A Practical Theology of the Trinity
Love is God's Meaning
A Practical Theology of the Trinity In one sense, Julian's "showings" and her reflections upon them are a form of theological inquiry. She asks many questions about the nature of God, about creation and human nature, about sin and salvation, and about the ultimate meaning and fulfilment of all things – that is, eschatology. However, at the same time, the "showings" may be understood as an extended prayer because Julian's questions are directed at God. They are not simply an expression of her own ability to intellectualize in relation to what she has asked.1 In that sense, Julian's theology of God is fundamentally practical‐spiritual rather than concerned purely with the language and concepts we use about God. Her aim is to emphasize the love of God in such a way as to liberate her fellow Christians from all that prevents them growing into the life of God. Our ignorance of God's love keeps us in sin and despair (chapter 73). In the end, therefore, there is only one
"showing" or "revelation" and that is God's love as the meaning of everything. As Julian herself says in chapter 1, "This is a revelation of love which Jesus Christ, our endless bliss, made in sixteen showings."
The basis for Julian's teachings about God is her visions of the Passion and yet in the very first "showing" she comes to understand that "where
Jesus appears the blessed Trinity is understood, as I see it" (chapter 4).
Two things follow from this. First, the fundamental "showing" touches the inner reality of God in a direct way. "And in the same revelation suddenly the Trinity filled my heart full of the greatest joy" (chapter 4). The starting point of Julian's experience of and theology of God is the Trinity.
"For the Trinity is God, God is the Trinity." Second, the suffering Jesus is revealed as the ground of hope. Julian experienced an inclination to "look up to heaven to his Father" but she is drawn to say "No, I cannot, for you are my heaven."
So I was taught to choose Jesus for my heaven, whom I saw only in pain at this time. No other heaven was pleasing to me than Jesus, who will be my bliss when I am there. And this has always been a comfort to me, that I chose Jesus by his grace to be my heaven in all this time of suffering and of sorrow. And that has taught me that I should always do so, to choose only Jesus to be my heaven, in well‐being and in woe.
(Chapter 19) The understanding Julian received was not only for the sake of herself,
"the simple, unlettered creature" (chapter 2) who is granted the sight, a woman who at the time was on the margins of the institutional Church without teaching authority or status. The message delivered through