Philosophy should be aware that through this translation something
important has been eliminated. When sin was changed into guilt and thus
106  Christiane Tietz
the offence against divine law was changed into an offence against human
law, “something was lost.”13 Now God is no longer the authority for moral
behavior. This leads to another important change: if human beings fail to
observe the law, now God is also no longer the redeemer. Because of this,
any hope for forgiveness is gone. Only the religious desire for forgiveness
preserves the sensibility that the most horrible aspect of suffering lies in
the fact that the failure to maintain the law cannot be undone.14 Secular
people will only feel a certain kind of emptiness after translation.15 “[T]he
incredulous sons and daughters of modernity seem to believe that they owe
each other more and do need more than what is available to them in the
translated form of religious tradition.”16
At several points, Habermas emphasizes that it is important to remain
aware of this emptiness and loss, and not to assume that reason can sub-
stitute for every aspect of religion. To assume this is the failure of those
secularizing translation processes in which reason “encompasses” religion
(Habermas speaks of “vereinnahmende Vernunft”).17 Habermas’s exam-
ple for this is Hegel. In Habermas’s view, Hegel sacrifices the idea of a
future given through salvation history to a world process circling within
itself.18 And Hegel’s followers try to realize the profaned content of reli-
gion through efforts of solidarity.19 Habermas judges that by attempting to
transform all religious content into something secular, reason overburdens
itself and thus despairs of itself—or flees to some sort of messianic thinking
again.20
So, how does Habermas understand the role of translation in the history
of secularization? Religious content has been translated into secular con-
cepts. Through this translation process, something has been lost. But one
should not forget this and should not try to substitute it.

Secular Language and Religious Language

I have been speaking about translation from the religious to the secular. But
how does Habermas conceptualize secular language and religious language?
Habermas maintains that secular language is universally accessible—at
least it claims to be.21 It is a language shaped by reason. This includes the
assumption of a natural, common reason, which makes it possible to form
arguments to which everybody has access. Habermas calls such a language
“worldview neutral”; it is post-metaphysical.22 This assumption of a com-
mon human reason is, as Habermas concludes in agreement with John
Rawls, the foundation of the legitimacy of secular state power, because it is
only by giving general reasons for its decisions which everybody can accept
that a political government is not oppressive.23 Habermas also calls this
rational basis a “democratically enlightened commonsense,”24 which all
citizens have. In the context of modern government, in the institutions of
the modern state, such as parliaments, courts, ministry, and administration,
“only secular reasons count.”25
 Habermas’s Call for Translating Religion 107
In Habermas’s view, all human beings participate in that common reason,
while some may add religious dimensions to their lives. The idea, obviously,
is not to say that secular people’s reason is better than that of religious
people. Habermas searches for a reason that is common to everybody,
regardless of religious or nonreligious affiliation. This common reason gives
secular reasons.
Habermas also uses secular in the sense of “nonreligious.”26 The term
then refers to people who are not religious anymore, people who have sub-
stituted the God-concept with nonreligious ideas.
According to Habermas, religious language, in contrast, is dependent on
the truth of revelations.27 It refers to “the dogmatic authority of an inde-
feasible core of infallible revealed truth,”28 which is not open to discussion.
Habermas contrasts the “anthropocentric perspective” of secular reason (as
philosophy it can only resonate with human beings as thinking, speaking,
and acting but has no perspective on the whole of nature and history) and
the “perspective from a distance of a theo- or cosmocentric thinking”29 of
religion.
Habermas describes religious language also as articulating “intuitions of
transgression and salvation” (“Intuitionen von Verfehlung und Erlösung”).30
Religious language articulates “a consciousness of what is missing” and thus
can keep rationalized society from forgetting the destruction that modern
progress has caused.31 In religion, a “sensibility for a life falling short,” for
pathologies in a society, for failed individual lives, and so forth can survive.32
Religious traditions are able to articulate moral intuitions with regard to
“sensitive [i.e., vulnerable] forms of the human community.”33 These intu-
itions deal with experiences; they work quite subtly and lead to a certain
hermeneutics of life (and thus should not be understood dogmatically).34
Habermas obviously has a twofold view of religion. On one hand, he
understands religion as dogmatic and revelatory and thus in contrast to
modern reason, which questions everything. On the other hand, he under-
stands religion as intuitive and sensible and thus as able to complement
modern reason. I will come back to this difference again.

The Task of Translation in a Post-Secular Society

A post-secular society realizes that a merely secular society has lost the sen-
sibility of a life falling short. It realizes that there are moral feelings that (so
far) have only found a differentiated expression in religious language. These
feelings are almost forgotten in the post-secular society, but somehow are
nevertheless missed.35
Thus, a post-secular society not only realizes that religion, against all
prognoses, has survived. It also acknowledges that religious communities
play a function in society by reproducing motives that are important in cer-
tain democratic situations.36 A post-secular state treats all cultural sources
with care, because in a situation of a torn social fabric they can help to
108  Christiane Tietz
restore the solidarity of citizens.37 In a post-secular society, believers and
nonbelievers are willing to learn from each other.38
Habermas sees it as the task of the post-secular society to give those feel-
ings, preserved in religions, a general resonance beyond the community of
believers through “a saving formulation.”39 He obviously is convinced that
the potential of religious language (its “encrypted semantic potential”) can
be unfolded into “an inspiring power” if it is transformed into “reasonable
speech” (begründende Rede) so that its “profane truth” can be seen.40 He
summarizes his position as follows: “A secularization, which does not anni-
hilate, takes place in the mode of translating.”41
This description of the translation process is interesting because it sug-
gests that the “inspiring power” of religious traditions can be effectual not
through the religious language itself, through its pictures, metaphors, and
stories but through transforming them into “reasonable speech.” It argues
that nonreligious people are not able to understand the “encrypted semantic
potential” of religious language; therefore, that potential needs to be trans-
lated. This description is linked to Habermas’s understanding of religion as
dogmatic and supernatural, which needs to be transformed into common,
secular reason.

The Task of Believers in a Post-Secular Society

Habermas argues that in a post-secular society believers and secular peo-
ple have different tasks, and they have a cooperative task. First of all, reli-
gious people have to translate their position to give “reasons, which are
not only acceptable for members of one community of faith.”42 This means
that “they have to translate their religious convictions into secular language
before their arguments have the chance to find the compliance of the major-
ities.”43 In Habermas’s view, without such a successful translation there is
no chance that the content of religious voices may be of any relevance in
institutional debates.44
While Habermas sometimes seems to assume that religious people should
accept that being a religious person is only one aspect of human life while
being a citizen is another,45 he presents a different view when he states that
pious people live their whole existence out of faith, making it impossible for
them to distinguish between their political and their religious existence.46
Therefore, it would be unreasonable to expect them to always give secular
reasons for their political decisions; they may not be willing, but some of
them are not even able to do so.47 Only politicians, as part of the govern-
mental institutions, have the duty to be worldview neutral and thus to trans-
late their religious convictions.48 Ordinary religious citizens may express
their positions in religious language in public discourse, even if they can find
secular “translations” for them.49
It is interesting that Habermas here speaks of translation not as trans-
forming content from one language to another but as adding secular lan-
guage to religious language. Believers who play a role within the institutions
 Habermas’s Call for Translating Religion 109
of a secular state also have to reflect on their religious convictions from the
outside and have to combine (verknüpfen) them with secular positions.50
Yet, is combining them with secular positions the same as translating? I will
return to this question later.

The Task of Nonbelievers in a Post-Secular Society

Habermas observes that the liberal state has so far expected a translation
process only from its citizens who are believers.51 In Habermas’s opinion,
post-secular society should be aware that secular people have a duty here
as well. As already mentioned, nonbelievers have to realize that there are
religious people who see the world differently and who, for this reason,
question secular people’s own understanding of the boundaries of enlight-
ened reason.52 In this context, secular people have to acknowledge that it
would be unreasonable to label religious positions in general as epistemo-
logically irrational; otherwise, they would unfairly insinuate that religious
people have not arrived in modernity.53 It also would be ridiculous to ask
religious people to translate into reasonable language if religion in general
was irrational. Habermas concludes that “[s]ecularized citizens, as far as
they are acting as citizens, are not allowed to deny the truth potential of
religious worldviews in principle, nor are they entitled to deny to believing
citizens the use of religious language in public debate.”54
Second, secular people should maintain an appreciation for the “force of
articulation of religious languages,”55 because they can learn from religious
people “to recognize their own, sometimes buried intuitions.”56

The Task of a “Cooperative Translation of Religious Contents”57

For Habermas, the boundary between secular and religious reasons is fluid.
Thus, the setting of this boundary in post-secular society should be a coop-
erative task, which asks both sides to take the other’s perspective.58 This is a
cooperative task, because, otherwise, the controversy about what a secular
society is would take place only in the minds of believers.59
Second, it should be a common effort of religious and secular people to
translate religious truths “from the vocabulary of a certain religious com-
munity into a language accessible to all.”60 This is not only the task of reli-
gious people. It is a “cooperative task” between religious and nonreligious
people. “A liberal political culture can expect even of their secularized cit-
izens that they participate in the efforts to translate relevant contributions
from a religious into a publically accessible language.”61

The Example of Human Beings as Image of God

Habermas gives historical examples of translation in the secularization pro-
cess. But he also gives some contemporary examples, most prominently that
of human beings as the image of God. Let’s analyze this example carefully.
110  Christiane Tietz
At first sight, it seems as if Habermas is looking only for a translation of
religious concepts into the discursive, worldview neutral language of univer-
sal, secular reason. He speaks about translating the concept of “being the
image of God” (imago Dei) into the idea of an “equal dignity of all human
beings” that has to be respected unconditionally. He calls this translation
a “saving translation,” because it “makes accessible the content of biblical
terms beyond the boundaries of a religious community, to a general public
of people of different faith traditions or of no faith.”62 Here a “secular-
izing release of potentials of meanings, encapsulated religiously,”63 takes
place. Again (as in the Kant example) it is the idea of something uncondi-
tional (all human beings are the image of God), which is translated from
the God-concept into the characteristics of reason. After the translation it is
human reason which guarantees the equal dignity of all.
But Habermas speaks not only of religious concepts but also of “intu-
itions of transgression and salvation.”64 At first sight, it seems as if Haber-
mas wants to translate even these intuitions into the language of discursive
reason, because only as such could they unfold their potential for the gen-
eral societal consciousness: “Why shouldn’t they [religious traditions] con-
tain encoded semantic potentials which, if only they are transformed into
discursive speech and their profane truth is uncovered, can unfold their
inspirational power?”65
But when Habermas discusses the same example of the image of God in
another text, translation means much more than only translating religious
concepts into discursive speech.66 Here he explains the translation process
in a much more nuanced way. The ethical context is the question of human
interference into the human genome. Habermas states that it is not neces-
sary to believe that God, who is love, created Adam and Eve to understand
what the concept of being an image of God means, namely that love needs
the recognition of the other, that freedom needs mutual acknowledgment.
The concept of being an image of God includes that the human being is
free (otherwise, it could not respond to God’s love) and that it is God’s
creature.67 Habermas concludes that “[t]his creatureliness of the image
expresses an intuition which in our context can also speak to somebody
religiously unmusical.”68 So, the creatureliness (an obviously religious con-
cept) can speak directly to somebody who is nonreligious without being
translated into rational arguments.69
Habermas continues by noting that the picture of being a creature includes
the idea of an absolute difference between creator and creature. God’s cre-
ating is absolutely different from any self-determination of humankind and
thus does not interfere with human freedom and human self-determination.
God’s determination lies on a different level: God defines human beings such
that he enables and obliges them to be free.70 Habermas again argues that
it is not necessary to believe in these concepts to understand through them
what is at stake if another human being would take the place of God, that
is: if a human being, driven by his own preferences, would interfere with the
accidental combination of parental chromosomes.
 Habermas’s Call for Translating Religion 111
What kind of translation is taking place here? Habermas maintains that
you can understand those intuitions without believing in their dogmatic reli-
gious background: “[I]t is not necessary to believe to understand what is
meant.”71 It is not necessary to believe in God to understand what happens
when another human being takes the place of a God in which one does not
believe. Translation here means leaving the dogmatic background behind.
Interestingly, this is not a translation into reasonable arguments. Habermas
uses suggestive language, and he describes these intuitions simply without
using the basic religious premise of the existence of God. In listening to his
suggestive language, one can firmly sense how the “treasure of [religious]
pictures” “stimulates” the “imagination.”72 It is only in the second step that
practical reason formulates concluding postulates.73 Religious intuitions,
translated only by dropping the religious premises, help to form the moral
judgment before all rational discourse. Many biblical texts narrate these
intuitions. If they are told in society, they can help reason to be inspired by
those intuitions as well. Put differently, translating religion in this way helps
reason to do its job.

The Relation of the Source Language to the Target Language

after Translation
The last section of this part has to do with the relationship between religion
and the secular, or between theology and philosophy, after translation. Is
one of these in the long run becoming superfluous?
At first sight, Habermas seems to judge that philosophy has simply not
exhausted religious meaning so far: “As long [!] as religious language car-
ries inspiring semantic content which is still [!] needed, which eludes [at
least at the moment?] expression in philosophical language and which
waits to be translated into argumentative discourse, philosophy even in its
post-metaphysical form is not able to substitute or displace religion.”74 Yet,
in principle secular reason should be able “to rouse and to keep alive in
profane minds a consciousness of the worldwide violation of solidarity, of
a consciousness of what is missing.”75 Translations of religious language
“reveal” the “profane substance” of religious ideas and thus help reason
to rediscover this profane substance.76 But at the end of this process reli-
gion and theology might be overcome, the new language can substitute for
the old.
Yet Habermas also speaks of a reason that does not take over religion.
It acknowledges that it is not able to transform all religious content into
something secular. The imago-Dei example shows that Habermas in some
texts does not speak of a direct translation into secular, rational language.
It seems as if he is much more interested in intuitive religious concepts still
present in the post-secular society that can, now and again, inspire philo-
sophical arguments because they also speak to nonreligious people. Here
Habermas states that there will always remain an “opaque core of religious
experience” that discursive thinking will never understand.77 Then religion
112  Christiane Tietz
and theology will never become superfluous. Habermas himself concedes
that the future of this relation is “uncertain [ungewiss].”78

WHAT IS HABERMAS’S CONCEPT OF TRANSLATION?

Is “Translation” the Right Concept to Frame What Habermas

is Looking For?
We can observe three different uses of “translation” in Habermas. First,
Habermas calls for a translation of religious concepts (such as “being the
image of God”) into secular concepts (such as “human dignity”). This trans-
lation is similar to what happened during the historical secularization pro-
cess. It can be called a “translation” because meaning is transferred from
one language (the religious one) to another language (the secular one). In
his description of this translation process Habermas presupposes that those
two languages include different worlds, the religious language dealing with
revelation and intuition, the secular language dealing with reason and argu-
ments. Intuitions of weakness and failure genuinely belong to the religious
world but can be transformed into rational language. Religious language
and secular language conceptualize different worlds but they are not so dif-
ferent that translation is impossible, because the secular world has been
formed by the translation of the religious world and because religious peo-
ple live in this secular world.79
Habermas, second, also describes “translation” as combining religious
and secular concepts. Combining is something different from translating.
But calling this a “translation” nevertheless, can be understood as a short-
ened style of speaking. Religious concepts get translated first into secular
concepts in the sense just mentioned, and then religious people combine both
perspectives when speaking in public. The result of this is “bilingualism.”80
Habermas, third, in the second imago-Dei example, also uses reli-
gious concepts, their intuitions, and their imaginations as inspiration for
philosophical imagination to think about forgotten aspects of human
self-understanding. He argues that this is possible because those religious
concepts can be understood even if one does not believe in basic religious
ideas (such as the existence of God). No translation of intuition into a ratio-
nal concept is necessary. It is only the secular recipient who drops one word
of the religious source language and explains the anthropological intuition
without that word: Where the religious language said “God,” we now say
“not by another human being, not by itself, from somewhere else.” Here
Habermas presupposes that both religious and secular people are able to
deal with intuitions of weakness and failure because these intuitions are
generally human. Religious tradition only preserves these intuitions better
than secular reason. But in principle religious language and secular language
describe a similar world.
 Habermas’s Call for Translating Religion 113
It is interesting that Habermas does not speak of any translation from
secular language to religious language. Why is this? The reason might be
that religious language refers to something to which secular language can-
not, namely, to God who transcends this world. While you may be able to
drop this when translating from the religious sphere, you cannot regain it
in the secular sphere to find a way back to the religious sphere. Therefore,
Habermas’s translation is a one-way road.81

What is Translated, and How?

Habermas states that religious language should be translated. But, as already
mentioned, he presents an ambivalent understanding of what religion is.
On one hand, Habermas conceptualizes religion as depending on revela-
tion. This, of course, is a narrow understanding of religion.82 Only very
few aspects of those religions that conceive themselves as Offenbarungsre-
ligionen (religions of revelation) are understood as directly given through
revelation.83 And in modernity, this dimension of revelation has been ques-
tioned by many theologians. But even if one remains with the idea of reve-
lation, many religious elements of those Offenbarungsreligionen are derived
from elements given by revelation in a second step of interpretation and
argument.84 If I may explain this for Christianity: Jesus Christ is considered
to be the revelation of God. But how should this be understood? What does
it mean that God has become human in that individual? This is not directly
given through revelation. This is human interpretation by reason and is of
course open to dialogue. Astonishingly, Habermas somehow seems to be
aware of this too; he acknowledges that Christian theology represents that
rational conceptualization of religion.85 While defining religion through rev-
elation, he obviously also thinks of religion as being open for enlightened
reason.86 But if so, why then would religious language as such have to be
translated into secular, reasonable language? It seems as if Habermas uses an
unreflected concept of religion that is shaped by contrast and by the idea of
translation: religion is that which needs to and can be translated so as to be
understood by secular reason. Yet this definition entails that the ability to be
translated into secular language decides what religious language is; here rea-
son becomes much more self-sufficient than Habermas originally wanted.87
On the other hand, Habermas defines religious language through the abil-
ity to preserve intuitions better than secular language. In this case, religion
is not defined through revelation but through a greater openness for human
weakness and failures. Here religious language can still speak to secular rea-
son if one only drops the religious premise. No translation into reasonable
concepts is needed. This other concept of religion is not shaped by contrast,
but by comparison: religion has a better ability to do something; the ability
and need to be translated are not part of the definition of religion. This
definition of religion is much more open. And this religious language can be
understood even by somebody who does not speak this language natively.
114  Christiane Tietz
Even if this two definitions differ—and this difference shows Habermas’s
distance from the source language—both live from an “initiative trust”
which George Steiner diagnoses as first element of translation, “that there
is ‘something there’ to be understood, that the transfer will not be void.”88
Habermas argues that what should be translated (religion) is already
located in the context into which it should be translated and that the target
language has already been influenced by the source language. But the source
language has also been changed by its interaction with the target language
in the challenging situation of worldview pluralism. This means both lan-
guages have already encountered each other essentially.
Different Christian traditions will value this description of Habermas dif-
ferently. Many Catholic theologians react with satisfaction and do not see
any problem with Habermas’s expectation that Christian positions should
be justified in a secular manner. This is because Catholicism assumes a
greater agreement between faith and reason, since both are given by God.89
From a Catholic perspective this is true not only in ethical questions, but
also with regard to the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ. It is possible
to justify the Christian faith with reasonable arguments. Bernd Irlenborn
concludes that “the translation of faith convictions into a secular language
is directly deducible from the public claim [Öffentlichkeitsanspruch] of the
Christian message.”90 Protestant positions usually emphasize more strongly
that there is a nonrational part of religion, something that in principle can-
not be transformed into arguments, for example, that God has become
human in Jesus Christ.91
How then does Habermas want to translate? At first sight it seems as if
he would just translate concepts. But at second sight we could see that he
also wants to “translate” intuitions, by dropping religious core concepts of
which infallible truth was assumed (like the existence of God). He drops
dogmatics to uncover the hermeneutical dimension of religion. But at the
same time he keeps, for example, the idea that something is unconditional
or unavailable. This could be identified with the second element of Steiner’s
concept of translation, aggression,92 in which one acquires what is to be
translated: “The translator invades, extracts, and brings home.”93

What is Gained through This Translation?

At this point, one may want to ask an additional question about translating
religion: Why should one translate? Habermas’s answer is that when secular
reason realizes its own limits and that it is missing something, it starts trans-
lating again. Without translation the target language would misunderstand
itself and would lose its openness for intuitions. Many theologians who
discuss Habermas acknowledge that he has developed a new awareness of
the problems of modernity94 and of problems and limits of reason.95 The
limit of the target language opens up for the value of the source language.96
At the same time reason realizes its own limits through translat-
ing. Through translating, reason observes that it is not able to translate
 Habermas’s Call for Translating Religion 115
everything. While in the secular, post-metaphysical context translation
meant the attempt to completely transform the religious content into sec-
ular language, now, in the post-secular context, the concept of translation
includes realizing that reason is not able to articulate everything.97
At the same time, again, reason through translation regains some mean-
ing it had been missing. This can be identified with the third element of
Steiner’s concept, incorporation.98 Reinhold Esterbauer argues that Haber-
mas seems to ignore that incorporation also expresses negative aspects of
translation, especially that translated religious language could support anti-
democratic impulses.99 Consequently Esterbauer asks for reasonable criteria
that help reason to distinguish between helpful, counterproductive or even
dangerous translations.100 Habermas probably would argue against this that
the process of discursive reason will take care of this. Here the target lan-
guage obviously is ruling over the source language.
Translating religion into secular language also helps to see the potential
of religion. It helps to recognize its potential of keeping intuitions.101 This
in George Steiner’s framework is the fourth element, reciprocity, in which
through translation the original appears in a different light.102 But for the
religious people this potential was never questioned. It are only the secular
people who gain a fresh perspective on religion through translation.

What is Lost?
Theologically, it is an interesting question whether it is possible to drop
religious dogmatics (as the existence of God) and still have the same herme-
neutical, intuitive meaning.103 Or, to put it into a question, from where are
religious intuitions derived? Of course, they do not come out of the blue but
are resonances of worldly experiences. But why do some people interpret
these experiences with God and some without?104 The decisive question to
secular reason and philosophy in the process of translating religion then
becomes: Can secular reason, can philosophy leave open the possibility of
a further experience which only religion can convey? Such an experience
is not detached from world experience but is an “experience with experi-
ence.”105 Is philosophy able to leave open the possibility of a non-deducible
value unique to religion so that religious intuitions are not necessarily iden-
tical with secular intuitions? Only then would something get lost in the
translation process from religious to secular language. And only then would
the translation process not fully encompass or absorb religion.
Habermas sometimes speaks as if he would think that at a certain point
philosophy will have translated every religious element—and thus religion
would be overcome. But sometimes he seems to acknowledge that religion
and theology cannot be replaced.106 He therefore recognizes that it is impos-
sible to come to a complete possession of the experiences present in religious
language through translation.107
But if the latter is his opinion, then the question remains: What do we
lose if we drop the core dogmatic content? Magnus Striet has commented
116  Christiane Tietz
extensively on Habermas’s example of human beings as image of God and
as creatures.108 While in the Christian tradition God is responsible for the
differences and the equality of all human beings—they are equal because
they are all created by God, but God at the same time creates them as differ-
ent individuals—Habermas has to think of nature as securing this difference
and equality.109 Striet judges that with this shift Habermas pays a high price
because nature as such is disinterested in human beings; it has no “moral
sensibility.”110 Human beings now have to suffer “under nature’s imperti-
nence.”111 Even if it means a high price, Striet warns theology not to crow
over this result too easily, because an honest theology would think of God as
well as someone who often does not behave as interested in human beings’
well-being.112 An honest theology would not ignore the problem of theodicy.
Yet the problem of theodicy only arises because the Christian tradition
thinks of God as good and as interested in human beings’ well-being, as
caring for the weak and as suffering with those who suffer. This is some-
thing that cannot be said about nature. Furthermore, Christians believe in
a redeemer who forgives sins and who at some time will end all suffering.
This hope is definitely lost when translating the religious language of the
Christian God into the secular language of nature. Habermas is aware of
this loss. A translation of religion into secular language gives no reason to
assume that there is a God who will reconcile and heal. This is something
only religious language can do when speaking of God himself.

NOTES

1. Jürgen Habermas, Glauben und Wissen: Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buch-

handels 2001 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001); English translation in
Jürgen Habermas, “Faith and Knowledge,” in The Frankfurt School on Reli-
gion: Key Writings by Major Thinkers, ed. Eduardo Mendieta (New York:
Routledge, 2005), 327–338.
2. Here Habermas and Ratzinger discussed the question of whether a democratic
society needs religion for the foundation of its normative values. Habermas
argued that there is no need for a religious legitimation of a democratic consti-
tutional state; morality and law can be established without any religious reason.
Jürgen Habermas, “Vorpolitische Grundlagen des demokratischen Rechtssta-
ates?,” in Jürgen Habermas/Joseph Ratzinger, Dialektik der Säkularisierung:
Über Vernunft und Religion, ed. Florian Schuller (Freiburg, Basel, & Wien:
Herder, 2005), 18. His basic argument is this: The democratic procedure itself
is already “a method to produce legitimacy out of legality;” therefore, there is
“no deficit of validity which would have to be filled with ‘morality’ ” (20; cf.
Jürgen Habermas, “Religion in der Öffentlichkeit: Kognitive Voraussetzun-
gen für den ‘öffentlichen Vernunftgebrauch’ religiöser und säkularer Bürger,”
in Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion: Philosophische Aufsätze [Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005], 126). And there is also no need for a religious
motivation for a democratic constitutional state; democracy in itself, as mak-
ing communicative freedom possible, motivates participation in democracy.
Habermas, “Vorpolitische Grundlagen des demokratischen Rechtsstaates?,”
23. The “social fabric” is the democratic process itself (24). But there are
threads from the outside, for example, the politically uncontrollable dynamics
 Habermas’s Call for Translating Religion 117
of world economics, which change democratically engaged citizens into iso-
lated egoistic monades (26), or the decline of influence of democratic consen-
sus that kills the motivation for democracy. This is the situation, when the
social fabric may tear and when religion is helpful (27).
3. Christiane Tietz, “. . . mit anderen Worten . . . Zur Übersetzbarkeit religiöser Über-
zeugungen in politischen Diskursen,” Evangelische Theologie 72 (2012): 86–100.
4. Habermas, Glauben und Wissen, 9.
5. Ibid., 13.
6. Ibid., 12.
7. Ibid., 13.
8. Ibid., 14; Habermas, “Religion in der Öffentlichkeit,” 143.
9. Habermas, Glauben und Wissen, 14.
10. Ibid., 14f.
11. Ibid., 23f; see also Jürgen Habermas, “Die Grenze zwischen Glauben und
Wissen: Zur Wirkungsgeschichte und aktuellen Bedeutung von Kants Reli-
gionsphilosophie,” in Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion: Philosophische
Aufsätze (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005), 216–257.
12. Habermas, Glauben und Wissen, 23.
13. Ibid., 24.
14. Ibid., 24f.
15. Ibid., 25.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., 26.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., 27.
20. Ibid.
21. Habermas, “Vorpolitische Grundlagen des demokratischen Rechtsstaates?,”
30. The question can be left open if secular language in fact is universal or if
this is only a regulative idea necessary for communication.
22. Jürgen Habermas, “Ein Bewußtsein von dem, was fehlt,” in Ein Bewußtsein
von dem, was fehlt: Eine Diskussion mit Jürgen Habermas, ed. Michael Reder
and Josef Schmidt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008), 33.
23. Habermas, “Religion in der Öffentlichkeit,” 125, 127, and 140. Democratic
majority is not enough for this legitimacy.
24. Habermas, Glauben und Wissen, 13.
25. Habermas, “Religion in der Öffentlichkeit,” 136.
26. Habermas, Glauben und Wissen, 24.
27. Habermas, “Vorpolitische Grundlagen des demokratischen Rechtsstaates?,” 30.
28. Habermas, “Religion in der Öffentlichkeit,” 135.
29. Habermas, “Ein Bewußtsein von dem, was fehlt,” 27.
30. Habermas, “Vorpolitische Grundlagen des demokratischen Rechtsstaates?,” 31.
31. Jürgen Habermas, “Einleitung,” in Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion:
Philosophische Aufsätze (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005), 13.
32. Habermas, “Vorpolitische Grundlagen des demokratischen Rechtsstaates?,” 31.
33. Habermas, “Religion in der Öffentlichkeit,” 137.
34. Habermas, “Vorpolitische Grundlagen des demokratischen Rechtsstaates?,” 31.
35. Habermas, Glauben und Wissen, 29.
36. See note 2 in this chapter.
37. Habermas, “Vorpolitische Grundlagen des demokratischen Rechtsstaates?,” 32f.
38. Ibid., 33.
39. Habermas, Glauben und Wissen, 29.
40. Habermas, “Einleitung,” 13. “Warum sollten sie [religiöse Überlieferungen]
nicht immer noch verschlüsselte semantische Potentiale enthalten, die, wenn
sie nur in begründende Rede verwandelt und ihres profanen Wahrheitsgehaltes
entbunden würden, eine inspirierende Kraft entfalten können?”
118  Christiane Tietz
41. Habermas, Glauben und Wissen, 29.
42. Ibid., 21.
43. Ibid. (my emphasis).
44. Habermas, “Religion in der Öffentlichkeit,” 138.
45. Habermas, “Vorpolitische Grundlagen des demokratischen Rechtsstaates?,” 34.
46. Habermas, “Religion in der Öffentlichkeit,” 132f.
47. Ibid., 132.
48. Ibid., 133f.
49. Ibid., 136.
50. See also ibid., 132, where Habermas admits that some people might not have
enough knowledge or enough ideas to find secular reasons that are indepen-
dent (!) of their authentic convictions.
51. Habermas, Glauben und Wissen, 21.
52. Habermas, “Vorpolitische Grundlagen des demokratischen Rechtsstaates?,” 35.
53. Then they could understand religious freedom only as “kulturellen Naturschutz
für aussterbende Arten”; Habermas, “Religion in der Öffentlichkeit,” 145.
54. Habermas, “Vorpolitische Grundlagen des demokratischen Rechtsstaates?,”
36. Habermas asks of secular people a “self-reflective overcoming” of a misun-
derstanding of secular modernity; Habermas, “Religion in der Öffentlichkeit,”
145. “[Es] verdankt sich die Einsicht säkularer Bürger, in einer postsäkularen,
auf das Fortbestehen religiöser Gemeinschaften auch epistemisch eingestellten
Gesellschaft zu leben, einem Mentalitätswandel, der kognitiv nicht weniger
anspruchsvoll ist als die Anpassung des religiösen Bewusstseins an die Her-
ausforderungen einer sich immer weiter säkularisierenden Umgebung. Nach
Maßstäben einer Aufklärung, die sich kritisch ihrer eigenen Grenzen verge-
wissert, verstehen die säkularen Bürger ihre Nicht-Übereinstimmung mit
religiösen Auffassungen als einen vernünftigerweise [!] zu erwartenden Dis-
sens” (145f.). Otherwise, secular people could not expect of religious people
to use public reason, which includes the willingness of secular people to dis-
cuss the contributions of religious people (146).
55. Habermas, Glauben und Wissen, 22. In Habermas, “Religion in der Öffen-
tlichkeit,” 125, he adds that it cannot be the nonbelievers who define the
boundaries of tolerance between religious activities of the one side and the
negative religious freedom of the other. It cannot be that only secular people
define this; it has to be a cooperative venture, to find reasons that both sides
can accept.
56. Habermas, “Religion in der Öffentlichkeit,” 137.
57. Habermas, Glauben und Wissen, 20; and Habermas, “Religion in der
Öffentlichkeit,” 137.
58. Habermas, Glauben und Wissen, 22.
59. Ibid.
60. Habermas, “Religion in der Öffentlichkeit,” 137.
61. Habermas, “Vorpolitische Grundlagen des demokratischen Rechtsstaates?,” 36.
62. Ibid., 32.
63. Ibid.; Habermas, “Religion in der Öffentlichkeit,” 149, where Habermas adds
that philosophy has taken “innovative impulses” from those Christian terms,
“wenn es ihr gelingt, kognitive [!] Gehalte im Schmelztiegel begründender
Diskurse aus ihrer ursprünglich dogmatischen Verkapselung freizusetzen.“
64. Habermas, “Vorpolitische Grundlagen des demokratischen Rechtsstaates?,” 31.
65. Habermas, “Einleitung,” 13.
66. Habermas, Glauben und Wissen, 29.
67. Ibid., 30.
68. Ibid.
69. See ibid., 22, where he calls the translation of “being an image of God” “prob-
ably overhasty.”
 Habermas’s Call for Translating Religion 119
70. Ibid., 30.
71. Ibid.
72. Habermas, “Die Grenze zwischen Glauben und Wissen,” 231.
73. Ibid.
74. Jürgen Habermas, “Motive nachmetaphysischen Denkens,” in Nachmetaphy-
sisches Denken (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988), 60.
75. Habermas, “Ein Bewußtsein von dem, was fehlt,” 30f.
76. Habermas, “Religion in der Öffentlichkeit,” 149.
77. Ibid., 150; and Habermas, “Ein Bewußtsein von dem, was fehlt,” 29: “Der
Glaube behält für das Wissen etwas Opakes, das weder verleugnet noch bloß
hingenommen werden darf.”
78. Jürgen Habermas, “Replik auf Einwände, Reaktion auf Anregungen,” in Glau-
ben und Wissen: Ein Symposium mit Jürgen Habermas, ed. Rudolf Langthaler
and Herta Nagl-Docekal (Wien: R. Oldenbourg & Akademie, 2007), 370.
79. Most interpreters of Habermas’s texts only see this dimension. They judge
that Habermas is looking for a translation into rational arguments (begrün-
dende Rede), into “propositional arguments,” for example, Michael Kühn-
lein, “Zwischen Vernunftreligion und Existenztheologie: Zum postsäkularen
Denken von Jürgen Habermas,” Theologie und Philosophie 84 (2009): 531.
And they object that Habermas accordingly is only able to translate certain
contents of religion but does not reach the core of religion itself; Friedo Ricken
SJ, “Nachmetaphysische Vernunft und Religion,” in Ein Bewußtsein von dem,
was fehlt: Eine Diskussion mit Jürgen Habermas, ed. Michael Reder and Josef
Schmidt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008), 76.
80. Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, “Öffentliche Theologie in der Zivilgesellschaft,”
in Politik und Theologie in Europa: Perspektiven ökumenischer Sozialethik,
ed. Ingeborg Gabriel (Mainz: Grünewald, 2008), 349; Tietz, “. . . mit anderen
Worten . . .,” 98f.
81. The only possible path from secular to religious language is to remember the
translation from religious to secular language that has happened. But this is
not a translation backward. It is only memory.
82. Bernd Irlenborn, “Religion und öffentliche Vernunft: Zur Bedeutung des
christlichen Glaubens bei Jürgen Habermas,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für
Philosophie und Theologie 55 (2008): 344.
83. Habermas, “Replik auf Einwände, Reaktion auf Anregungen,” 389: “Offen-
barungswahrheiten” are “Sätze mit einem historischen Index . . ., die sich auf
die personale Autorität eines Lehrers berufen.”
84. See also Walter Raberger, “Übersetzung—‘Rettung’ des Humanen?,” in Glau-
ben und Wissen: Ein Symposium mit Jürgen Habermas, ed. Rudolf Langthaler
and Herta Nagl-Docekal (Wien: R. Oldenbourg & Akademie, 2007), 242.
85. Habermas, “Replik auf Einwände, Reaktion auf Anregungen,” 370.
86. But exactly this rational conceptualization is what others reject in his concept
of religion. They complain that Habermas can only take a religion seriously
that has been through enlightenment. Only a religion which is willing to use
reason and which has accepted the challenges of the pluralistic state is able to
make its position reasonably transparent in the societal dialogue; see Reinhold
Esterbauer, “Der ‘Stachel eines religiösen Erbes’: Jürgen Habermas’ Rede über
die Sprache der Religion,” in Glauben und Wissen: Ein Symposium mit Jürgen
Habermas, ed. Rudolf Langthaler and Herta Nagl-Docekal (Wien: R. Olden-
bourg & Akademie, 2007), 307, who argues, that it is not religion as such in
which Habermas is interested but only enlightened religion.
87. Kühnlein, “Zwischen Vernunftreligion und Existenztheologie,” 546.
88. George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, 3rd ed.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 312; and Esterbauer, “Der ‘Stachel
eines religiösen Erbes’,” 319.
120  Christiane Tietz
89. Irlenborn, “Religion und öffentliche Vernunft,” 341.
90. Ibid.
91. See especially Søren Kierkegaard, Einübung im Christentum, trans. Emman-
uel Hirsch, Gesammelte Werke, Abt. 26 (Düsseldorf: Eugen Diederichs,
1955), 76ff.
92. Steiner, After Babel, 313; and Esterbauer, “Der ‘Stachel eines religiösen
Erbes,’ ”  319.
93. Steiner, After Babel, 314.
94. Irlenborn, “Religion und öffentliche Vernunft,” 339; and Kühnlein, “Zwischen
Vernunftreligion und Existenztheologie,” 532.
95. Norbert Brieskorn SJ, “Vom Versuch, eine Beziehung wieder bewußtzu-
machen,” in Ein Bewußtsein von dem, was fehlt: Eine Diskussion mit Jür-
gen Habermas, ed. Michael Reder and Josef Schmidt (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 2008), 38f., who argues that when Habermas speaks of “a con-
sciousness of something missing,” he is not speaking of reason missing some-
thing like human beings miss wings, but of reason missing something like a
blind man misses his eyesight. Habermas describes reason as missing some-
thing that it could have and did have but no longer does and therefore badly
misses.
96. See Irlenborn, “Religion und öffentliche Vernunft,” 338, who recognizes pos-
itively that Habermas, in contrast to other modern philosophers, acknowl-
edges the relevance of religion in a secular society while the others conceive
religious faith as a “vormoderne Einstellung . . ., die durch die Aufklärung und
spätestens durch wissenschaftliche Einsicht obsolet geworden ist.”
97. Kühnlein, “Zwischen Vernunftreligion und Existenztheologie,” 536f.
98. Steiner, After Babel, 314f.
99. Esterbauer, “Der ‘Stachel eines religiösen Erbes,’ ” 319f.
100. Ibid., 320.
101. Kühnlein, “Zwischen Vernunftreligion und Existenztheologie,” 536f.
102. Steiner, After Babel, 316; and Esterbauer, “Der ‘Stachel eines religiösen
Erbes,’ ”  320.
103. Johanner Fischer, “Zur Frage der ‘Übersetzbarkeit’ religiöser Unterschei-
dungen in eine säkulare Perspektive,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie
und Theologie 49 (2002): 215.
104. Thomas Freyer argues that revelation and knowledge stand in a relation full of
tension which cannot be resolved. Human language is unable to express reve-
lation completely; theological language is always a language at the boundaries
which is unable to transform the transcendent into human concepts. This is
one reason why it is impossible to translate religious language completely into
secular language; Thomas Freyer, “Theologische Rationalität und säkulare
Vernunft,” Theologische Quartalsschrift 185 (2005): 150–151.
105. Gerhard Ebeling, “Die Klage über das Erfahrungsdefizit in der Theologie als
Frage nach ihrer Sache,” in Wort und Glaube, vol. 3 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr
[Paul Siebeck], 1975), 3–28; and Eberhard Jüngel, “Drei Vorbemerkungen,”
in Unterwegs zur Sache: Theologische Bemerkungen, 2nd ed. (München: Chr.
Kaiser, 1988), 8.
106. Raberger, “Übersetzung—‘Rettung’ des Humanen?,” 250f.
107. Jürgen Habermas, “Ein Gespräch über Gott und die Welt,” in Zeit der
Übergänge: Kleine politischen Schriften IX (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
2001), 191: “Philosophie . . . kann vielleicht der Theologie einige Begriffe‚
entwenden . . ., aber es wäre der schiere Intellektualismus, wenn man von
der Philosophie erwartete, daß sie sich auf dem ‘Übersetzungswege’ die in der
religiösen Sprache aufbewahrten Erfahrungsgehalte mehr oder weniger voll-
ständig aneignen könnte.”
 Habermas’s Call for Translating Religion 121
108. Magnus Striet, “Grenzen der Übersetzbarkeit: Theologische Annäherungen
an Jürgen Habermas,” in Glauben und Wissen: Ein Symposium mit Jürgen
Habermas, ed. Rudolf Langthaler and Herta Nagl-Docekal (Wien: R. Olden-
bourg & Akademie, 2007), 266ff.
109. Ibid., 274.
110. Ibid.
111. Ibid., 275.
112. Ibid.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bedford-Strohm, Heinrich. “Öffentliche Theologie in der Zivilgesellschaft.” In Poli-

tik und Theologie in Europa: Perspektiven ökumenischer Sozialethik. Edited by
Ingeborg Gabriel, 340–357. Mainz: Grünewald, 2008.
Brieskorn SJ, Norbert. “Vom Versuch, eine Beziehung wieder bewußtzumachen.”
In Ein Bewußtsein von dem, was fehlt: Eine Diskussion mit Jürgen Haber-
mas. Edited by Michael Reder and Josef Schmidt, 37–50. Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 2008.
Ebeling, Gerhard. “Die Klage über das Erfahrungsdefizit in der Theologie als Frage
nach ihrer Sache.” In Wort und Glaube, vol. 3, 3–28. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr
(Paul Siebeck), 1975.
Esterbauer, Reinhold. “Der ‘Stachel eines religiösen Erbes’: Jürgen Habermas’ Rede
über die Sprache der Religion.” In Glauben und Wissen: Ein Symposium mit Jür-
gen Habermas. Edited by Rudolf Langthaler and Herta Nagl-Docekal, 299–321.
Wien: R. Oldenbourg & Akademie, 2007.
Fischer, Johanner. “Zur Frage der ‘Übersetzbarkeit’ religiöser Unterscheidungen in
eine säkulare Perspektive.” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie
49 (2002): 214–235.
Freyer, Thomas. “Theologische Rationalität und säkulare Vernunft.” Theologische
Quartalsschrift 185 (2005): 150–151.
Habermas, Jürgen. “Die Grenze zwischen Glauben und Wissen: Zur Wirkungsge­
schichte und aktuellen Bedeutung von Kants Religionsphilosophie.” In Zwischen
Naturalismus und Religion: Philosophische Aufsätze, 216–257. Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 2005.
———. “Ein Bewußtsein von dem, was fehlt.” In Ein Bewußtsein von dem, was
fehlt: Eine Diskussion mit Jürgen Habermas. Edited by Michael Reder and Josef
Schmidt, 26–36. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008.
———. “Ein Gespräch über Gott und die Welt.” In Zeit der Übergänge: Kleine
politischen Schriften IX, 173–196. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001.
———. “Einleitung.” In Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion: Philosophische
Aufsätze, 7–14. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005.
———. “Faith and Knowledge.” In The Frankfurt School on Religion: Key Writ-
ings by Major Thinkers, edited by Eduardo Mendieta, 327–328. New York:
Routledge, 2005.
———. Glauben und Wissen: Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels 2001.
Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001.
———. “Motive nachmetaphysischen Denkens.” In Nachmetaphysisches Denken,
35–60. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988.
———. “Religion in der Öffentlichkeit: Kognitive Voraussetzungen für den ‘öffent­
lichen Vernunftgebrauch’ religiöser und säkularer Bürger.” In Zwischen Natu-
ralismus und Religion: Philosophische Aufsätze, 119–154. Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 2005.
122  Christiane Tietz
———. “Replik auf Einwände, Reaktion auf Anregungen.” In Glauben und Wissen:
Ein Symposium mit Jürgen Habermas. Edited by Rudolf Langthaler and Herta
Nagl-Docekal, 366–414. Wien: R. Oldenbourg & Akademie, 2007.
———. “Vorpolitische Grundlagen des demokratischen Rechtsstaates?” In Jürgen
Habermas/Joseph Ratzinger, Dialektik der Säkularisierung: Über Vernunft und
Religion. Edited by Florian Schuller, 15–37. Freiburg: Herder, 2005.
Irlenborn, Bernd. “Religion und öffentliche Vernunft: Zur Bedeutung des christli-
chen Glaubens bei Jürgen Habermas.” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und
Theologie 55 (2008): 334–344.
Jüngel, Eberhard. “Drei Vorbemerkungen.” In Unterwegs zur Sache: Theologische
Bemerkungen, 2nd ed., 7–10. München: Chr. Kaiser, 1988.
Kierkegaard, Søren. Einübung im Christentum. Translated by Emmanuel Hirsch.
Gesammelte Werke, Abt. 26. Düsseldorf & Köln: Eugen Diederichs, 1955.
Kühnlein, Michael. “Zwischen Vernunftreligion und Existenztheologie: Zum
postsäkularen Denken von Jürgen Habermas.” Theologie und Philosophie 84
(2009): 524–546.
Raberger, Walter. “Übersetzung—‘Rettung’ des Humanen?.” In Glauben und Wis-
sen: Ein Symposium mit Jürgen Habermas. Edited by Rudolf Langthaler and
Herta Nagl-Docekal, 238–258. Wien: R. Oldenbourg & Akademie, 2007.
Ricken SJ, Friedo. “Nachmetaphysische Vernunft und Religion.” In Ein Bewußtsein
von dem, was fehlt: Eine Diskussion mit Jürgen Habermas. Edited by Michael
Reder and Josef Schmidt, 69–78. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008.
Steiner, George. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. 3rd ed. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007.
Striet, Magnus. “Grenzen der Übersetzbarkeit: Theologische Annäherungen an Jür-
gen Habermas.” In Glauben und Wissen: Ein Symposium mit Jürgen Habermas.
Edited by Rudolf Langthaler and Herta Nagl-Docekal, 259–282. Wien: R. Old-
enbourg & Akademie, 2007.
Tietz, Christiane. “. . . mit anderen Worten . . . Zur Übersetzbarkeit religiöser Über-
zeugungen in politischen Diskursen.” Evangelische Theologie 72 (2012): 86–100.
7 Does Allah Translate ‘God’?
Translating Concepts between
Religions
Klaus von Stosch

The possibility of translating religious concepts from one religious frame-

work to another seems to be one of the basic assumptions of comparative
theology. For example, it seems to be necessary that ‘God’ is a translation
of Allah if we want to discuss whether Muslims and Christians believe in
the same God. Although the micrological methodology of comparative the-
ology makes it impossible to give any general answer to such a question,1
some concrete efforts of comparative theology seem to depend on the pos-
sibility of such a translation. But is this precondition acceptable? Can ‘God’
be considered a translation of Allah? Are translations possible from one
religious framework to another?
Some theologians deny this and they pretend that there exists a sort of
untranslatability and incommensurability between religions like Islam and
Christianity. They deny that Muslims and Christians are struggling with the
same problems and using notions which can easily be translated from one
religious framework to another. In the following contribution I try to exam-
ine this problem by dealing with the notion of ‘God/Allah’, of ‘Christ/Ma-
sih’ and of ‘Spirit/Ruh’ in Christian and Muslim theology. I want to clarify
whether they can be considered as translations and whether the possibility
of translation really is a precondition of interreligious dialogue and of com-
parative work in a theological sense.

IS ALLAH A TRANSLATION OF ‘GOD’?

At first glance there seems to be no doubt that this question should be

answered with “yes”. Etymologically, the word Allah is probably a compo-
sition of the definite article al (the) and the notion elah or ilah. Ilah comes
from a-la-ha, which means worship.2 For Elah there are several definitions:
Somebody, in whom people can find refuge, somebody who affects peo-
ple, or a being which exists in secrecy.3 None of these definitions has any
specific Islamic connotation. Moreover, the notion of Allah had already
been used for God before the revelation of the Qur’an on the Arabian Pen-
insula, and it was common among Jews, Christians, Hanafis, and among
124  Klaus von Stosch
the polytheistic Arabs.4 Even until today Arabic Christians use the notion
Allah when worshipping the Christian God. And even in pre-Islamic times
Allah was worshipped as chief god at Mecca and he was the only god who
was worshipped without idols.5 It was exactly this common notion of God
among the different religions and worldviews that opened up the possibility
of interreligious debates for the Qur’an.6 Obviously enough, the Qur’an did
not break completely with pre-Islamic images of God, but it tried to debate
them, especially in arguing against any form of idolatry (shirk), that is, the
deification or worship of anyone or anything other than the singular God.
Although the etymological result seems to indicate that ‘God’ is simply
the English translation of the Arabic notion Allah, whether this translation
is appropriate on the factual level is highly disputed in current Christian the-
ology. Do Muslims and Christians really believe in the same God such that it
is legitimate to say that ‘God’ is just the translation of Allah? Muslim Salafi
thinkers are not the only ones denying this view. An increasing number of
Christian theologians of all denominations do so as well. One of the most
influential Catholic critics of the identification of the Muslim and Christian
God is the Roman Jesuit Felix Körner. For him the only possibility of refer-
ring to God is constituted through witness and surrender because God is not
like an object.7 Thus, even the translation of the word God to another cul-
tural context needs this kind of surrender. In this understanding you cannot
refer to ‘God’ without being touched by God. Thus, a translation of Allah
as ‘God’ only seems to be legitimate if Allah and ‘God’ are identified in the
surrender of a person.
For Körner, references to God are mediated through a confident engage-
ment that has its roots in the biblical history of God’s engagement in the
world. He argues that the God of the Qur’an is not identical with the God
of the Bible because the Qur’an does not connect to the Bible in a positive
way, but opposes decisive moments of Jewish and Christian salvation his-
tory.8 Moreover, Körner assumes that the relationship of God to humankind
in the Qur’an is not characterized by unconditional love and compassion
and that God, from a Muslim perspective, always remains the transcendent
God and is neither really touched nor even shaped by his creation.9 Thus,
in this reconstruction of Islam there are at least three problems that prevent
the identification of the Muslim and the Christian God and which make it
disputable whether ‘God’ is really a translation of Allah: the overempha-
sis of God’s transcendence, the negative relationship to the Bible, and the
ambivalent and arbitrary picture of God in the Qur’an. All in all, Körner
seems to think that there is a sort of gap between Islam and Christianity
grounded in their differing images of God: While Christianity essentially
claims a communion between God and humankind, Islam seems to witness
not the communion, but the confrontation of both.10
When I discuss Körner’s interesting points with my Muslim colleagues, it
becomes immediately apparent that his claims are highly controversial. Many
academically trained Western Muslims disagree with his interpretations of
 Does Allah Translate ‘God’?  125
Islam and they insist on the possibility of translating Allah as ‘God’ and
even of identifying ‘God’ and Allah. Let’s go through the points of difference
Körner assumes. Since the last one is perhaps the most challenging I begin
there. Is it true that in the Qur’an you cannot really rely on God and that
you never know whether God really loves you? Is it true that God always
remains transcendent such that he never enters into a deep mutual relation-
ship with humans?
If you look at the Qur’an with these questions in mind, you will see that
there are different possible answers. There are justifications for different
images of God in the Qur’an, and in Muslim theology there are many dif-
ferent ways of approaching the notion and the properties of God. The large
variety of possibilities is rather obvious, and it is clear that Körner correctly
summarized some of those possibilities. But other Muslim theologians insist
on the unconditional love and mercy of God who is close to humans and is
touched by them. Mouhanad Khorchide, for example, says that compassion
or mercy is the most important property of God and that it describes the
very essence of God. He argues that in some verses of the Qur’an compas-
sion and God are even identified with each other (e.g., in 7:56; 17:110).
Moreover, it is only compassion which God has devoted himself to (6:12).11
Not only God’s creation, but also his revelation has to be understood as
expressions of the unconditional mercy of God.12 Especially the expression
‘Al-Rahman’, which appears in the Qur’an 169 times, points to the uncon-
ditional nature of God’s mercy and it literally means “the All-compassionate
or the All-merciful,” which should be distinguished from God’s mercy under
certain circumstances, which is expressed as Al-Rahim 226 times in the
Qur’an.13
Therefore, from this perspective God not only is transcendent but also
interacts with humans. Or as Shomali puts it: “God is the One and nothing
is like Him, but at the same time God is very close and immanent.”14 “He
appreciates even the little good acts that we perform and thanks us.”15 The
image of such a God, who is “nearmost and responsive,”16 fits very well
together with the image of the God of the Bible portrayed by Körner. And
it can be supported by many verses of the Qur’an. For instance, the Qur’an
reminds us that God is nearer to us than our jugular vein (50:16), that he
is close to us when we are asking something from him, and that he is the
friend and protector of those who trust in him (3:68). “Verily he has full
knowledge of all that is in men’s heart” (35:38).
Thus, it depends on your hermeneutic approach to the Qur’an whether
you understand such verses as proof for a loving God caring for his beloved
children or whether you are afraid of him as a big brother who is always
watching and controlling you. And it also depends on your hermeneutic
approach to the Bible if you understand this book as witness to a God of
unconditional love and friendship to humankind. At least in Catholic the-
ology today most theologians would argue like Körner or Christiane Tietz
and would say that at the core of Christian belief there is the idea that
126  Klaus von Stosch
God is “a God who is friendly to human beings and who is there for this
world.”17 From this perspective God is absolute love and gives his love to
us unconditionally through his word Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. God
also shows his unconditional love in his relationship to the people of Israel.
Thus, the relationship of the Qur’an to the witness of God’s love shown
through Christ and through the covenant with the people of Israel is decisive
for the question of whether ‘God’ can be translated as Allah.
Let’s first of all take a short look at the relationship with Israel. Körner
quotes two passages from the Qur’an in order to prove that the Qur’an does
not accept Israel as the people of God. The first passage is the following:
“But because of their breach of their covenant, we cursed them, and made
their hearts grow hard: They change the words from their right places and
forget a good part of the message that was sent them. . . . But forgive them,
and overlook their misdeeds: for Allah loveth those who are kind” (5:13).
Is this passage really denying the particularity and distinctiveness of Israel,
as Körner puts it?18 Again the answer to this question will depend on your
hermeneutics. The text can be read in different ways, and it offers a read-
ing which appreciates Israel. In this reading the Qur’an accepts and repeats
the Jewish claim to a covenant with God (5:12) and in our passage it uses
reproaches which the Bible itself has against Israel. It is a common Jewish
idea that Israel breaks the covenant and does not respect the words of God.
The most important point in this context is the end of the passage, which
makes clear that in the end God is all-merciful and that he overlooks their
misdeeds and invites us to be merciful as well. Another passage quoted by
Körner is “[i]f ye think that ye are friends to Allah, to the exclusion of
(other) men, then express your desire for death, if you are truthful!” (62:6)
Obviously enough there is no need to read this passage as a rejection of
Judaism, but only as a rejection of an exclusivist reading of the particularity
of Israel. Then, the meaning can be stated like this: “Only if you, the Jews,
think that only you are friends of God and if you want to exclude everybody
else from this friendship, God will not be satisfied with you.” Rather than an
affront against Judaism, this is a statement against any form of exclusivism.
However, it depends on your hermeneutics of the Qur’an whether you
will accept this interpretation. And Muslims differ very much in their
approach to the Qur’an. Thus, it is impossible to explain in a general sense
whether ‘God’ really is the translation of Allah. Notions are always rooted
in language games and forms of life. And if the Qur’an is rooted in a form
of life that is very much in opposition to or in isolation from Christianity it
is very difficult to see that the meaning of the notions can be different. That
is why friendship and dialogue are so important for comparative theology.19
After such an existentially led dialogue the interpretations of scripture may
change, new possibilities of interpretation arise and the translation of cen-
tral notions may become different.
I think we can learn an important lesson from this insight for the subject
of translation. There is no neutral position from which to decide whether
 Does Allah Translate ‘God’?  127
a translation is correct. Moreover, you always have to keep in mind the
target audience of the translation because their cultural and educational
background will be decisive for their understanding. Language games are
changing and we are making up the rules as we go along, as Wittgenstein
puts it.20 The meaning of notions is not fixed in a Platonic extraworld (or
Hinterwelt, as Nietzsche puts it), but it is in a constant state of flux. Thus,
translations from one religious framework to another have to be connected
with the forms of life of religious believers and have to be rooted in a shared
human way of living. This shared human way of living can be different from
situation to situation, and it opens very different ways of understanding.
Wittgenstein reminds us of what happens when explorers come to an
unknown culture and that it is the gemeinsame menschliche Handlungs-
weise, the shared human way of living that helps us to understand it and
to check any translation attempt.21 This shared way of living is not a fixed
combination of patterns, but it has to be found in different ways in different
situations. Thus, it is important to see how a religious belief is lived and in
which kind of practice it is embedded if we want to understand its meaning.
Common or similar ways of acting can be extremely helpful at getting to
the meaning of words in unknown language games. Therefore, there is no
general way of answering whether a translation, like the translation of Allah
as ‘God’, is correct. If I consider a Muslim theology like the theology of
mercy submitted by Mouhanad Khorchide, I feel very confident in translat-
ing Allah as ‘God’. But if I look at a Salafi understanding of God, I am quite
aware of a significant difference in the concept of God. I  cannot identify
their Allah with the God of Jesus Christ, and I doubt whether in this context
‘God’ is a translation of Allah.
Thus, the translation depends on the context and the target audience. It is
interesting that even a theologian like Khorchide, who strongly asserts that
Allah should be translated as ‘God’ and that the God of the Bible and the
God of the Qur’an are the same God, uses the notion Allah when writing
a textbook for children. For Muslim children the Arabic word helps them
in finding their identity in Germany, and Allah is even used by very lib-
eral theologians. Thus, it depends on the context whether the translation of
‘God’ as Allah is suitable, and theologians should respect the possibility of
both the translation of ‘God’ as Allah and the rejection of this translation.
Which decision is the right one can only be clarified in certain situations,
contexts, and language games.
However, within the context of Christian theology it could be argued that
the translation of Allah as ‘God’ should always be avoided because of the
Qur’anic rejection of Christ. You could argue that if the Qur’an is opposed
to the central claim of Christian belief, a Christian can never accept that
Allah may be God and it would be better to avoid the misleading transla-
tion of Allah as ‘God’. Thus, the references to Christ in the Qur’an have to
be considered if we want to understand whether the translation of Allah as
‘God’ can be appropriate.
128  Klaus von Stosch
IS MASIH A TRANSLATION OF ‘CHRIST’?

As mentioned above, for Körner the Qur’anic rejection of the Christian

interpretation of the particularity of Jesus is of compelling evidence for the
separation of ‘God’ and Allah. Thus, I am now turning to the Qur’anic
idea of Christ. My question now is whether the Qur’an really rejects the
Christian idea of incarnation because such a rejection could count as evi-
dence against the possibility of translating Allah as ‘God.’ In this context it
is important whether Masih is the translation of ‘Christ’ and whether other
titles such as ‘son of God’ are correct translations from Christian language
games because the correct translation seems to be a kind of precondition
for understanding how the Qur’an relates to Christianity. If ‘son of God’
in the Qur’an and in Christian teaching has very different meanings, then
the Qur’anic rejection of this title is not necessarily a rejection of Christian
belief. If it is the case that the Christological titles have not appropriately
(in the Christian understanding) been translated in the Qur’an, the chance
increases that Allah can be translated as ‘God’. The failure of the one trans-
lation seems to be the precondition of the success of the other one.
If we look at the Qur’anic account of Jesus, it is striking that important
aspects of Christology are affirmed in the Qur’an. The Qur’an accepts Jesus
as the word of God (3:45; 4:171). It also admits that Jesus is a messenger
and prophet (19:30; 33:7) and a servant of God (19:30), which is a very
important honorary title if it is read in the tradition of the Ebed-JHWH-
songs. Moreover, the Qur’an speaks of Jesus as a spirit of God (4:171) and
a sign for all peoples (21:91; cf. 23:50). Even the title Masih is frequently
used in the Qur’an, which is the Arabic word for Messiah, which can be
translated as Christ. Thus, the question is whether or not it is possible to
establish a sort of Christology based on the Qur’an or whether the transla-
tion of Masih as ‘Christ’ is misleading. Is Masih just the Arabic translation
of ‘Christ’ and does the Qur’an appreciate the particularity of Jesus in such
a way that it can be accepted by Christians as a translation of their beliefs
into an Arabian context?
At this point it is usually claimed that there is an obvious anti-Christological
and anti-Christian aspect of the Qur’an which is demonstrated through the
argument that the Qur’an refuses to accept Jesus as God or as son of God
(4:171). Indeed, the Qur’an sharply opposes the identification of Jesus Christ
with God several times (5:17; 5:72; 19:35). Whether this refutation is really
a refutation of Christianity and of Jesus Christ as the son of God in the
orthodox Christian sense depends very much on the question of whether
‘son of God’ in the Qur’an really is a translation of the Christian belief. Is
‘son of God’ in the language of the Qur’an an appropriate translation of ‘son
of God’ in Christian language games? Does the Qur’anic statement really
want to oppose Christian belief in Christ?
To understand why an answer to those questions is not so easy, we need
some information on the historical background of Christology in the seventh
 Does Allah Translate ‘God’?  129
century, that is, the time of the origin of the Qur’an. Orientalist research has
shown that in the time of the revelation of the Qur’an there was significant
debate between monophysite and Nestorian Christians on the Arabian Pen-
insula.22 While in the south of Arabia there were Christian settlements with
a Syrian origin which were influenced by monophysite elements in Chris-
tology,23 Nestorianism was dominant in Persia because the kings of Persia
made the Nestorian interpretation of Christianity a sort of state religion,24
which was also influential in the Arabian Peninsula. Between both extremes
there were many different denominations and interpretations of Christology
without any common nucleus that could reconcile the different groups.25
Among this mixture, monophysite interpretations of Christology seem
to have been the most influential. They had obvious tritheistic tendencies
as is evident in the thinking of John Philoponus (†575).26 One reason for
this tritheistic tendency was the popular piety in oriental churches, which
was influenced by old Egyptian ideas of Divine triads and which was closely
connected with the adoration of Mary as a sort of goddess.27 Epiphanius
of Salamis (†403) for example mentioned “a group of Thracian women
who emigrated to Arabia and who worshipped the mother of God as she
was a Goddess”28—a development very much encouraged through the
title of Theotokos (God-bearer), which was proclaimed at the council of
Ephesus (431). Tendencies leading in the same direction can be observed
in Judeo-Christian, Coptic, and Syrian theologies. They all tend to identify
the Holy Spirit and Mary, and lead to the Divine triad of God the Father,
Mother and Son, which is criticized in the Qur’an. The Holy Trinity gets the
shape of a holy family that is a heresy from the Christian orthodox point
of view but that was already known among Judeo-Christians in Egypt as
the Gospel to the Hebrews proves. In the third fragment of this Gospel, the
Pneuma Hagión is explicitly called the mother of Jesus.29 Also a branch of
the Montanists (the Marianites) claimed that Mary as Jesus is godlike,30
and, in the monophysite Church of Abyssinia, Mary was worshipped as the
goddess Isis.31 Thus, there can be no doubt that Mary was very much taking
the place of the mother goddess in the Christian cult in the Orient.32
Naturally this monophysite transformation of Christianity has never
been accepted by the majority of Christians. On the contrary, it was perse-
cuted in the Empire and even in Arabia it was intensely debated. However,
these debates were not dominated by orthodox believers, but by Nestorian
interpretations of Christianity, especially after the conquest of the Arabian
Peninsula by the Persians in 597.33
If we reconsider the Qur’anic statements concerning Christ against the
backdrop of those historical debates, it is possible that they just want to
criticize monophysitism and its tendencies to tritheism. Thus, the accusa-
tions in verses like 5:17.72 seem to address monophysite Christians who
worshipped Christ as ‘Our God’ or even as ‘Almighty God’ in their church
service.34 And whether the Qur’an is only rejecting the triades and trithe-
istic concepts of oriental popular piety in Christianity or the orthodox
130  Klaus von Stosch
understanding of the Trinity and Christology is a difficult question that can-
not be easily answered.35
Interestingly enough, the reason for the Qur’anic refusal of identifying
Jesus and God is that the Qur’an wants to defend God’s self-sufficiency who
is in no need of a guarantor (10:68) and that everything renders worship to
him (2:116). But no Christian would deny this and so one must examine
whether the Qur’anic rejection of the identification of Jesus and God and
its rejection of the notion that ‘son’ really points to the idea Christians have
when they call Jesus the son of God. In this context it is striking that the
Qur’an repeatedly states that Jesus is a real human being, and that he and
his mother had to eat their daily food (5:75).
As only gnostic interpretations of Christianity would contradict this
characterization it seems rather unclear whether the Qur’anic attacks are
really addressed to orthodox Christianity. Consider for example that the
Qur’an is not only criticizing the Christians because they call Christ the
son of God, but also the Jews because they call Esra the son of God (9:30).
This accusation is rather confusing because there are, at least today, no
Jews asserting that Esra is the son of God at all. Thus, this verse cannot be
addressed to the Jews of our day, and it can also be supposed that the other
claim is not directed at the Christians of today and perhaps not against
orthodox Christianity at all.
In this context it might be instructive to consider an observation of the
Muslim scholar Mahmoud Ayoub. He shows that the Qur’an never asserts
that Christianity calls Jesus the walad of God, and that it is precisely the
claim that a man can be the walad of God against which the Qur’an is
arguing. From his point of view it is only a biological understanding of
sonship that is criticized in the Qur’an, not, for example, a metaphorical
understanding or the idea of a son which comes from the love of the father.
This idea of loving unity could be translated into Arabic as ibn and from
Ayoub’s point of view this would be the better interpretation of the intimacy
of Jesus and God as it is described in the Bible. Thus, the accusations of the
Qur’an against the idea to commit shirk by saying that God has a walad can
be understood as directed against the Arabs of Mekka, who think that their
goddesses are biological children of God36 and perhaps against some Jewish
and Christian sects who adopted similar ideas. Although I do not think that
Chalcedon is merely defending a metaphorical understanding of sonship, it
is also clear that it has metaphysical, rather than a biological understanding
in mind. Thus, we simply do not know how the Qur’an would comment on
a metaphysical understanding of sonship within the framework of a rela-
tional ontology that is the common framework of many modern Christian
approaches to Christology.
All in all, it is more than questionable whether the Qur’an really attacks
the idea of Christology which can be found in Christian orthodoxy. Perhaps
Kenneth Cragg is right in saying that “the logic by which, for the Qur’an,
Jesus can never be ‘Son’ to God is precisely the logic by which, for Paul and
 Does Allah Translate ‘God’?  131
the New Testament, he is.”37 However, it is clear that Muslims do not deify
Jesus and that in their interpretations the Qur’an shows us that you “can
find God in Jesus without deifying him.”38 But this does not mean that the
Qur’an does not appreciate the peculiarity of Jesus and it does not mean
that the Qur’anic critique of Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity is
really directed against orthodox Christianity.
If the Qur’an is not directed against orthodox Christianity does this mean
that it believes in Jesus as Christ and that Islam can be understood as a
branch of Christianity? Surely not! If the Qur’an calls Jesus Masih it does
not repeat or translate the Christian beliefs. The Qur’an is not just a transla-
tion of Christianity in the Arabic context. It is obvious that the particularity
of Jesus that is acknowledged in the Qur’an is not a Christian understand-
ing of this particularity. The only thing I wanted to show is that it is not so
obvious whether the Qur’an contradicts the Bible. In a certain understand-
ing the Qur’an can be understood as relating positively to the Bible and as
giving a new and different interpretation of Christ. Thus, I do not want to
claim that the Bible and the Qur’an are saying the same things, but I want to
show a way in which the differences one can find in them can be considered
mutually enriching. For our topic we can learn that there is plenty of space
between identity and contradiction. If Islam uses notions of its pagan and
Christian context such as Allah and Masih this does not mean that it wants
to say the same thing as the religions it is dealing with. But shared notions
in shared language games are the precondition for debates, and the Qur’an
wants to enter into a debate with Christianity, not in the sense of total
contradiction, but in the sense of differentiation and specification. How-
ever, there is a shift of meaning through the translation and sometimes it is
important to reject the translation in order to show that a certain debate is
missing a decisive point. The translation of ‘Christ’ as Masih or the use of
the notion of the ‘son of God’ in the Qur’an is not very helpful for mutual
understanding because the Qur’anic understanding of Christian Christology
is rather far removed from the mainstream of Christianity. At this point,
critique of translation is necessary and new attempts at translation have to
be made.
After this very different result in this second attempt of translation
I would like to turn to a last short glimpse at the question of whether or not
the Holy Spirit can be found in the Qur’an.

IS RŪH THE TRANSLATION OF ‘SPIRIT’?

As the Hebrew Bible frequently mentions the Ruach of God there are also
plenty of passages speaking of Rūh as the Spirit of God in the Qur’an. It
states that the Spirit was breathed into the first man (15:29; 32:9; 38:72)
and that the Spirit gives inspiration by command of God to any of his ser-
vants He pleases (17:85; 40:15). Several times the expression of the Spirit is
132  Klaus von Stosch
used in the context of Mary and Jesus (4:171; 19:17; 21:91; 66:12). But it is
also used to express how the revelation was given to Muhammad (26:193;
42:52) and it is closely related to the angels (70:4; 78:38; 97:4). Most clas-
sical commentaries take such verses as evidence for the identification of the
Spirit with Gabriel, although the Qur’an nowhere explicitly makes such an
identification:

Rūh is one of only a handful of nouns in Arabic that can be either mascu-
line or feminine according to the grammatical gender. The way in which
the differing spirit passages intersect and interweave with one another,
particularly in the passages on the conception of Jesus and the descent of
the spirit on or upon the night of destiny, suggest that the spirit serves to
mediate not only the temporal and eternal but also the male and female.39

In two contexts the Qur’an even speaks of the Holy Spirit. The one occasion
has to do with Jesus who is strengthened with the Holy Spirit (2:87.253;
5:110). The other occasion is the revelation of the Qur’an. It is the Holy
Spirit which has brought the revelation from God (16:102) and in this con-
text it is clear that the Qur’an is meant. Rūh is also in the center of the
prayers of Ramadan (Salat at-tarawih) and it is asked for in order to get a
connection with the vivid revelation of God.40
All these points illustrate that there are some family resemblances between
the usage of the Holy Spirit in the Bible and in the Qur’an. The Qur’an again
is obviously articulating its ideas within Biblical metaphors. But as with
Jesus it is very important for the Qur’an that the Spirit is also submitted to
the command of God. For the Qur’an the Spirit is a force coming from God
rather than something that has a place within him. This is not necessarily in
contradiction to the Christian idea, but at least a differentiation. Also, most
Christians usually do not pray to the Holy Spirit, but he or she is very clearly
considered an instance in the secret of God.
Here translation becomes complicated because it is difficult to appro-
priately reflect the differentiations. And it becomes even more complicated
because there are other Arabic terms that perhaps fit the idea of the Holy
Spirit better than the term rūh. The spirit in the Qur’an is not as omnipres-
ent as the Spirit in the Bible and its guidance is not stressed as strongly.
It is connected more with angels than immediately with God. Perhaps the
guidance itself (hudan), which is very often mentioned in the Qur’an, can be
a better link between the Biblical and the Qur’anic idea of God’s presence
within our lives. Another possibility are the ninety-nine names of God that
can be closely related to the role of the Holy Spirit within the life of God.
In any case it is obvious that the literal translation of Rūh as ‘Holy Spirit’
is highly misleading because the Qur’anic and the Muslim uses of the term
differ quite a bit. Sometimes we need a change in terms in order to come to
a good translation. And sometimes even such a new term is not sufficient
 Does Allah Translate ‘God’?  133
because the concept is located in very different language games and more
steps are necessary to have a suitable translation.

CONCLUSION

What are the implications for the possibility of translating religions that can
be derived from what I have tried to investigate in this chapter? First of all,
the attempt of a general translation of religions or the attempt of a general
translation of certain notions such as Allah, Masih, or Rūh does not make
sense. You simply cannot say in a general way whether such translations are
suitable because it depends on the context in which they are used. Transla-
tion has to focus on target groups and on certain situations to be clear and
to make sense. As I tried to show the differences between Islam and Chris-
tianity are not so great that a mutual understanding is impossible. How-
ever, common language games or the sharing of forms of life is necessary
if religious believers want to understand each other. And the establishment
of a common discourse can shape the meaning of traditional concepts and
notions. Thus, I am not so sure whether such a shift of concepts from one
tradition to another should be called ‘translation’. It always depends on the
context whether you can consider ‘God’ a translation of Allah; Masih, a
translation of ‘Christ’; and so on.
Translation can be a starting point for a fruitful exchange, but it can also
lead to confusions and it can be highly misleading. Translation can only
have benefits if we are aware of its losses. So what are the benefits and what
are the losses if we translate Allah as ‘God,’ Masih as ‘Christ,’ and Rūh as
‘Spirit’? I think the most important benefit is the possibility of communica-
tion and of debate. Although my Muslim colleague probably has different
ideas concerning Christ than I do, the common language can be a tool to
get in touch and to get to a deeper understanding of both one’s own and
the foreign interpretations. If both of us talk of ‘God,’ it is easier to find out
whether we have similar concepts. Because theology is very much the witness
of a dialogue between God and humankind it is very important to take the
same notion in order to give space to the possibility that there is common
history between God and religious believers of several religious traditions.
On the other hand, the common translation can be a loss of differentia-
tion. It can disguise differences and lead to a superficial harmony. It can be a
sign of taking over the ideas of the others and of not respecting their other-
ness. That is why sometimes it is better to use different terms and, for exam-
ple, to insist that the Qur’an has no Christology but only a prophetology.
Whereas it seems to me very helpful to translate ‘God’ as Allah in most con-
texts, it can be misleading to translate ‘Christ’ as Masih or ‘Spirit’ as Rūh
because this neglects existing differences. However, it can also be problem-
atic to reject such a translation because sometimes at a deeper level one can
134  Klaus von Stosch
discover commonalities that are not realized in the beginning and that allow
for translation. The only way to decide whether translations between reli-
gions are appropriate is the establishment of a common discourse between
theologians of different religious traditions. Such a common discourse is
needed especially between Muslims and Christians on those concepts used
in both religious traditions. Thus, translations are not so much the precon-
dition of such common discourses but their result. And comparative work
is not so much dependent on translation, but translation is dependent on
comparative work.
The result of a common discourse will not be that different religions are
simply saying the same things with different concepts. And if they use the
same concepts they will often want to say different things. That is why they
are different religions and pluralism should not obscure this very simple
fact. However, the most important purpose of my paper was to show that
differences are not always contradictions, and I am under the impression
that we can learn much from the differences among religions. Just to men-
tion three points which are related to my paper: I can learn from Islam that
the speech of the unconditional nature of Divine love and mercy alone is
not enough to explain the compassion of God because he wants to show
it to us in our daily lives and he wants to open up to us the possibility of
working with his good will. I can learn of the manifold ways in which the
speech of God can be witnessed. And I can learn that the guidance of God
can be expressed in diverse possibilities and that you should let yourself be
influenced by it your whole life.

NOTES

1. Klaus von Stosch, Komparative Theologie als Wegweiser in der Welt der Reli-
gionen (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2012), 194–199.
2. Mohammed Ali Shomali, ed., God: Existence and Attributes (London: Insti-
tute of Islamic Studies, 2008), 13.
3. Kāzem Mūsavī Boğjnūrdī, ed., dāiratul m ārife bozorge islamī (Great Islamic
˘

Encyclopedia), vol. 10 (Teheran: The Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclope-
dia, 2001), 79.
4. Toshihiko Izutsu, God and Man in the Koran: Semantics of the Koranic Welt-
anschauung (Tokyo: Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, 1964),
95–119.
5. F. E. Peters, “Allah,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, ed.
John Esposito (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 127.
6. Izutsu, God and Man in the Koran: Semantics of the Koranic Weltanschau-
ung, 96 and 98.
7. Felix Körner, “JHWH, Gott, Allah: Drei Namen für dieselbe Wirklichkeit?,”
Theologisch-Praktische Quartalschrift 158 (2010): 34.
8. Ibid., 37.
9. Felix Körner, Kirche im Angesicht des Islam: Theologie des interreligiösen
Zeugnisses (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2008), 332.
10. Körner, “JHWH, Gott, Allah,” 38.
11. Cf. Mouhanad Khorchide, “ ‘Ich bin dem Menschen näher als seine Hals­
schlagader’ (Sure 50,16): Gott und Mensch im Dialog,” in Der stets größere
 Does Allah Translate ‘God’?  135
Gott: Gottesvorstellungen in Christentum und Islam, ed. Andreas Renz et al.
(Regensburg: Pustet, 2011), 81.
12. Ibid., 82–85; Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’an (Minneapolis,
MN: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1980), 9.
13. Shomali, God, 18–20.
14. Ibid., 7.
15. Ibid., 31.
16. Ibid., 26.
17. Christiane Tietz, “. . . mit anderen Worten . . . Zur Übersetzbarkeit religiöser
Überzeugungen in politischen Diskursen,” Evangelische Theologie 72
(2012): 100.
18. Körner, “JHWH, Gott, Allah,” 36.
19. von Stosch, Komparative Theologie als Wegweiser in der Welt der
Religionen, 150.
20. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen. 9th ed. Werkausgabe
2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993), 83. All citations of Philosopische
Untersuchungen refer to paragraphs.
21. Ibid., 206.
22. Cf. Tor Andrae, Der Ursprung des Islam und das Christentum (Uppsala:
Almquist & Wiksell, 1926), 27–28.
23. Horst Bürkle, “Jesus und Maria im Koran,” in Wege der Theologie: An
der Schwelle zum dritten Jahrtausend, ed. Günter Risse et  al. (Paderborn:
Schöningh, 1996), 575.
24. Andrae, Der Ursprung des Islam und das Christentum, 16–17.
25. Martin Bauschke, Jesus—Stein des Anstoßes: Die Christologie des Korans und
die deutschsprachige Theologie (Köln: Böhlau, 2000), 104.
26. Ibid., 153.
27. Ibid., 154.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid., 157.
30. Ibid., 155.
31. Andrae, Der Ursprung des Islam und das Christentum, 205.
32. Bauschke, Jesus—Stein des Anstoßes, 155.
33. Ibid., 156.
34. Ibid., 151.
35. As a first contribution to this ongoing discussion cf. Mouhanad Khorchide
and Klaus von Stosch, eds., Trinität: Anstoß für das muslimisch-christliche
Gespräch (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2013).
36. Mahmoud Ayoub, A Muslim View of Christianity: Essays on Dialogue, ed.
Irfan Omar (New York: Orbis Books, 2007), 125.
37. Kenneth Cragg, Jesus and the Muslim: An Exploration (London: Allen & Unwin,
1985), 30; cf. John Flannery, “Christ in Islam,” One in Christ 41 (2006): 31.
38. Muhammad Legenhausen, preface to Jesus: Through the Qur’an and Shi’ite
Narrations, ed. Mahdi Muntazir Qa’im, trans. Al-Hajj Muhammad Legen-
hausen (Qom: Ansariyan Publications, 2009), 27.
39. Michael Sells, “Spirit,” in Encyclopedia of the Qur’an, vol. 5, ed. Jane Dammen
McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 117.
40. I have to thank Muna Tatari for giving this hint to me.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andrae, Tor. Der Ursprung des Islam und das Christentum. Uppsala: Almquist &
Wiksell, 1926.
136  Klaus von Stosch
Ayoub, Mahmoud. A Muslim View of Christianity: Essays on Dialogue. Edited by
Irfan Omar. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007.
Bauschke, Martin. Jesus—Stein des Anstoßes: Die Christologie des Korans und die
deutschsprachige Theologie. Köln: Böhlau, 2000.
Boğjnūrdī, Kāzem Mūsavī ed. dāiratul mārife bozorge islamī (Great Islamic Encyclo-

˘
pedia). Vol. 10. Teheran: The Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, 2001.
Bürkle, Horst. “Jesus und Maria im Koran.” In Wege der Theologie: An der Schwelle
zum dritten Jahrtausend. Edited by Günter Risse, Heino Sonnemans, Burkhard
Theß, and Hans Waldenfels, 575–586. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1996.
Cragg, Kenneth. Jesus and the Muslim: An Exploration. London: Allen  &
Unwin, 1985.
Flannery, John. “Christ in Islam.” One in Christ 41 (2006): 27–36.
Izutsu, Toshihiko. God and Man in the Koran: Semantics of the Koranic Weltan-
schauung. Tokyo: Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, 1964.
Khorchide, Mouhanad. “ ‘Ich bin dem Menschen näher als seine Halsschlagader’
(Sure 50,16): Gott und Mensch im Dialog.” In Der stets größere Gott: Gottes-
vorstellungen in Christentum und Islam. Edited by Andreas Renz, Mohammad
Gharaibeh, Anja Middelbeck-Varwick, and Bülent Ucar, 72–90. Regensburg:
Pustet, 2011.
——— and Klaus von Stosch, eds. Trinität: Anstoß für das muslimisch-christliche
Gespräch. Paderborn: Schöningh, 2013.
Körner, Felix. “JHWH, Gott, Allah: Drei Namen für dieselbe Wirklichkeit?”
Theologisch-Praktische Quartalschrift 158 (2010): 31–39.
———. Kirche im Angesicht des Islam: Theologie des interreligiösen Zeugnisses.
Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2008.
Legenhausen, Muhammad. Preface to Jesus: Through the Qur’an and Shi’ite Narra-
tions. Edited by Mahdi Muntazir Qa’im and translated by Al-Hajj Muhammad
Legenhausen. Qom: Ansariyan Publications, 2009.
Peters, F. E. “Allah.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, edited by
John Esposito, 127–130. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Rahman, Fazlur. Major Themes of the Qur’an. Minneapolis, MN: Bibliotheca
Islamica, 1980.
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men McAuliffe, 114–117. Leiden: Brill, 2006.
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Islamic Studies, 2008.
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Paderborn: Schöningh, 2012.
Tietz, Christiane. “. . . mit anderen Worten . . . Zur Übersetzbarkeit religiöser Über-
zeugungen in politischen Diskursen.” Evangelische Theologie 72 (2012): 86–100.
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Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993.
8 Translating Religious
Symbol Systems
Some Preliminary Remarks
on Christian Art in China
Volker Küster

The universal claim behind the message of salvation in Jesus Christ made
Christianity a translation movement early in its history.1 Encounters, con-
flicts, and exchanges with other cultures and religions, and their particular
symbol systems, were therefore inevitable. After an aniconic phase in which
the “mysterium tremendum et fascinans”2 was thought to be unrepresent-
able, Christian art, from the third century on, developed as a means to com-
municate the message. Cross and fish may well have been the first cautious
attempts at symbolic representation. In the West, artists soon referred to
Hellenistic iconography to translate Christian faith into visual expression.
For instance, Hermes, the Greek messenger of the gods, who was often
portrayed with a sheep on his shoulders, was transformed into the Good
Shepherd. In Dura Europos one can observe the similarities between the
visual arts in Greco-Roman religions such as the Mithras cult, and Jewish
or Christian sacred spaces.3 Most likely the same artists were commissioned
by representatives of different religions and thereby became agents of icono-
graphic crossover.
East Syrian, so-called Nestorian, Christianity travelled along the Silk
Road into Asia.4 A  few engraved stone crosses on the lotus flower and
cross-shaped amulets are remaining from this phase. In what follows I trace
the encounters between Christian faith in its different branches and Chinese
culture through the ages. In accordance with the missionary expansion of
Christianity, one can distinguish four phases in the production of Christian
art in China: (1) the pre-Western dispersal of Christianity by wandering
monks and merchants; (2) Western missions in the aftermath of colonial-
ism; (3) the Great missionary awakening in the nineteenth century; and
(4) the emancipation of the then so-called younger churches after the two
World Wars and the decolonization of Asia and Africa. China is a special
case insofar as the mainland has never been conquered by the West, despite
the repeated onslaught of the colonial powers. Because of the communist
takeover (1949) and later the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), missionary
activities were halted, and even the lives of the local churches were tempo-
rarily restricted. It has only been since the 1980s that contextual Christian
art could develop. Today in the context of globalization we are standing at
the threshold of a fifth phase.
138  Volker Küster
Anton Wessels has coined the witty catchphrase “portrayal or betrayal”
regarding the images of Jesus in different cultural forms.5 Every attempt to
translate or contextualize the Christian faith has to be regarded as an indi-
vidual act and analyzed with the tools of Intercultural Theology. There are
always four players in the game: the translator, the receiver of the transla-
tion, the translation itself, and the context in which the translation process
takes place.6 The hermeneutical prism created by these different perspec-
tives, through which we read both texts and images, evokes questions such
as: Who is translating what for whom and with what intention? Are there
certain patterns of how translation works? What are the gains and losses in
the translation process?
In order to answer these questions I apply a scale of models derived from
the missiological discussion on the interaction processes between Christian
faith and culture that go along with the translation process.7 The spectrum
ranges from the mere transplantation of the usual Western forms of Christian
faith into a foreign cultural-religious context to its complete assimilation.
Between these two are different stages of negotiation: The accommoda-
tion model tries to keep form and content separate like the kernel and the
husk of a nut.8 The inculturation or contextualization model,9 in contrast,
has digested the inseparability of culture and religion and reckons with the
dynamic interactions that go with it. Instead of a nut, the image of an onion
is applied. If one peels away the different layers, by the end nothing is left.
The most recent glocalization model seems to burst out of the traditional
translation paradigm entirely. The perception of culture has changed since
the introduction of the inculturation or contextualization model. Culture is
regarded today as fluent and multilayered. The hyperculture of global con-
sumer capitalism, also referred to as McDonaldization or Coca-colonization,
provoked, contrary to its intentions, a resurgence of local cultures. The con-
traction of the words global and local in the neologism glocalization indi-
cates that all analyses of any local culture have to take into consideration
the interplay between the two dimensions. Generally speaking on the scale
from transplantation to contextualization, mere transplantation might be
expected to incur the greatest losses of understanding with no gains at all;
on the other end of the spectrum, the message would best be conveyed by
contextualization, which will, at the same time, enrich the Christian symbol
system in the process. Even though in what follows I am correlating the scale
with the historical phases introduced earlier, the older models exist along-
side the newer ones. As a matter of fact, one can observe a constant swinging
between the extremes of transplantation and assimilation.

FIRST CONTACT: THE NESTORIAN ASSIMILATION

The first contact with Nestorian Christianity during the Tang dynasty
(618–906) has often been disregarded as heretical.10 With the end of this
 Translating Religious Symbol Systems 139
dynasty, Nestorian Christianity seems to have faded, though only to reemerge
under the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368).11 Its early memorial, the
stele of Sianfu (781), bears on its top an engraving of a Syrian cross standing
on a lotus flower (Figure 8.1). In Hindu and Buddhist iconography the lotus
is the seat or rostrum of the gods and the Buddha. The Christian symbol is
thus not superimposed on the lotus, as suspicious postcolonial minds may
suggest, but, on the contrary, the lotus elevates the cross.12
The Syrian cross symbolizes not so much the suffering and death of Jesus
Christ but his resurrection. It is associated with the tree of life and the axis
of the world. This cosmic symbolism works well with the Taoist cloud orna-
ments to the left and the right. While the cross is the symbol of Christianity
the lotus is Hindu and especially Buddhist. Growing from mud its beautiful
flower symbolizes purity. This again matches the accompanying lilies to the
left and right. In Western medieval depictions of the annunciation, the angel
often holds a white lillie as a symbol of purity.
The engraving of the cross is framed by two dragon-like figures whose
bodies are intertwined and who hold a pearl with their hind legs right above
the cross. This pearl has been interpreted as the Nestorian symbol for eter-
nal salvation, not without pointing to the Kumbhira pearl in Buddhism that
symbolizes the Buddha’s law. The dragons are favored Confucian symbols.
Those who think along the lines of preparatio evangelica interpret this as
a symbolic representation that the three major religions in China (Daoism,
Confucianism, and Buddhism) have been fulfilled in Nestorian Christianity.13
Besides tombstones and a few relief stones with similar depictions of
the cross on the lotus (sometimes accompanied by angels),14 some stylized

Figure 8.1  Nestorian Stele detail (781; excavated 1625)

140  Volker Küster
crosses, most likely used as protective amulets by soldiers, have been pre-
served.15 The Nestorian art seems to have been mainly aniconic. Only a few
wall paintings have been discovered so far. Nestorian Christianity obviously
has blended in quite well, yet it also has been said that it perished because
of its assimilation with Daoism and Buddhism.16

SECOND CONTACT: THE ROMAN CATHOLIC

MISSION BETWEEN TRANSPLANTATION AND
ACCOMMODATION

Roman Catholicism entered China in two waves. The Franciscans, who

had travelled along the trade routes since the middle of the twelve century,
brought under Giovanni da Monte (1247–ca. 1328) embroidered images
and miniatures as presents for the representatives of the ruling class of the
Yuan Dynasty. According to one of his letters in 1305 da Monte Corvino
ordered six images with scenes from the Old and New Testament to instruct
the common people without saying who had been commissioned.17 Even
though the papal envoy, Giovanni da Marignolli (ca. 1290–1360), was an
artist himself, little is recorded about attempts at accommodation under the
aegis of the Franciscans.18
The so-called Christian tombstones of Quanzhou, a multicultural, mul-
tireligious coastal city, belong to a larger collection of stones dating from
the fourteenth century, rediscovered in the 1940s, and comprising not only
stones of Nestorian and Latin rite Christianity but also of Buddhist as well
as Muslim background. The stones share certain iconographic similarities.
Prominently, the headstone of the Franciscan missionary Andrew of Perugia
“features an engraved pair of angel-like creatures supporting a figure sitting
on a lotus flower [which] indicates that the smaller Latin Rite community was
not averse to the use of Nestorian iconography” (Figure 8.2).19 Jeremy Clarke,
who seems to be convinced that the Franciscans were in favor of accommoda-
tion, himself refers to “the observed antagonism between the communities”
and admits that the accommodation described can also be due to the fact that
“the same artists were involved in the production process.”20 Yet he concludes
that “[e]ven in times of hostility, evidence of hybridity can be found.”21
In 1951–1952 two tombstones were rediscovered in the neighboring
city of Yangzhou. They bear the names of Katerina Ilioni († 1342) and
her brother Anthony († 1344), members of the foreign trade community of
Italian decent.22 The inscriptions are in Latin. Clarke follows Francis Rou-
leau SJ (1900–1984), who first described the discovery of Katarina’s tomb-
stone, in interpreting the engravings on the headstone as hybrid.23 While the
Madonna on the top of the headstone is sitting on a Chinese-style rostrum,
it is debatable whether her facial features and that of baby Jesus on her lap
are really sinicized. They are more reminiscent of a typical medieval West-
ern depiction (Figure  8.3). Neither is their clothing particularly Chinese,
 Translating Religious Symbol Systems 141

Figure 8.2  Tombstone Andrew of Perugia (d. ca. 1332; Quanzhou)

which usually comes first in the accommodation process, nor their facial
expressions, particularly their eyes and noses. The angels in the depictions
of the martyrdom of St.  Catherine of Alexandria, the name patroness of
the deceased, however, might show some local influence. Currently, only a
rubbing of the stone is available. Both stones are supposed to be in the local
museum’s collection.
There seems to have been a transplantation–assimilation–dilemma:
While the Nestorians assimilated themselves to the Chinese context, the
Franciscans were the first to bring Western-style images. Given the stance
of the Franciscans in the later rites controversy, it seems probable that they
wanted to distinguish themselves from the Nestorians. Additionally, a good
part of the Roman Catholic clientele came from the Western community
in China. The commissioned artist, however, often went their own ways
by using local patterns and referring to the iconographies they had been
trained in, which could explain the chair or the depiction of the angels on
the Yangzhou tombstone.
142  Volker Küster

Figure 8.3  Tombstone Katerina Ilioni (d. 1342; Yangzhou)

The second wave of Catholicism was the Jesuit initiative under Matteo
Ricci (1552–1610). They brought Western art as presents and illustrative
material for the emperor and local gentry as well. The most popular among
these images was probably a copy of the Salus Populi Romana, which is
attributed to Saint Luke and kept in Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Ricci
was personally invited to select four Christian images and provide short
interpretations for Master Cheng’s Ink Garden (Chengshi Moyuan, 1606),
an album published by the Cheng brothers from Anhui, who used it as a
commercial for their ink cake production. While this kind of album was
officially supposed to serve to provide templates for inkcake design, they
became collectors’ items. At the same time, the Jesuits not only commis-
sioned local artists, like the famous painter and poet Wu Li (1631–1718),
who was one of the six masters of the early Qing period (seventeenth cen-
tury),24 but also were even accompanied by their own artists, among whom
Giuseppe Castiglioni (1688–1766) became the most prominent.25 He was
installed as an official painter at the court of the Chinese emperor. Casti-
glioni developed into a master of traditional Chinese painting himself, one
of his specialties being horse painting. Still it is said that Castiglioni man-
aged to develop a hybrid style translating Western aesthetic categories into
Chinese painting by introducing, for instance, perspective and the interplay
between light and shadow. Unfortunately, there seems to be no Christian
motifs preserved in the Chinese style of either Wu or Castiglioni.
 Translating Religious Symbol Systems 143
Ricci himself could be rather critical about Chinese painting: “Even
though the Chinese usually love painting a lot, they cannot reach our art
standards .  .  . They are not familiar with oil painting and do not depict
shadows in their paintings that are, therefore, dead and without any life.”26
Ricci locates the reason for this alleged deficit “in the scarcity or the lack of
contact with other nations that could help them to develop.”27 During his
ascent to Beijing, the wife of the governor of Jinan wished to commission a
local artist to copy an oil painting of the virgin that Ricci carried with him.
Instead, he gave her a copy he himself had already commissioned from a
Chinese convert rather than allow an unknown artist to produce another
copy.28 This episode suggests that he wanted to maintain control of the visual
representation of the Christian faith. It becomes evident that even this pio-
neer of accommodation was not free of the European superiority complex
that is typical for later epochs of missionary history. On the other hand the
complaints of the Jesuit painter Jean-Denis Attiret (1702–1768) about the
permanent interference of the Chinese emperor Ch’ien-lung (1711–1799;
r. 1735–1796) in his work show that the Chinese, for their part, were also
quite conscious of their own superiority. The emperor opined, “Watercolor
is more elegant and pleasant for the eye, no matter from which side one
looks at it.” The “dark shadows” in European style painting seemed like
“spoiling spots” to him.29
Different from their Franciscan predecessors and later critics, the Jesuits
advocated accommodation. They wanted to give Christianity a Chinese out-
look, even though form and content should be kept separate. One of the few
preserved silk paintings by a presumably local artist depicts the Madonna in
Chinese dress with baby Jesus on her arms that still shows the features of the
Western Renaissance model (Figure 8.4).30 The closer one gets to the holy
the less accommodated the figures usually are in this early phase. A strong
emphasis was placed on catechetical material. Right after its publication
in Europe the Jesuits ordered a copy of Jerome Nadal’s Evangelicae Histo-
riae Imagines (Antwerpen, 1593). Many of the 153 illustrations of biblical
stories by this Flemish Jesuit were copied by local artists who accommo-
dated them slightly. João da Rocha published an Instruction on How to
Pray the Rosary (Songnianzhu guicheng, 1619) featuring fourteen images,
and P. Giulio Aleni published an Explanation of the Incarnation and Life
of the Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu jiangsheng chuxiang, 1637), which even
contained fifty-eight sinicized prints that drew on Nadal or other European
renaissance models (Figures 8.5 and 8.6).
Next to Western-style paintings, Chinese-style court art, more
non-Christian than Christian, and accommodated prints for catechetical
purposes, one can find a fourth category of devotional objects, oddities,
and exotica. A trade in religious goods between the Philippines, Macau, and
China had already developed. The Zhangzhou ivories are mainly Marian
statues that have influenced the iconography of the child-giving Guanyin
(songzi Guanyin) and vice versa. Another exotica is the Jesuit porcelain
144  Volker Küster

Figure 8.4  Chinese Madonna (17th c.)

that was a version of the so-called China blue with Christian motifs. This
supposedly Chinese tableware was produced according to Dutch and British
taste with measurements and even motifs commissioned by merchants. The
Christian variant served similar purposes to propagate the missionary cause
in the West and raise funds or simply to attract Western customers with
religious backgrounds.31
Figure 8.5  Annunciation in: Jao da Rocha, How to Pray the Rosary (in Chinese,
1619)
146  Volker Küster

Figure 8.6  Annunciation in: Jeronimo Nadal, Adnotationes in Euangelio (Rome,

1594)
National competition between Spain and Portugal, Propaganda Fidei
and Padroado (patronage), as well as rivalries between different orders,
stirred the rites controversy. The Dominicans and Franciscans questioned
the accommodation strategy of the Jesuits. The controversy ended with
 Translating Religious Symbol Systems 147
the dissolution of the Jesuit order (1773). At the same time the Chinese
emperors responded to the anti-accommodation policy of the popes with
prohibition and prosecution that led to the decline of Catholic Christianity
in China. Nevertheless, it did not affect the Jesuits at the imperial court.
They were obviously regarded not so much as Christian missionaries but
as scholars and artists that contributed to the glory of the Chinese emperor.
Their cultural mission was therefore much more sophisticated than their
critics ever suspected. Or did they become, on the contrary, useful tools in
the imperial machinery?

FROM EUROCENTRISM TO THE RENAISSANCE OF CATHOLIC

MISSIONARY ART (NEO-ACCOMMODATION)

With the missionary awakening in the nineteenth century, which was kindled
mainly by Protestants, the Catholics also returned to China. This epoch is char-
acterized by a strong Eurocentrism that neglected local cultures and religions:

From the treaty period [treaty of Nanjing 1842] to the middle of the
nineteenth century onwards, however, the process of indigenization
stalled. This was for at least two reasons: the process met opposition
from Catholic missionaries, and certain sections of the Chinese Catholic
communities expressed a preference for European-style imagery.32

The Protestant missionaries often came from the lower echelon of society;
for them the divine calling was at the same time a possibility for social
upward mobility. They usually lacked the refined taste for the arts of the
bourgeoisie. Still Schüller points to the fact that the Protestants were ini-
tially more active in producing Chinese-style Christian art than the Cath-
olics.33 Daniel Johnson Fleming has published two paintings “produced a
few years before 1900” that were shown in the hospital of the Church Mis-
sionary Society in Hangchow, and a mural painting from a small chapel at
Hwen Giang, West China (Figure 8.7). He also reproduced works from the
Episcopal St.  Luke’s Studio in Nanking founded by the later bishop T. K.
Shen.34 Furthermore, some catechetical material has also been preserved.35
The Catholics, on the other hand, were paralyzed by the aftermath of the
rites controversy. The Jesuits, whose order was even temporarily dissolved
(1773–1814), were very cautious not to get into trouble again with the hier-
archy. The local Christians internalized the missionary position over against
their own culture, which was probably also due to the anti-Christian senti-
ments of their countrymen, and favored the transplantation of Western-style
images of the Madonna of Lourdes. This eventually kindled a Lourdes
revival in China with several pilgrimage centers like the one in Sheshan, in
the vicinity of Shanghai. “It is ironic, however, that [at the same time] a Chi-
nese version of Mary was [produced and] depicted in Rome and eventually
made its way to Lourdes.”36
148  Volker Küster

Figure 8.7  Embarking on the Christian Boat (mural; Chapel in Hwen Giang, West
China, ca. 1916)

An interesting detail is that Our Lady of Donglu, a portrait for one of the
Marian pilgrimage sites, was commissioned by the Lazarist priest René Fla-
ment, a member of the same catholic order as Vincent Lebbe (1877–1940),
one of the few outspoken critics of the eurocentrism of the mission work of
those years. Flament sent a photo of a portrait of the empress Cixi by the
American artist Katharine Carl, to be used as a model, to the head of the
Tushanwan workshop founded in 1867, which was situated at the Jesuit
compound in Zikawei, Shanghai. The original painting from 1908 by Liu
Bizhen (Siméon Liu) seems to be lost. While the original is thoroughly sini-
cized, lesser copies show elements of sinicization in terms of clothing and
interior design (Figures 8.8 and 8.9).37 The facial expressions of Mary and
Jesus, who is standing on the rostrum next to Mary as a small adult, are not,
however, particularly Chinese but are rather Western. Cixi seems to have
been quite aware of the possibilities of portrait painting and photography.
She herself posed as Guanyin for a number of photos, which might also have
served as models for the Christian painting of Mary. The fact that she was
also referred to as “the motherly” and “the one that promises luck” would
have evoked associations with Mary/Guanyin among the faithful of her time
who saw the portrait. In 1924 when the Chinese church was consecrated
to Mary, Celso Costantini (1876–1958), the apostolic delegate to China
(1922–1935) and later secretary of the propaganda Fidei (1935–1953),
declared, “We must popularize this image,” and Our Lady of Donglu trans-
formed into Our Lady of China (Zhonghua Shengmu).38
The strong French influence on Chinese Catholicism was not free
from nationalism either; a fact that caused concern in Rome. The experi-
ence of the terrifying consequences of nationalism in the Great War trig-
gered a change in the missionary theology of the Vatican. Pope Benedict
XV’s apostolic letter, Maximum illud (1919), though also not free of the
 Translating Religious Symbol Systems 149

Figure 8.8  Liu Bizhen, Our Lady of Donglu (Shanghai, 1908)

Eurocentrism of the times, called for a local clergy and hierarchy. Celso
Costantini was under official orders to put the new policy into practice. As
an artist and art critic himself, Costantini regarded art as a suitable medium
to accommodate the Christian faith in China. He was attracted to Lukas
Ch’en’s (Yüan Tu, 1903–1966) depictions of Guanyin exhibited in Beijing
(1928) and the apostolic delegate commissioned him to produce a number
150  Volker Küster

Figure 8.9  Our Lady of Donglu; copy (Ordination card, Xujiahui, 1946)

of Christian paintings. On Costantini’s recommendation, Chen joined the

faculty of the newly established art department at the Catholic Fu Jen Uni-
versity, which was founded to teach and preserve traditional Chinese art.
Following an invitation for a Christmas exhibition (1934) given by the
Figure 8.10  Lukas Ch’en, Mary, Queen of the Angels (1938)
152  Volker Küster
head of the department, Br. Franz Berchmans Brückner, SVD (1891–1985),
some senior students, however, produced a couple of Christian paintings
in neo-accommodation style that were easily sold. This was motivation
enough for them to follow this path.39
Lukas Ch’en portrayed Mother Mary kneeling next to the child lying in
a manger. She seems a bit displaced on an open terrace fenced by a stone
wall with a view of a traditional Chinese landscape. The Western model,
a painting by Fra Filippo Lippi (ca. 1406–1469) could still be identified.40
Another depiction of Mary shows The Queen of the Angels, accompanied
by a heavenly orchestra of eight playing traditional Chinese instruments
(Figure 8.10). The holy mother holds baby Jesus on a blanket made of bird
feathers on her arms, symbolizing his heavenly decent. Around his neck the
child bears a chain with a lock. This is a traditional practice by rich parents,
who give their child to a poor woman to raise it. They keep the key and later
release the chain as part of the home coming ceremonies once they take back
the child.
The Fourteenth Station of the Cross shows Jesus lying on a stone (Fig-
ure 8.11). While his head is looking upward, the body is turned to the side.

Figure 8.11  Lukas Ch’en, Christ in the Tomb (1940)

 Translating Religious Symbol Systems 153
His two legs are slightly bent. The crown of thorns lies to the left of his head
as if forgotten. This depiction of Jesus in the tomb resembles iconographi-
cally the Buddha entering into Nirvana. There are two patterns of parinir-
vana, as it is called iconographically. When the legs of the Buddha are bent,
he is just about to enter Nirvana; if they are lying on each other straightened
out, the Buddha has already entered Nirvana. Accordingly, Jesus is here
portrayed as lying in the tomb on Easter Saturday—which is liturgically
even more important than Good Friday in the catholic tradition—waiting
for resurrection. One of the rare depictions of The Trinity shows God as a
Chinese sage sitting on a chair made of a big root. Jesus, holding a cross in
his hands, is placed next to him on a platform vaulted by a huge halo and
surrounded by clouds. Little angels are playing at their feet, like swimming
in a sea of clouds. The Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, is flying in an
additional small halo above them.
(George) Wang Su-Ta (*1911)41 produced a Crucifixion scene that is
iconographically still reminiscent of its Renaissance model. Understanding
the death and suffering of God has long been difficult in the context of
Asian religions and worldviews. Therefore, when the passion of Christ is
depicted at all in Asian Christian art, it usually follows the Western model
and abstains from its own interpretations. An interesting detail, however,
is that the artist put the soldiers in Japanese uniforms alluding to the colo-
nial plight. This can be interpreted as anticipation of a Chinese liberation
theology. (Johannes Evangelista) Lu Hung-Nien (*1914) painted a Flight
into Egypt showing the holy family using a boat (Figure 8.12). An invisible
diagonal that runs from the lower-left corner to the top-right corner divides
the painting into an empty triangle to the right, with only two birds in it and
a lower triangle filled with spread bamboo plants and the boat connecting
the two parts of the picture. The interplay between fullness and emptiness in
the composition is typical for traditional Chinese landscape painting. Clarke
alludes to the classical Chinese novel Water Margin, which tells the story
of a “legendary band of heroes who are in the watery marshes during their
fight against a corrupt government.”42
(Karl) Hsü Chi-Hua (1912–1937) depicts Judas with the sack of money
in his hands. In front of him stands an ugly devil in Chinese dress with bat
wings. He already bears in his right hand the rope that Judas will use to
hang himself. Hsü’s Holy Supper shows Jesus and his disciples as a party of
Confucian aristocrats on an open terrace in a garden landscape. About 500
paintings have been produced by this school (ca. 1935–1939), most of them
lost today. What is preserved seems to be mainly in Western collections of
Mission orders and agencies. Since Protestant missionaries were attracted
by these artworks, some pieces may also be hanging in private homes.
Mon van Genechten (1903–1974), also known by his Chinese name
Fang Xisheng, a Flemish painter and priest who was a missionary to China
(1930–1946), joined the faculty of Fu Jen’s art department in 1938.43 Sim-
ilar to the Jesuit artists before him, he studied traditional Chinese painting
Figure 8.12  Lu Hung-Nien, Flight into Egypt (1934)
 Translating Religious Symbol Systems 155
(1930–1938), but also deliberately created Christian paintings in Chinese
style. According to his own recollection he created about forty such motifs,
which he left behind in China. Yet after his return to Belgium he continued
painting Christian motifs in Chinese style, which sold well in exhibitions.
Some of his work is preserved in a collection endowed to his hometown
of Geel.
With his monumental Suffering China (1943/1944; Figure 8.13) and a few
preparatory smaller sketches like The Blind Man, The Cripple, or Beggar
Woman (all 1943), van Genechten broke through the neo-accommodation
style.44 He depicts the plight of the Chinese people under Japanese colo-
nialism. The artist was detained with other missionaries in Japanese camps
and placed under house arrest. He had to hide his paintings in a hollow
tree. After his release he finished his major work that shows Christ bearing
the cross among the poor and oppressed Chinese people. Van Genechten
himself calls it a “European-style painting.”45 In a certain sense it already
anticipated socialist realism, even though the artist never came into contact
with the communist intellectuals in China. Van Genechten was influenced
by Catholic social teaching and always opted for the poor. The painting
again contains a Chinese liberation theology avant la lettre.
The polemic that the Fu Jen artists in fact used art forms that were out-
dated is debatable. Even today contemporary Asian artists continue to work
in this old traditional style or recycle it in hybridized forms. Celso Cos-
tantini and Sepp Schüller seem convinced that Christianity could not only
preserve but revitalize this ancient tradition.46 Another question is whether
it was accepted by the Chinese Christian contemporaries who felt the need

Figure 8.13  Mon van Genechten, Suffering China (1943/44)

156  Volker Küster
to differentiate themselves from their surroundings or whether it remained
an exotic item to propagate the mission in foreign lands at home.

PROTESTANT INITIATIVE: THE THREE-SELF MOVEMENT

TOWARD CONTEXTUALIZATION

Only in the 1980s, after thirty years of suppression, did the policy of the
communist government toward religion change, and Christianity and other
religions start to flourish again. In regard to the situation on the Catho-
lic side Clarke raises the question: “Why is it that there is a pronounced
dislike of Chinese Christian imagery in the period after economic reform
[1978]?” as possible reasons he points to the persecutions and prohibitions,
the separation between the Christian leaders and the faithful, and a lack of
knowledge about the history of Chinese Christianity.47 One may ask what
happened in Catholic circles in the nearly thirty-five years that followed.
The Protestant Three-Self Church under Bishop Ting (1915–2012), who
was a proponent of contextualization, on the other hand, took a favorable
stance toward the arts; several exhibitions have been held and an art center
opened with assistance of the Amity foundation. A  small brochure docu-
menting the first Chinese Christian Art Seminar and the Second Chinese
Christian Art Exhibition shows that the genres employed by various artists
range from copying the style of nineteenth-century Western religious kitsch,
socialist realism, neo-accommodation or traditional court art, such as land-
scape and animal painting accompanied by calligraphic bible verses, to mere
Christian calligraphy as well as folk art.48 The following examples are taken
from the areas of folk and court art.

Folk Art
He Qi and Fan Pu, who used the folk art of paper cutting, have probably
become most well known in the West.49 He Qi (*1950) started his career by
depicting Christian motifs through Chinese paper cuts. Most of them still
follow the accommodation model, with Chinese personnel in traditional
dress. Through composition principles like symmetry and harmony, some-
times making use of the yin–yang symbolism, some of his art works, how-
ever, already move toward inculturation or contextualization. The Flight
into Egypt or The Good Samaritan expresses the Asian longing for harmony
through making the yin–yang pattern the central composition principle.
In The Prodigal Son this composition principle is perfected (Figure 8.14).
The father is holding the son who is kneeling in front of him on his lap. At
first sight the androgynous look of the son can even evoke the impression
of a couple in love. The shape of their bodies follows the yin–yang matrix,
which is repeated through the graphic interplay between their heads and the
circle of the sun. The bird flying into the sunlight from the left is a goose,
 Translating Religious Symbol Systems 157

Figure 8.14  He Qi, The Prodigal Son (1991)

which comes home from her winter shelter. He Qi portrays Samson with
the Beijing opera mask of General Zhang Fei, an impulsive character. This
perhaps most mature fruit of his attempts at contextualization has caused
some discussions in the Chinese church, which made the artist wary of dis-
tributing it.50 After experimenting with tapestry, another folk art, He Qi
turned to a kind of crayon/gouache technique. Over the last two decades he
has produced a rich variety of colorful paintings. The figures are painted in
a naïve way. The Chinese opera masks reoccur for instance in the depiction
of The Three Magi (Figure 8.15). He Qi has since migrated to the United
States. He has found a sponsor well connected in evangelical circles and
successfully sells his works, even prints, at high prices to Western audiences.
They also plan the production of the He Qi World Bible.
Fan Pu (*1948) has long remained in the shadow of He Qi. As a daugh-
ter of a well-known Protestant pastor who was also a calligrapher, she was
raised in the Christian faith. The artist learned paper cutting while she was
deported to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. She used this
medium to reproduce the Bible illustrations from her memories of a Chris-
tian book that was dear to her in her childhood and was lost in the turmoil
of the Cultural Revolution. The abundant variety of her Christian paper
cuttings is still reminiscent of the obviously Western evangelical models. The
only accommodation is often the technique itself. More recently, however,
Fan Pu has combined the aristocratic art of calligraphy with the folk art of
paper cutting. She cuts verses of literati into the paper that can be read anew
in the light of biblical stories. This strategy is reminiscent of Matteo Ricci’s
accommodation project.
The Chinese characters in the upper third of our example are a quote
from a poem by Quyuan: “Long and narrow is the way and I will wander
forth and back on it” (Figure 8.16). At the lower margin of the picture a
158  Volker Küster

Figure 8.15  He Qi, The Three Magi (2002)

shepherd follows this narrow way with a symbolic number of three sheep.
He walks straight, with his shepherd stick in his right hand. With his left
hand he is pointing toward the sun that gives him directions. In the center
the crown of thorns is depicted, symbolizing Jesus Christ’s glorification in
the light of god. The way leads upwards around mountain slopes that are
reminiscent of traditional Chinese landscape painting. In the center of the
picture it crosses a river that flows through the scenery.
Christian viewers will be involuntarily reminded of the biblical parable
of the two ways (Matt. 7:12–14). The way into life—to God—is long and
narrow, comparable to the way of suffering of Jesus Christ, who went before.
Being aware of his predecessor the shepherd leads his sheep on this very way.51

Court Art
Traditional court or scholarly art knows different genres like landscape, and
animal and flower painting. Calligraphy not only accompanied the paint-
ings but was also an art form in its own right. It can be roughly categorized
 Translating Religious Symbol Systems 159

Figure 8.16  Fan Pu, Long and Narrow Way (1997)

according to the type of characters and the sort of brush stroke applied. The
calligraphy Immanuel for instance is written in ancient Chinese characters
(Figure 8.17).
In what seems to be a typical Chinese landscape painting that plays
with empty space Yang Chien-hou (*1910) depicts deer standing on a rock
underneath a waterfall. The accompanying calligraphy, however, identifies
it as a reference to Psalm 42:1–3:

As a deer pants for flowing streams,

so pants my soul for you, O God.
160  Volker Küster

Figure 8.17  Liu Bo-Han, Immanuel (1990s)

Bao Gu-Ping shows an eagle standing with one claw on a pine tree
branch, ready to spread his wings (Figure  8.18). The pine tree branches
fill the lower third of the painting along a diagonal line. The bird reaches
into the center of the picture. The calligraphy on the right upper margin is
a quote from Isaiah 40:31: “But those who wait for the Lord shall renew
their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles.” The traditional
landscape painting of mountain scenery in fog by Wang Zhiming serves as
an illustration of Psalm 33:6–9: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were
made.” The interplay between emptiness and fullness in these compositions
is typical for traditional Chinese painting. The first generation of Christian
artists after the economic reform by and large worked under the patronage
of the Three-Self Church, which followed Bishop Ting’s vision of contextu-
alization. Some of them later migrated to the United States. More recently a
number of artists have breached the borders of the contextualization para-
digm and started to develop a glocal art.

THE GLOCALIZATION OF CHINESE CHRISTIAN ART

Ding Fang (Shanxi *1956), probably still the most traditional among this
second generation of Christian artists in post-reformation China, draws
large-scale semiabstract oil paintings with rough brushstrokes in earthen
colors. His depiction of Revelation shows an oversized open book lying on
the ground with the cover towards the viewer (Figure 8.19). To the left a
cityscape can be seen. The horizon is covered with clouds.
Most of the other artists are following popular trends in contemporary
art by using photography and installations.52 Cao Yuanming produced pho-
tographs of doors and interiors of Chinese churches that he put together
in large-scale wallpapers with ten-by-ten photos. Chen Ke (Henan *1965)
Figure 8.18  Bao Gu-Ping, They Will Soar on Wings Like Eagles (1990s)
162  Volker Küster

Figure 8.19  Ding Fang, The Book with Seven Seals (1990s)

works with light and shadow when projecting a large-scale cross on the
floor and the walls of a gallery space. Small figures are following the way
of the cross. Zhu Juyang’s (Shanxi *1969) performance with a living Lost
Sheep hanging from the gallery ceiling above the herd driven into the exhi-
bition space (Figure 8.20) and his photograph of a bound sheep, reenacting
a painting by Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664) will certainly not meet
with approval from Western animal rights activists. Does this still fit the
categories of translation? The artists obviously understand themselves as
part of the contemporary art world, which uses the lingua franca of media
technologies in many local dialects. Multiple belonging, hybridity, and mul-
tilinguality seem to be the order of the day here.

CONCLUSION

Translation can take quite different routes as we have seen in these art-
works. The typology of encounters between various traditions of Christian
faith and Chinese culture ranges from the assimilation strategy of the Nesto-
rians to at least a partial neglect of ‘things Chinese’ under the first wave of
Catholic missionaries that followed them, and the Eurocentrism of many
nineteenth-century missionaries. In the earlier cases, however, the close
entanglement with the foreign Mongol rulers led to an extinction of Christi-
anity after the end of the occupation. The Chinese discarded Christianity as
Figure 8.20  Zhu Jiuyang, Lost Lamb (2010)
164  Volker Küster
an unwelcome foreign influence just like the abhorred foreign rulers. A sim-
ilar attitude is still prevalent under the communist regime.
The accommodation model practiced by the seventeenth-century Jesuits
and their followers at the beginning of the twentieth century tried to keep
Christian content and Chinese form apart, in a way balancing out the dif-
ferences between their forerunners. In its secularized form, the Jesuit painter
Guiseppe Castiglioni, by creating some kind of hybrid traditional Chinese
style that incorporates Western aesthetics, at least seems to have been suc-
cessful. Contextual Christian art that finally tries to blend form and content,
and profit from interaction of intercultural processes, was welcomed in the
circles of the Three-Self Church around Bishop Ting, but could hardly reach
out to the more evangelical-minded house churches. The present trend of a
glocalized Christian art that enters the contemporary art scene goes beyond
the contextualization paradigm. Some of the artworks might eventually find
more acceptance in the secular art world than in Christian churches.53

NOTES

1. Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture,

2nd ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008), 33.
2. Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige: Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und
sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen (München: C.H.Beck, 1963).
3. The Yale University Art Gallery hosts a good sample from the excavations.
4. I am aware of the debate concerning the problematic term Nestorian, which
was not self-ascribed. Yet lacking a convincing alternative I, for the time
being, keep the common name. See Jeremy Clarke, The Virgin Mary and Cath-
olic Identities in Chinese History (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press,
2013), 16n5.
5. Anton Wessels, Images of Jesus: How Jesus Is Perceived and Portrayed in
Non-European Cultures (London: SCM, 1990), 13.
6. Volker Küster, Einführung in die Interkulturelle Theologie (Göttingen: Van-
denhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 75–85.
7. Ibid., 56–59 and 89–92. See also H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture
(New York: Harper & Row, 1951).
8. This model, developed in Catholic circles early on, can be further differenti-
ated into a kind of preaccommodation, when the elements of different cultures
still stand awkwardly next to each other, accommodation and its revival in
neo-accommodation, and accommodation in a transition toward the more
integrated vision of inculturation.
9. While inculturation is a term that has also been coined in catholic discourse
following Vatican Two (1962–65), contextualization was propagated in the
early 1970s by the Theological Education Fund that is associated with the
World Council of Churches. I prefer the latter term, because it allows to cover
the more cultural-religiously oriented Inculturation and Dialogue theologies
and the Liberation theologies, which are focusing on the socioeconomic and
political dimension of the different contexts alike.
10. It was not until 1994 that the Vatican officially accepted the Assyrian Church
of the East, the successors of the Nestorians. Cf. Common Christological
 Translating Religious Symbol Systems 165
Declaration between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East
(www.vatican.va).
11. Nicolas Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China: 635–1800, vol. 1
(Leiden: Brill, 2001).
12. The St. Thomas Cross in India also dating from the seventh century, which is
today venerated in the church on Mount St. Thomas, Chennai.
13. Sepp Schüller, Die Geschichte der christlichen Kunst in China (Berlin:
Klinkhardt und Biermann, 1940), 22f.
14. Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, “Beispiele christlicher Kunst an der Seidenstraße,”
in Die Bilder und das Wort. Zum Verstehen christlicher Kunst in Afrika und
Asien, ed. Theo Sundermeier and Volker Küster (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1999), 49–66; Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, “Christian Art on the Silk
Road,” in Künstlerischer Austausch/Artistic Exchange, ed. Thomas W. Gaeht-
gens (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994), 477–484; Wasilios Klein, “Christliche
Reliefgrabsteine des 14. Jahrhunderts von der Seidenstraße,” in Symposium
Syriacum, vol. VI, ed. R. Levenant (Rome: Pontificio Instituto Orientale,
1994), 419–442; S. N. C. Lieu, “Nestorians and Manichaeans on the South
China Coast,” Vigiliae Christianae 43 (1980): 71–88; P. Yoshiro Saeki, The
Nestorian Documents and Relics in China, 2nd ed. (Tokyo: Maruzen, 1951);
Ken Parry, “Angels and Apsaras,” Journal of the Asian Arts Society of Aus-
tralia 12 (2003); and Andrew West, “Christian Tombstones of Zayton,”
BabelStone, November  25, 2006, http://babelstone.blogspot.com/2006/11/
christian-tombstones-of-zayton.html.
15. F. S. Drake, “Nestorian Crosses and Nestorian Christians in China under the
Mongols,” Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 2
(1962): 11–25.
16. Josef Franz Thiel, “Die christliche Kunst in China,” in Die Begegnung Chi-
nas mit dem Christentum. Christliches Kunstschaffen in China (Catalogue)
(St.  Augustin: Haus Völker und Kulturen, 1980), 27–51 esp. 30, where he
refers to Saeki, The Nestorian Documents and Relics in China. Wolfgang
Hage, church historian in Marburg, has come to similar conclusions. See
Klimkeit, “Beispiele christlicher Kunst an der Seidenstraße,” 49n1.
17. Schüller, Die Geschichte der christlichen Kunst in China, 17.
18. The Parisian gold smith, Guillaume Bouchier, had been captured and brought
to Karakorum where he worked at the court of the Mongol Khans. According
to Guilelmus de Ruysbroek, he also produced some French-style Christian
art works. Ibid., 15 and 25. Further there is some controversy concerning
whether two works ascribed to T’ang Yin (1470–1524) date from this period.
Cf. Thiel, “Die christliche Kunst in China,” 36; and Schüller, Die Geschichte
der christlichen Kunst in China, 18–20, who take opposing positions.
19. Clarke, The Virgin Mary and Catholic Identities in Chinese History, 19f.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., 21.
22. Francis Rouleau, “The Yangchow Tombstone as a Landmark of Medi-
eval Christianity in China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 17 (1954):
346–365; and Richard C. Rudolph, “A  Second Fourteenth Century Tomb-
stone in Yangzhou,” Journal of Oriental Studies 13 (1975): 133–136.
23. Thiel doubts whether there had been any attempts at accommodation, “Die
christliche Kunst in China,” 35f.
24. Xiaoping Lin, Wu Li (1632–1718): His Life, His Paintings (Lanham, MD:
University Press of America, 2001); and Jonathan Chaves, Singing of the
Source: Nature and God in the Poetry of the Chinese Painter Wu Li (Hono-
lulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1993).
166  Volker Küster
25. Cécile Beurdeley and Michel Beurdeley, Castiglione, peintre jésuite à la Cour
de Chine (Paris: Bibliothèque des arts, 1971); Michèle Pirazzoli-t'Serstevens,
Giuseppe Castiglione, 1688–1766: peintre et architecte à la cour de Chine
(Paris: Thalia, 2007); and Michel Beurdeley, Peintres jésuites en Chine au
XVIIIe siècle (Arcueil: Anthèse, 1997).
26. Quoted in Thiel, “Die christliche Kunst in China,” 42.
27. Quoted in ibid., 41f. See also Schüller, Die Geschichte der christlichen Kunst
in China, 56.
28. Clarke, The Virgin Mary and Catholic Identities in Chinese History, 33.
29. Quoted by Schüller, Die Geschichte der christlichen Kunst in China, 70; Thiel,
“Die christliche Kunst in China,” 42.
30. Cf. the controversy about a “Buddhist Madonna” (see note 18 in this chapter).
31. Since 1947 the Protestant Tao Fong Shan Christian Center also produces hand
painted porcelain plates with Christian motifs in Chinese style. See The Gos-
pel in Chinese Art (Hong Kong: Tao Fong Shan Christian Center, 1991).
32. Clarke, The Virgin Mary and Catholic Identities in Chinese History, 6.
33. Schüller, Die Geschichte der christlichen Kunst in China, 100; and Sepp
Schüller, Neue christliche Malerei in China: Bilder und Selbstbiographien der
bedeutendsten christlich-chinesischen Künstler der Gegenwart (Düsseldorf:
Mosella-Verlag, 1940), 44f.
34. Daniel Johnson Fleming, Each with His Own Brush: Contemporary Christian
Art in Asia and Africa (New York: Friendship Press, 1938), 10–39; and Arno
Lehmann, Afroasiatische christliche Kunst (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsan-
stalt, 1967), 109–112.
35. Thiel, “Die christliche Kunst in China,” 45.
36. Clarke, The Virgin Mary and Catholic Identities in Chinese History, 77.
37. Thiel seems to reproduce the original. See “Die christliche Kunst in China,”
47. Clarke, on the other hand, only seems to know secondary reproduction
concerning ordination and prayer cards. See Clarke, The Virgin Mary and
Catholic Identities in Chinese History, see images 11 through 13.
38. Clarke, The Virgin Mary and Catholic Identities in Chinese History, 131.
39. Fritz Bornemann SVD, Ars sacra Pekinensis. Die chinesisch-christliche Malerei
an der Katholischen Universität (Fu Jen) in Peking (Mödling bei Wien, Austria:
Verlag Missionsdruckerei St.  Gabriel, 1950); and Horst Rzepkowski, “Ars
Sacra Pekinensis. Geschichte und Diskussion eines Versuchs,” in Den Fremden
wahrnehmen. Bausteine für eine Xenologie, ed. Theo Sundermeier (Gütersloh:
Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1992), 119–162.
40. Schüller, Die Geschichte der christlichen Kunst in China, 102f.
41. Asterisks indicate birth year.
42. Clarke, The Virgin Mary and Catholic Identities in Chinese History, 180.
43. Lorry Swerts and Koen De Ridder, Mon Van Genechten (1903–1974): Flemish
Missionary and Chinese Painter: Inculturation of Chinese Christian Art (Leu-
ven: Leuven University Press, 2002).
44. See illustrations in ibid., 173, 58, and 40.
45. Ibid., 38.
46. Schüller, Neue christliche Malerei in China, 7; Letter of Celso Costatini pub-
lished in Bornemann, Ars sacra Pekinensis. Die chinesisch-christliche Malerei
an der Katholischen Universität (Fu Jen) in Peking.
47. Clarke, The Virgin Mary and Catholic Identities in Chinese History, 195f.
48. “The First Chinese Christian Art Seminar” (Amity Christian Art Center,
China, 1996); and “The Second Chinese Christian Art Exhibition” (Amity
Christian Art Center, China, 1996).
49. Volker Küster, “Folk Art as Means of Communicating the Gospel?—The
Paper Cuttings of He Qi,” in Mission Revisited, ed. Volker Küster (Berlin: LIT,
2010), 161–174; and Volker Küster, “Das Evangelium in Bildern erzählen.
 Translating Religious Symbol Systems 167
Die Papierschnitt-Zyklen von Fan Pu (China),” Neue Zeitschrift für Missions-
wissenschaft (2002): 267–280.
50. In addition there was also a quarrel between him and Fan Pu about who
invented this motif.
51. Another example would be Lu Lan, who is using colorful folk art painting.
52. See the exhibition catalogues Souls of Living Water, Fifth Beijing Holy Easter
International Art Exhibition, Beijing, 2011, and The Tree of Life (March 
22–April 10, 2013).
53. In a sense comparable to those cultural Christians that operate outside the
Chinese church, even though this does not necessarily match with the de facto
church association of the particular artist.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beurdeley, Cécile, and Michel Beurdeley. Castiglione, peintre jésuite à la Cour de

Chine. Paris: Bibliothèque des arts, 1971.
Beurdeley, Michel. Peintres jésuites en Chine au XVIIIe siècle. Arcueil: Anthèse, 1997.
Bornemann, Fritz. Ars sacra Pekinensis. Die chinesisch-christliche Malerei an der
Katholischen Universität (Fu Jen) in Peking. Mödling bei Wien: Verlag Missions-
druckerei St. Gabriel, 1950.
Chaves, Jonathan. Singing of the Source: Nature and God in the Poetry of the Chi-
nese Painter Wu Li. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1993.
Clarke, Jeremy. The Virgin Mary and Catholic Identities in Chinese History. Hong
Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013.
Drake, F. S. “Nestorian Crosses and Nestorian Christians in China under the Mon-
gols.” Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 2 (1962):
11–25.
“The First Chinese Christian Art Seminar.” Amity Christian Art Center, China, 1996.
Fleming, Daniel Johnson. Each with His Own Brush: Contemporary Christian Art
in Asia and Africa. New York: Friendship Press, 1938.
The Gospel in Chinese Art. Hong Kong: Tao Fong Shan Christian Center, 1991.
Klein, Wasilios. “Christliche Reliefgrabsteine des 14. Jahrhunderts von der Seiden-
straße.” In Symposium Syriacum. Edited by R. Levenant, VI: 419–442. Rome:
Pontificio Instituto Orientale, 1994.
Klimkeit, Hans-Joachim. “Beispiele christlicher Kunst an der Seidenstraße.” In Die
Bilder und das Wort. Zum Verstehen christlicher Kunst in Afrika und Asien.
Edited by Theo Sundermeier and Volker Küster, 49–66. Göttingen: Vanden-
hoeck & Ruprecht, 1999.
———. “Christian Art on the Silk Road.” In Künstlerischer Austausch/Artis-
tic Exchange. Edited by Thomas W. Gaehtgens, 477–484. Berlin: Akademie
Verlag, 1994.
Küster, Volker. “Das Evangelium in Bildern erzählen. Die Papierschnitt-Zyklen von
Fan Pu (China).” Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft 58 (2002): 267–280.
———. Einführung in die Interkulturelle Theologie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2011.
———. “Folk Art as Means of Communicating the Gospel?—The Paper Cuttings of
He Qi.” In Mission Revisited. Edited by Volker Küster, 161–174. Berlin: LIT, 2010.
Lehmann, Arno. Afroasiatische christliche Kunst. Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsan-
stalt, 1967.
Lieu, S.N.C. “Nestorians and Manichaeans on the South China Coast.” Vigiliae
Christianae 43 (1980): 71–88.
Lin, Xiaoping. Wu Li (1632–1718): His Life, His Paintings. Lanham, MD: Univer-
sity Press of America, 2001.
168  Volker Küster
Niebuhr, H. Richard. Christ and Culture. New York: Harper & Row, 1951.
Otto, Rudolf. Das Heilige: Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein
Verhältnis zum Rationalen. München: C.H.Beck, 1963.
Parry, Ken. “Angels and Apsaras.” Journal of the Asian Arts Society of Australia
12 (2003).
Pirazzoli-t'Serstevens, Michèle. Giuseppe Castiglione, 1688–1766: peintre et archi-
tecte à la cour de Chine. Paris: Thalia, 2007.
Rouleau, Francis. “The Yangchow Tombstone as a Landmark of Medieval Christi-
anity in China.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 17 (1954): 346–365.
Rudolph, Richard C. “A  Second Fourteenth Century Tombstone in Yangzhou.”
Journal of Oriental Studies 13 (1975).
Rzepkowski, Horst. “Ars Sacra Pekinensis. Geschichte und Diskussion eines
Versuchs.” In Den Fremden wahrnehmen. Bausteine für eine Xenologie. Edited
by Theo Sundermeier, 119–162. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1992.
Saeki, P. Yoshiro. The Nestorian Documents and Relics in China. 2nd ed. Tokyo:
Maruzen, 1951.
Sanneh, Lamin. Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture. 2nd
ed. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008.
Schüller, Sepp. Die Geschichte der christlichen Kunst in China. Berlin: Klinkhardt
und Biermann, 1940.
———. Neue christliche Malerei in China: Bilder und Selbstbiographien der
bedeutendsten christlich-chinesischen Künstler der Gegenwart. Düsseldorf:
Mosella-Verlag, 1940.
“The Second Chinese Christian Art Exhibition.” Amity Christian Art Center, China,
1996.
Souls of Living Water, Fifth Beijing Holy Easter International Art Exhibition,
Beijing, 2011.
Standaert, Nicolas, ed. Handbook of Christianity in China: 635–1800. Vol. 1. Leiden:
Brill, 2001.
Swerts, Lorry, and Koen De Ridder. Mon Van Genechten (1903–1974): Flemish
Missionary and Chinese Painter : Inculturation of Chinese Christian Art. Leuven:
Leuven University Press, 2002.
Thiel, Josef Franz. “Die christliche Kunst in China.” In Die Begegnung Chinas
mit dem Christentum. Christliches Kunstschaffen in China (Catalogue), 27–51.
St. Augustin: Haus Völker und Kulturen, 1980.
Wessels, Anton. Images of Jesus: How Jesus Is Perceived and Portrayed in
Non-European Cultures. London: SCM, 1990.
West, Andrew. “Christian Tombstones of Zayton.” BabelStone, November 25,
2006. http://babelstone.blogspot.com/2006/11/christian-tombstones-of-zayton.html.
Conclusion
What is Lost and Gained?
Michael P. DeJonge and Christiane Tietz

“There are losses which need to be called total. They take place in cases
in which no translation is possible, and when they occur for example in a
novel, the translator has to fall back on the ultima ratio, that is: to place a
footnote—and the footnote seals the translator’s defeat.”1 This depressing
situation, described by Umberto Eco, has not been the result of the efforts
collected in this book. The preceding chapters include not only footnotes
but also several impressive gains as a result of translating religion. This
short conclusion reflects on both losses and gains while also conceptualizing
what we have observed in translating religion.

TRANSLATING RELIGION: WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

At first sight it might be considered a weakness of this book that a univer-

sal and uniform definition of religion was not imposed on all contributors.
Instead, the authors themselves defined what they considered the ‘religion’
being translated in their particular case studies. Looking back to the results
of the individual chapters, this apparent weakness proved to be a strength.
For only through this openness could we discover that in several examples it
was actually the attempt to translate which defined religion.2 Our analyses
of translating ‘religious’ texts, concepts, and terms often revealed the influ-
ence of the translator’s understanding of ‘religion.’ This means ‘translating
religion’ shows how much ‘religion’ is a construction, often from a certain
Western perspective. A general definition of ‘religion’ imposed from the out-
set would have hidden this constructive moment.
An openness with regard to defining ‘translation’ proved productive as
well. We expanded our scope beyond a narrow, linguistic concept of trans-
lation, which would look only at examples of translating texts into texts.3
Texts are certainly important elements of religious traditions, but religions
cannot be reduced to texts. At the same time, we resisted a very broad con-
cept of translation like George Steiner’s for whom “all understanding and
interpreting is ‘translating.’ ”4 Steiner postulates “that translation is formally
and pragmatically implicit in every act of communication, in the emission
170  Michael P. DeJonge and Christiane Tietz
and reception of each and every mode of meaning.”5 Doing so would have
risked weakening the potential specific to the concept of translating as some-
thing other than understanding and communicating. We instead used a con-
cept of translation in the metaphorical sense of transferring meaning from
place A to place B. This helped us focus on those acts of understanding and
communicating that must overcome distances and boundaries, for example,
between different cultures or different eras. These acts of overcoming dis-
tances and boundaries are especially important in the global, plural context
of today. The translation metaphor guided our attention away from facile
and naïve talk of a common world toward an awareness of different experi-
ences and perspectives. But at the same time the translation metaphor urged
us to bridge rather than reinforce these differences.
We also found our work challenging a too-simple account of transfer
from A to B. The character of such transfer can differ significantly, ranging
from mere transplantation to complete assimilation. Translation is not only
a transfer of something from A to B but also a much more complex, multidi-
mensional accommodation or even interculturation process.6 And in many
cases, the line between A and B is not absolute, as when the target language
has already been shaped by the source language.7

WHAT IS LOST? WHAT IS GAINED?

Judging loss and gain in translation depends on one’s view on the question
of translatability, which in turn depends on one’s understanding of language.
A universal understanding of language that sees a deep structure common
to all natural languages, that posits something beyond language to which all
languages ultimately refer, finds its complement in the idea that the diversity
of religions ultimately points to or expresses the same reality. In this case,
translating religion is possible in principle because all religions point to, for
example, ‘the transcendent.’ This position, sometimes called religious plu-
ralism, is increasingly contested by theorists of religion. Religious pluralism
requires a perspective unavailable to human subjects, a God’s-eye view from
which to survey the whole, diverse religious landscape.8
One could adopt a weaker assumption that all religions deal at least
with the anthropological or existential questions and problems common
to all humans while each individual religion offers a different answer. Here
one assumes that all religions deal with, for example, the same ‘experience
of finiteness’ and that at least the problems and questions associated with
that experience could be translated without loss. Yet this perspective, too,
depends on questionable universal assumptions. Is the experience of finite-
ness really the same, for example, in a Christian context with its belief in
linear time and a life after death as in a Buddhist context with its belief in
reincarnation and nirvana?
Another option is the opposite linguistic position, namely that there is
nothing beyond the text. Here language does not refer to anything beyond
 Conclusion 171
itself. From this it seems to follow that languages essentially cannot be
translated.9 One will then agree with Wilhelm von Humboldt’s judgment:
“All translating to me seems to be an attempt to solve an impossible task.”10
Translating religion can then only lead to losses.
The view of language and translation that emerges through the work
collected in this book suggests a way beyond this well-worn alternative
between universalist translatability and particularist untranslatability. See-
ing language and texts as inseparably imbedded in their cultures directs
attention away from the question of whether there is anything beyond
the text. Translation, then, is an engagement between different culturally
imbedded languages and texts. This approach is especially helpful with
regard to religion, since religions are not objects like umbrellas that can be
carried from one place to another. Religions are always imbedded in their
historical and cultural context. No translation is possible in which the orig-
inal meaning can be transplanted without loss into a new context. But at
the same time, the translation leads to a new content which speaks in a new
context. Because of the “cultural distance . . . the message does not remain
unchanged. Moreover the translator expresses a new, ‘different’ message for
his target recipients.”11
Even if loss of the original context is inevitable, there still can be no gen-
eral answer to the more evaluative question of whether a specific translation
leads to a loss or to a gain. The concrete answer still depends on the person
who asks. How much knowledge of the original context does the person
have?12 Is the person involved in the source language game and/or in the
target language game; is the person judging more from the outside or more
from within about the suitability of a translation?13 How does the person
value the original context of religion?14 How important does the person con-
sider doctrine to be for religion?15 What hermeneutics does the person bring
to translating a text?16 How does the person value religion as such?17 Some-
times only a common discourse between persons of both languages can lead
to a judgment about losses and gains.18 The evaluation of a translation is
further complicated because translating religion is not necessarily something
which happens only once. Several examples dealt with continuing processes
of translating.19 Losses from one translation can be made explicit and per-
haps reversed through a new translation.20
Understanding religion and language as connected with culture leads to
the insight that translating religion can edify21 a connection between differ-
ent religious cultures. The goal of translation is not the identical image of the
source language but an encounter between cultures, a better understanding
of one’s own and of the other’s culture. Translation facilitates communica-
tion, debate, and exchange. The question to be asked then it not simply, “Is
the translation correct?” but also “Does the translation help to understand
(others and ourselves) and to bridge differences and to transcend boundar-
ies?” Translation is part of a dialogue that promotes consciousness of the
other’s and one’s own historical and cultural situation. Especially in difficult
cases,22 the translation process generates awareness of the specificity of the
172  Michael P. DeJonge and Christiane Tietz
source or the target language—as distinct from other conceptions of the
world.23 In translating, one becomes aware of one’s own preconceptions as
well as those of the other.24
In all attempts to translate religion one regulative idea is necessary: that
it is somehow possible to bridge the different contexts somehow through
translation. All attempts at translating religion begin with the assumption
that the task is worthwhile.25 Translation assumes that the source ‘text’ has
something to say to the target audience. Translation assumes the source to
have some kind of authority, even as the process of translation constructs
authority in the target context.26
The gain of translating religion lies not in an adequate reproduction of a
word in a new language. It lies in the process of a better understanding of
the self and other, and in producing new meaning for those who speak the
target language so that “what matters” to them can change.27 Translating
religion creates new meaning, sometimes even a new tradition.28 Tradition
is an important element of religions. But, as Hans-Georg Gadamer reminds
us, “[e]ven the most genuine, solid tradition does not take place through
the power of persistency of what is already there, but it needs acceptance,
apprehension, and care.”29 Translating religion is one mode of this care.

NOTES

1. Umberto Eco, Quasi dasselbe mit anderen Worten: Über das Übersetzen
(München/Wien: Carl Hanser, 2006), 111.
2. See the example of translating śraddhā and dharma in Hindu texts in Chap-
ter 3 of this volume; see also the example of translating religious into secular
language in Chapter 6 of this volume.
3. Such a project can be found in Marianne Grohmann and Ursula Ragacs, eds.,
Religion übersetzen: Übersetzung und Textrezeption als Transformations­
phänomene von Religion (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012).
4. Radegundis Stolze, Übersetzungstheorien: Eine Einführung, 6th ed. (Tübin-
gen: Narr/Francke/Attempto, 2011), 141.
5. George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, 3rd ed.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), xii.
6. See the example of translating religious symbol systems in Chapter 8 in this
volume.
7. See the example of translating from parents to children in Chapter 4 in this
volume; see also the example of translating religious into secular language in
Chapter 6 in this volume.
8. Cf. Klaus von Stosch, Komparative Theologie als Wegweiser in der Welt der
Religionen (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012), 30.
9. Cf. Stolze, Übersetzungstheorien, 30.
10. Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Einleitung zur Übersetzung von Aeschylos’ Aga­
memnon,” in Das Problem des Übersetzens, 2nd ed., ed. Hans Joachim Störig
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969), 80.
11. Stolze, Übersetzungstheorien, 187.
12. See the example of translating religious concepts to a different religious frame-
work in Chapter 7 in this volume; see also the example of translating religious
symbol systems in Chapter 8 in this volume.
 Conclusion 173
13. See the example of translating religious concepts to a different religious frame-
work in Chapter 7 in this volume.
14. See the example of historical translation in Chapter 2 in this volume.
15. See the example of translating from parents to children in Chapter 4 in this
volume.
16. See the example of translating religious concepts to a different religious frame-
work in Chapter 7 in this volume.
17. See the example of translating religious into secular language in Chapter 6 in
this volume.
18. See the example of translating religious concepts to a different religious frame-
work in Chapter 7.
19. See the example of translating between parents and children in Chapter 4 in
this volume; see also the example of translating into secular language in Chap-
ter 6 in this volume.
20. See the example of translating into secular language in Chapter 6 in this
volume.
21. See the example of translating dao in Chapter 1 in this volume.
22. See the example of translating dao in Chapter 1 in this volume; see also the
philologist’s perspective in the example of translating śraddhā and dharma in
Hindu texts in Chapter 3 in this volume.
23. See the example of translation between parents and children in Chapter 4 in
this volume; see also the example of translating between cultures in Chapter 5
in this volume.
24. See the example of translating dao in Chapter 1 in this volume; see also the
example of translating between cultures in Chapter 5 in this volume.
25. See the example of translating between cultures in Chapter 5 in this volume;
see also the example of translating religious symbol systems in Chapter 8 in
this volume.
26. See the example of historical translation in Chapter 2 in this volume.
27. See the example of translating between cultures in Chapter 5 in this volume.
28. See the example of historical translation in Chapter 2 in this volume.
29. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philo­
sophischen Hermeneutik, 6th ed. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck],
1990), 286.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eco, Umberto. Quasi dasselbe mit anderen Worten: Über das Übersetzen. München:
Carl Hanser, 2006.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen
Hermeneutik. 6th ed. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1990.
Grohmann, Marianne, and Ursula Ragacs, eds. Religion übersetzen: Übersetzung
und Textrezeption als Transformationsphänomene von Religion. Göttingen: Van-
denhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012.
Humboldt, Wilhelm von. “Einleitung zur Übersetzung von Aeschylos’ Agamem-
non.” In Das Problem des Übersetzens. 2nd ed. Edited by Hans Joachim Störig,
71–96. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969.
Steiner, George. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. 3rd ed. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998.
Stolze, Radegundis. Übersetzungstheorien: Eine Einführung. 6th ed. Tübingen:
Narr/Francke/Attempto, 2011.
von Stosch, Klaus. Komparative Theologie als Wegweiser in der Welt der Religionen.
Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012.
This page intentionally left blank
Contributors

Michael P. DeJonge is an associate professor of religious studies at the

University of South Florida. He earned his PhD in Religion from Emory
University, having also undertaken doctoral work at the Freie Universi-
tät in Berlin as a Fulbright scholar and fellow of the Berlin Program for
Advanced German and European Studies. Previous publications include
Bonhoeffer’s Theological Formation: Berlin, Barth, and Protestant Theol-
ogy and The Bonhoeffer Reader (coedited with Clifford Green).
Volker Küster is a professor of comparative religion and missiology at the
Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. He researches in the
areas of intercultural, contextual, and ecumenical theology. His previous
publications include The Many Faces of Jesus Christ: Intercultural Chris-
tology and Einführung in die Interkulturelle Theologie.
Carlos A. Lopez is Director of the Europe Program at LIU Global, Long
Island University. He earned a PhD in Sanskrit and Indian Studies from
Harvard University. Recent publications include Atharvaveda-Paippalada
Kandas Thirteen and Fourteen: Text, Translation, and Commentary.
Andrea Schulte, professor of Religious Education at the University of Erfurt,
lectures on ways of teaching Religious Education at schools. Her research
concerns Protestant schools and the challenges of religious education in
nearly non-religious environments such as the German regions of Saxony,
Thuringia, and Saxony-Anhalt.
Ulrike Sill received a diploma in Theology at the University of Tübingen
(Germany) and a doctorate in History at the University of Basel (2007).
Her publications include several articles and Encounters in Quest of
Christian Womanhood; The Basel Mission in Pre- and Early Colonial
Ghana. Her areas of research are Ghanaian and African history, church
history with a focus on women and gender relations, and the history of
the Basel Mission and the Basel women’s mission.
Klaus von Stosch studied Catholic Theology, Philosophy, and Economics
at Bonn and Fribourg. He is a professor of systematic theology and is
176  Contributors
head of the Center for Comparative Theology and Cultural Studies at
the University of Paderborn, Germany. One of his main research areas is
Muslim–Christian dialogue. Previous publications include Komparative
Theologie als Wegweiser in der Welt der Religionen and Theodizee.
Christiane Tietz studied Theology and Mathematics and did her theological
PhD and Habilitation in Tübingen. From 2008 to 2013, she was a pro-
fessor for systematic theology and social ethics in Mainz. Since 2013 she
has been a professor for systematic theology at the University of Zurich.
Wei Zhang is a professor of philosophy at the University of South Flor-
ida, specializing in classical Chinese philosophy, Mahayana Buddhist
philosophy, East–West comparative philosophy, hermeneutics, and phe-
nomenology. She received her PhD in East Asian Studies and Compara-
tive Literature from the University of Minnesota. Previous publications
include What is Enlightenment?: Can China Answer Kant’s Question?
and Heidegger, Rorty and the Eastern Thinkers: A Hermeneutics of
Cross-Cultural Understanding.
Index
accommodation 9, 138, 140 – 141, 143,
146 – 147, 156 – 157, 164 – 165,
    170; neo- 152, 155 – 156;
pre- 164
Akan 86 – 94, 96 – 98
Akuapem see Akuropon
Akuropon 90 – 92, 94 – 96
Allah 8, 123 – 128, 131, 133
Ames, Roger and David Hall 14, 16, 23
Appiah, Kwame Anthony 8, 85 – 88,
97 – 98
assimilation 9, 138, 140 – 141, 162, 170
Augustine 1, 33
baptism 91 – 92, 95
Basel Mission 8, 85 – 94, 96 – 101
Bhagavad Gı̄tā   53 – 55
Bible, translation of 1 – 2, 8 – 10, 32,
85 – 89, 95, 97 – 98, 157
Bildung see hermeneutics of edification
Buber, Martin 14, 16 – 17
Buddha, the 139, 153
Castiglioni, Giuseppe 142, 164
Catholicism 114, 140, 142, 148
Christ, Jesus 1, 113 – 114, 137; in
Chinese art 139, 153, 155, 158;
in intergenerational translation
70, 76 – 79, 81 – 82; translated as
Masih 8, 123, 126 – 131, 133
Christology 128 – 131, 133
cognitive development 7, 71 – 72, 74,
78 – 79, 82 – 83
common reason 106 – 107
concrete thinking 72, 76, 78, 80
contextualization 9, 48, 138, 156 – 157,
160, 164
Confucian 13 – 14, 139, 153
creature 37, 110, 116
cross: in intergenerational translation
70, 75 – 77; in Chinese art 137,
139 – 140, 152 – 153, 155, 162,
165
dao 6 – 7, 13 – 18, 23 – 26
Daodejing 6, 13 – 15, 17 – 18, 23,
25 – 26
Daoism 6, 13 – 14, 17 – 18; as mysticism
20 – 26
dharma 7, 46, 55 – 56, 62 – 64; as law
59; as merit 60 – 61; as morality
59; as religion 46, 56 – 59, 61
doxography 32 – 33
Dubuisson, Daniel 4, 48
Eco, Umberto 41, 169
eurocentric 86, 147 – 149, 162
family resemblance
(Familienähnlichkeit) 81, 132
Fan Pu 156 – 157, 167
Foucault, Michel 45, 63
Franciscan 140 – 141, 143, 146
Ga 87 – 89, 91
Gentzler, Edwin 3 – 4
Geertz, Clifford 87
Ghana 8, 85 – 86, 88 – 93, 96 – 98
globalization 137 – 138
glocalization 9, 138, 160, 164
God 1; and intergenerational
translation 70 – 73, 75 – 79,
81, 83; in Chinese art 153,
158 – 159; in relation to dao
21, 23, 25; the unknown 7,
29, 33 – 38, 41; translation of
178  Index
Allah see Allah; translation
into secular language 105, 107,
110, 112 – 113, 116; translated
as Onyame 89, 92, 94 – 96, 98;
translated as Nyonmo 89
Gold Coast see Ghana
Guanyin 143, 148 – 149
Habermas, Jürgen 8; evaluation of
112 – 116; on religious and
secular language 106 – 108; on
translation 104 – 106, 108 – 111
Hegel, G.W.F. 106
Heidegger, Martin 14, 17
He Qi 156 – 157
hermeneutics 39, 82, 107, 114 – 115,
125 – 126, 138, 171; of
edification 6 – 7, 19 – 21
Hinduism 49, 56 – 60, 64
Holy Spirit 2, 70 – 71, 76, 81, 126, 129,
153; translated as Rū h (see Rū h)
host-guest relationship 92 – 93
Hull, John 73 – 74
von Humboldt, Wilhelm 2, 171
iconography 137, 139 – 141, 143, 153
image of God 109 – 110, 112, 116
incorporation 115
inculturation 138, 156, 164
Islam 2, 8, 22, 85, 123 – 125, 131,
133 – 134
Jakobson, Roman 5, 30 – 31
Jesuit 14, 124, 142 – 143, 146 – 148,
153, 164
Kant, Immanuel 105, 110
Kindertheologie (children-theology)
73 – 74; concrete or operational
thinking in 77 – 78; and heaven
78 – 80
language: natural 31, 170; religious 8,
21, 71, 73, 78, 80 – 83, 104 – 109,
111 – 113, 115 – 116; secular 8,
104 – 106, 108, 112, 114 – 116;
source and target 8, 20, 31,
47 – 49, 55, 58, 62, 64, 85, 105,
114 – 115, 170 – 172;
language game 8, 79, 81, 126 – 127,
131, 133, 171; adult 83;
Christian 81, 128; theological
76 – 77
linguistic-historical contextualism
29 – 31, 35, 38, 40 – 41
lotus flower 137, 139 – 140
Manu, The Law Code of 58 – 60,
62–63
Mary 129, 132, 147 – 148, 152
Masih 8, 123, 128, 131, 133
monophysite 129
Muslim see Islam
mysticism 18 – 24, 26
Nestorianism 129, 137, 138 – 141,
162, 164
nirvana 153, 170
operational thinking see concrete
thinking
Paul 1 – 3, 33, 42, 130 – 131
philology 45 – 49, 63
Piaget, Jean 7, 71 – 72, 76, 79
post-metaphysical 106, 111, 115
post-secular society 8, 105, 107 – 109,
111, 115
power relations 85, 97 – 98
Pseudo-Dionysius 7, 29, 32 – 41,
42, 43
Qur’an 2 – 3, 85, 123 – 133
reciprocity 49 – 50, 52 – 53, 55, 63,
115
religious education of children 7,
71 – 74
religious semantics 71, 79 – 81
religious studies 4 – 6, 46, 48
R· g Veda 49 – 52, 55 – 56, 60
Rū h 8, 123, 131 – 133
secularization 8, 104 – 106, 108 – 109,
112
sinicization 140, 143, 148
sinology 13 – 14, 17 – 18, 21
six-fingered children 94 – 97
ś raddhā ́  7, 46, 49; as confidence/trust
50 – 52; as faith 46, 49, 53 – 55
Steiner, George 7, 29 – 31, 36, 39 – 43,
114 – 115, 169
thick description 87, 89
Three-Self Church 156, 160,
164

transcendence 21 – 22, 24, 34, 37, 124
translation: cooperative 108 – 109;
cross-cultural 7, 18 – 20, 26;
dynamic 2, 17, 48, 55, 92;
historical 7 – 8, 29 – 33, 36, 38,
40 – 42; interlingual 5, 29 – 31,
33, 42 – 43; intersemiotic 5 – 6,
30; intralingual 5 – 6, 30 – 31, 33,
35; linguistic 13, 20; literal 13,
17, 25, 80, 85 – 86, 89, 97 – 98,
132; performative 82 – 83; thick
8, 85 – 89, 97 – 98
Index  179
transplantation 9, 138, 141, 147, 170;
historical 31, 33, 38
Trinity 40, 70, 76, 81, 129 – 131, 153
walad 130
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 81, 127
worldview 47, 49, 60, 105 – 106,
108 – 110, 114, 153
yin/yang 13, 23, 156
Zhuangzi 18, 23 – 24