The Teaching of the Parable
The Teaching of the Parable
uncertainties. However, a sufficient appreciation of the parable, its meaning, and its importance was not immediately clear. As she notes in chapter 51:
For twenty years after the time of the revelation except for three months, I received an inward instruction, and it was this: You ought to take heed to all the attributes, divine and human, which were revealed in the example, though this may seem to you mysterious and ambiguous.
In this "instruction" Julian is granted an understanding that is not purely intellectual but is a deep spiritual insight that involved an ability to accept what she has been shown on all its levels. In summary, Julian is led to a wholly new perception about God, about human identity and about eternal union.
On this basis, the "inward instruction" and new insights which helped to clarify the parable or exemplum and therefore enabled her to include it in the Long Text took place around 1393. It would seem that, as a result of this new insight and instruction, Julian not only inserted the parable into the Long Text but may also have revised earlier parts of her text and also have been led to reflect on the famous image of the Motherhood of Jesus
(and of God overall) in the chapters that follow on from the parable.
The Teaching of the Parable The new "inward instruction" to Julian on the part of God leads her to understand the full implications of the parable narrative. She comes to see that the lord is God and that the servant, in the first instance, is
Adam. She also came to see that in this one symbolic man and his fall is embraced how God regards all of humankind and their failings. "For in the sight of God all men are one man, and one man is all men." Her critical insight is that while the servant was "injured in his powers" his will
(parallel to the "godly will" in chapter 37) is preserved in God's sight.
Because of his injury the servant was prevented from knowing this will.
The implication is that human sinfulness, the capacity to fall into ditches, is its own punishment. This punishment consists of our pain at an apparent separation from God and also an introspective self‐loathing. "And then I saw that only pain blames and punishes, and our courteous Lord comforts and succours, and always he is kindly disposed to the soul, loving and longing to bring us to his bliss."
Then Julian sees the lord sitting on the ground, alone in the barren wilderness, rather than sitting on a throne. It eventually becomes clear as
Parable of a Lord and a Servant
Julian's chapter further unfolds that this image signifies that God seeks no alternative dwelling place except the human soul which was created to be God's own city and dwelling. Indeed, Julian comes to see that the human soul is the most pleasing of all God's works. Therefore, upon the ground, God waits "until the time when by his grace his beloved Son had brought back his city into its noble place of beauty by his hard labour."
Later in the chapter when the Son has restored the city of the human soul to its true beauty, the lord once again sits down but now "in his noblest seat." The image of the lord waiting for humanity is also echoed in chapter 78 when Julian suggests that our Lord wishes us to know four vital things in relation to sin. "The fourth is how steadfastly he waits for us, and does not change his demeanour, for he wants us to be converted and united to him, as he is to us."
Julian initially sees the servant as Adam (and, in Adam, all of humanity) wearing laborer's clothes and wishing to do the one thing that would pay honor to the lord. This was to obtain a treasure "in the earth" which the lord loved. Julian wonders what this might be and is led to understand that "it is a food which is delicious and pleasing to the lord." Consequently, the servant was "to do the greatest labour and the hardest work there is." This is to be a gardener, digging and toiling, planting and making streams to run. Then the servant was to bring the fruit of his labor to the lord and to serve him. In a sense the lord has everything apart from the treasure in the earth. This treasure was founded in the lord but would only be really
"to his honour" when the servant (humanity) had cultivated it and then brought it to him.
Thereafter, Julian comes to understand that the servant also represents the Son, the second person of the Trinity. So, when Adam (humanity) fell,
God's Son also fell.
Because of the true union which was made in heaven, God's Son could not be separated from Adam, for by Adam I understand all mankind. Adam fell from life to death, into the valley of this wretched world, and after that into hell. God's Son fell with Adam, into the valley of the womb of the maiden who was the fairest daughter of Adam, and that was to excuse Adam from blame in heaven and on earth.
The critical key to Julian's insight and teaching is that "in all this our good Lord showed his own Son and Adam as only one man."
When Julian affirms that "our good Lord Jesus" has taken upon himself all our blame she is not reproducing in some simple way a classic medieval "satisfaction" or "restitution" theory such as that proposed by Anselm of Canterbury. In that approach human sin defrauds God
The Teaching of the Parable
of the honor God is rightly due. However, Christ, through his death, takes on the role of "satisfying" our debt to God and of restoring God's honor. Without this we would merit punishment. However, in Julian it is quite clear that God is neither angry nor feels dishonored nor assigns blame to humanity. This is reinforced by her image of the lord sitting patiently in the wilderness. The only "blame" is our own self‐ blame in the context of a deep sense of failure. Thus, in Julian's narrative, the servant in the ditch can only feel pain and failure because he is self‐preoccupied and therefore unable to see the lord looking on him with pity. "Blame" is part of our self‐preoccupation and destructive self‐image. This prevents us from seeing ourselves truly or from seeing God truly. In short, I am a failure, I am guilty, I am worthless.
Thus, when Julian says "And so has our good Lord Jesus taken upon him all our blame," this is not the blame that God lays upon us. It is the unproductive sense of guilt and worthlessness that we lay upon ourselves and which makes us feel that we are unlovable, not least in the sight of God. Thus, the Son taking "upon him all our blame" is the redemption of our blinded sight and the healing of our false confusions that stand between us and God's love. In that sense, without being reductionist, redemption is an act of healing and compassion rather than simply God‐as‐judge showing clemency in response to human evil and sin.
Interestingly the double understanding of the servant in Julian's parable has the Son take on Adam's tunic (meaning his clothing) and take on "all our charge" – that is, all humanity's burden and responsibility as gardener of the earth. In medieval society, clothing was not merely a practical matter but had great social significance. What was worn differentiated each social class. In that sense, clothing was a form of uniform. Thus, in reference to the lord sitting in the wilderness Julian says that "His clothing was wide and ample and very handsome, as befits a lord." She also notes that the colour of the lord's clothing was azure blue. Culturally and socially this may reflect the fact that, while in the early Middle Ages poor‐quality blue dyes were associated with the underclass, by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ultramarine blue from lapis lazuli and also azurite blue became the dominant colours of the clothes of the rich. Both in clothing and in art, blue was used more and more as a noble or royal colour. In addition, with the appearance of blue in images of the Virgin Mary
(seen as Queen of Heaven) as the colour of her mantle the colour also became an image of faithfulness and of what is truly spiritual.
Consequently, in the light of a specifically spiritual symbolism, the blue clothing of the lord sitting on the ground in the wilderness stood for his faithfulness to humanity and his humility.6
Parable of a Lord and a Servant
The image of clothing continues to be used creatively in the parable.
The Son wears Adam's "tunic." This becomes the image of the Son of God taking on human flesh and being permitted "to suffer all man's pain." "By his tunic being ready to go to rags and to tear is understood the rods and the scourges, the thorns and the nails, the pulling and the dragging and the tearing of his tender flesh, of which I had seen a part."
This refers back to Julian's original vision of the suffering of Jesus on the cross when she was seriously ill. There is also a graphic parallel between the Son's suffering on the cross and the original narrative of the servant trapped in the ditch.
And by the tossing about and writhing, the groaning and moaning, is understood that he could never with almighty power rise from the time that he fell into the maiden's womb until his body was slain and dead, and he had yielded his soul into the Father's hand, with all mankind for whom he had been sent.
Then, in the resurrection, "Adam's old tunic" was "made lovely." At the end of the chapter, as already noted, the lord no longer sits in the wilderness but on a noble seat. The servant‐as‐Son now stands immediately before the Father not as a servant "pitifully clothed" but "richly clothed in joyful amplitude" with a rich crown on his head. This crown is humankind. "We are his crown." Subsequently, the Son does not stand to the left of the Father as if he were a common laborer but "sits at the Father's right hand in endless rest and peace."
By comprehending in the image of the servant both Adam (humanity) and the Son of God, Julian understands not simply that the Fall and redemption are a single event "in God's sight" but that the creation and redemption of humanity are a simultaneous process. The first implies and contains the second.
The parable of a Lord and a Servant is presented as God's answer to Julian's various anxieties and questions about the experience of daily sinfulness yet her growing sense of God's lack of blame. The underlying problem or question is how these two realities of sinfulness and of God's lack of blame are compatible. In many respects this chapter and its narrative are pivotal to Julian's theological teaching and to her urgent sense of what needs to be understood by her fellow Christians. The focus of the parable is not so much on the classical theodicy question in a philosophical sense as on a radical realignment of Julian's understanding of the nature of God as our lover rather than our wrathful judge, of the meaning and value of creation as well as of human identity and of her radical soteriology or theology of sin and salvation. These themes will be explored in subsequent chapters.