Enough of God
Gilbert Meilaender on Losing Him in Translation
Recently I had occasion to read again portions of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship. It is known to many English readers as The Cost of Discipleship, the title of an earlier English translation published by Macmillan. But as volume four of the English Edition of Bonhoeffer’s Works now being published by Fortress Press, it is simply Discipleship (translating Bonhoeffer’s German title, Nachfolge).
That is all well and good, and the English edition of the Works contains useful introductions, footnotes, and bibliographies—each of which helps readers more fully to understand the text. In this way the scholarly life makes progress.
The Progressive Limit
For human beings, though, progress seldom moves in a straight line and is seldom divorced from the unfortunate limits of a particular age. And, as I read along in Discipleship, I was struck by a certain kind of limit—indeed, a limit that appears precisely where the editors and translators no doubt assume themselves to be most progressive. Moreover, this particular defect results in ugliness. Let me illustrate.
Here are just a few sentences from the new translation in the English edition of the Works:
God once created Adam in God’s own image. In Adam, God sought to observe this image with joy, as the culmination of God’s creation, “and indeed, it was very good.” In Adam, God recognized the divine self.
Here are those sentences in the earlier translation, published by Macmillan in 1963:
When the world began, God created Adam in his own image, as the climax of his creation. He wanted to have the joy of beholding in Adam the reflection of himself. “And behold, it was very good.” God saw himself in Adam.
Now, imagine reading page after page of Discipleship, translated in the style of the first of these translations. After a while one just wants to say, “Enough of God—no more please.” To be clear, the issue I raise here is not accuracy of translation. The issue is, first of all, ugliness.
Suppose we talked and wrote this way not just about God but also about others. “Ugly” would be too weak a word to describe the product. Consider the following sentences from a scholar who is a master of English prose. In his biography of St. Augustine, Peter Brown writes:
Gilbert Meilaender is the Duesenberg Professor in Christian Ethics at Valparaiso University. His books include Neither Beast nor God: The Dignity of the Human Person (Encounter Books) and Should We Live Forever?: The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging (Eerdmans). He is a Lutheran.
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