Conclusion

Notes

Conclusion As I have already suggested, the parable of a Lord and a Servant in chapter 51 is in important ways central to Julian's text and to her theology. As the parable affirms, God cannot see Adam (humankind) except through the Son's Incarnation and death. That is why Julian is briefly shown reality as God sees it. "I did not see sin" (chapter 27). Julian's key premise is that there is no human nature (Adam) independent of the Son who united our substance and our sensuality. Hence, from all eternity, God‐as‐Trinity has created human nature in the Son to be God's crown.

The story of the lord and the servant is presented as God's answer to Julian's various anxieties and questions about her daily experience of sinfulness yet her growing sense of God's lack of blame. As I have already indicated, I believe that in a deep sense this chapter with its exemplum narrative is pivotal to the teachings that Julian felt bound to direct at her

"evenchristen." The parable offers the key to Julian's sense of meaning about the true nature of God and of human existence that she has slowly and painfully come to understand and which she now seeks to communicate through the text. Julian's fundamental concern had been to find an answer to the question of how the two realities of her experience of sinfulness and yet of God's lack of blame are to be harmonized. As I have already indicated, in my view, the focus here is not so much on providing a response to the classical theodicy question as on a radical realignment of Julian's understanding of God as lover rather than wrathful judge, of how creation and human identity are understood "in God's sight" and, consequently, of the true nature of sin and salvation. Julian's whole theology – of the Trinity and of God's Motherhood, not to mention her theology of human nature – follows from this parable and depends upon it.12 The chapters that follow will now consider these three important theological themes: Julian's understanding of God, her theology of human identity, and her soteriology; that is, her theology of sin and salvation.

Notes 1 Key features of this chapter originally appeared as an essay in the international journal Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality volume 17, issue 1,

Spring 2017, pp 1–18, "Two Ways of Seeing: The Challenge of Julian of Norwich's Parable of a Lord and a Servant."

2 See, for example, the French historian and medievalist Jacques Le Goff, The Medieval Imagination, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988,

Part Two "Space and Time: The Time of the Exemplum (Thirteenth Century)," pp 78–80.

Parable of a Lord and a Servant

3 See Nicholas Watson & Jacqueline Jenkins, eds., The Writings of Julian of Norwich, University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press,

2006, p 274.

4 See Cur Deus Homo, Book First, Chapter XXIV, in S.N. Deane, ed., Saint Anselm: Basic Writings, 2nd edition, LaSalle, IL: Open Court Publishing,

1962, p 233.

5 For further comments on the contrast between Julian and Anselm, see Denise Nowakowski Baker, Julian of Norwich's Showings: From Vision to Book, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, pp 92–94.

6 For example, see Jacques Le Goff, Medieval Civilisation, Oxford/ Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1990, pp 358–359; also M. Pastoureau &

M.I. Cruse, Blue: The History of a Color, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.

7 See for example, Jay Ruud, "Nature and Grace in Julian of Norwich'" in Mystics Quarterly volume XIX, issue 2, June 1993, pp 70–81.

8 The so‐called heresy of the Free Spirit was the object of a great deal of fear by Church authorities across Europe during the fourteenth century.

The findings of Robert Lerner in The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972, have not been substantially revised by more recent scholars. Lerner convincingly demonstrates that the "heresy" was substantially a projection of institutional fear rather than a significant reality. It was, however, one of the accusations levelled at Beguines and women mystics and perhaps known to Julian. The argument in Nuth, Wisdom's Daughter, p 19, that Julian's references cannot be to Wycliffe and his followers is dependent on dating the Short Text to as early as c.1373. As we have already seen, some scholars now argue for a much later date.

9 See Brant Pelphrey, Christ our Mother: Julian of Norwich, Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1989, pp 113–118.

10 They certainly do not mean "spirit"/soul and "matter"/body. They bear some, but not total, resemblance to the Augustinian concept of higher and lower parts of the soul. See, for example Jantzen, Julian of Norwich, pp 137–139 and Nuth, Wisdom's Daughter, pp 104–116.

11 For example, in the Long Text, chapter 5, Colledge and Walsh use the word "familiar" in their modern English translation when the Middle

English text uses the word "homely."

12 See, for example, Denise Nowakowski Baker, Julian of Norwich's Showings:

From Vision to Book, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, Chapter 4 "The Parable of the Lord and Servant and the Doctrine of Original Sin," pp 83–106.

Chapter 4 Love is God's Meaning As I suggested in Chapter 2, I believe that the Christian mystical tradition offers a vital resource for renewing theology. However, when we approach spiritual texts with a theological frame of reference, we need to exercise some care. The great classical texts are not concerned primarily with ideas about doctrine but about the practice of the Christian life. What I am implying is that it is all too easy to identify an abstract infrastructure of theological concepts and ideas in a text such as Julian's A Revelation of Love and yet miss its essentially spiritual‐pastoral character. If it is true that mystical theology offers a source for the overall renewal of theology it will not be purely in terms of better conceptual frameworks. The writings of the great mystics introduce a way of knowing and seeing that is different from the path offered by traditional theological method. It is a knowledge that arises from a journey of love and engagement with God rather than something that depends on purely rational enquiry. Mystical

"knowing" never loses sight of the essential ineffability of God and so it concentrates on seeking images of God to express the passionate and the poetic rather than concentrating on abstract concepts. The mystical tradition in fact invites theologians to cultivate a degree of conceptual

"silence" and to re‐engage their analysis with contemplation and the use of imagination.

The writings of Julian are particularly rich from the point of view of the theology of God. As we have already noted, A Revelation of Love or Long

Text is among the most theological of medieval mystical texts. In particular, Julian is profoundly Trinitarian in tone. In addition, her approach to God‐as‐Trinity echoes many of the substantial questions raised in contemporary explorations of the doctrine. How does the inner relational and personal life of God connect with God's relationship with the world?

How is salvation related to the inner life of God? Is the Trinity affected by creation and human history? Is the cross related only to one aspect of God, the eternal Word, or to the Trinity as such?

Julian of Norwich: "In God's Sight" – Her Theology in Context, First Edition. Philip Sheldrake.

↑ Back to top