DEFENDING CHRIST'S DIVINITY: THE THEOLOGICAL MESSAGE OF SUSANNA AND CATHERINE WINKWORTH'S TRANSLATIONS

This article expands current understanding of how and in what form women contributed to theological debates of the nineteenth century. Literature has been seen as the preferred choice of text to 'engage in theological discourse', but this article suggests that women not only wrote original pieces of 'disguised' theology but contributed explicitly to this discourse through translation work. The Winkworth sisters translated fourteenth-century mystical theology and Reformation hymns, rich in a spiritual understanding of the relationship between God and humanity, to defend a belief in the divinity of Christ; a doctrine that was increasingly facing opposition both within and outside Christianity. The sisters resisted a Unitarian dismissal of this doctrine arguing that it was a central feature of a unified church. They also opposed attempts made by writers such as Ludwig Feuerbach and David Friedrich Strauss to view Christianity as a human construct or as a progressive philosophical system. Instead, the sisters insisted that a divine Christ was a vital component of the Christian faith.