Panel: TRINITY AND THE BODY: A SYSTEMATIC-PRAXEOLOGICAL APPROACH



448.14 - E. STEIN'S TRINITARIAN ANTHROPOLOGY

AUTHORS:
Baczyk P. (UCL ~ London ~ United Kingdom)
Text:
This paper investigates how Edith Stein's understanding of personhood and gender is reflective of her Trinitarian theology. Through a close reading of Finite and Eternal Being alongside her essays on womanhood, the paper explores how Stein's metaphysical framework - deeply rooted in both Thomism and phenomenology - interprets the body not merely as a biological given but as a theological signifier shaped by divine relationality. For Stein, the human being is created in the image of a tri-personal God whose inner life is marked by relation, gift, and fruitfulness. These relational dimensions of divine life provide the metaphysical grounding for her vision of womanhood as inherently receptive, form-bearing, and oriented toward the personal. The feminine body, in Stein's thought, is not simply a site of difference but a mode of participation in the Trinitarian structure of being - particularly expressive of the dynamic between origin, procession, and return. Rather than collapsing into essentialism, Stein's reflections offer a historically significant attempt to theologise the body as a site of meaning, dignity, and vocation. Her notion of the feminine as both naturally and spiritually attuned to communion - whether in motherhood, virginity, or intellectual life - reflects her conviction that gendered embodiment is part of the divine economy, rather than incidental to it. This paper situates Stein's voice within the broader historical conversation on the Trinity and the body, arguing that her metaphysical and theological anthropology offers a unique resource for recovering embodiment as a locus theologicus. In light of ongoing theological debates around gender and the imago Dei, Stein's synthesis remains a generative - and underappreciated - contribution.