Substance and Sensuality
Creation and Human Nature
somehow a single event. The moment of Adam's Fall becomes the moment of salvation as well. The parable is an exposition both of how
God always views humankind and also of salvation history from God's viewpoint. God looks upon us as we are in Christ and sees us both in our original blessing and final integrity: healed, sinless, and glorified. In chapter 10 this unbroken connection between our creation and our redemption is related to the unchanging nature of God's love. "And he who created man for love, by the same love wanted to restore man to the same blessedness and to even more." In the light of eternity we are ever in union with God and always have been. "And for the great endless love that God has for all mankind, he makes no distinction in love between the blessed soul of Christ and the least soul that will be saved"
(chapter 54).
The whole purpose of God's grace is not simply to overcome the fall but to "bring fair nature back again to the blessed place from which it came, which is God, with more nobility and honour by the powerful operation of grace" (chapter 63). In general, Julian's teaching about human nature is inseparable from her understanding of the fall and of redemption as she "saw" this in the vision of Christ on the cross and eventually came to understand it in the parable of a Lord and a Servant.
Substance and Sensuality Julian's most extensive exposition of human identity appears in the chapters immediately following the parable of a Lord and a Servant. Indeed, her analysis of human nature is related directly to her prolonged attempts to understand the parable. As already noted, Julian's theology of human nature is complex and binary but it is not dualistic. We therefore need to understand what Julian means by her describing two dimensions of the "soul" or of human identity. These are entitled "substance" and "sensuality" and are elucidated especially in chapters 53–59. Julian is clear that these dimensions mutually support each other.
Let either of them take help from the other, until we have grown into full stature as creative nature brings about; and then in the foundation of creative nature with the operation of mercy, the Holy Spirit by grace breathes into us gifts leading to endless life.
(Chapter 55) These two dimensions of human identity are not easy to define because the words have a number of connotations. What needs to be underlined is that they certainly do not mean "spirit" or soul versus "matter" or body.
Substance and Sensuality
The concepts of substance and sensuality bear some, but not total, resemblance to Augustine's concept of the higher and lower parts of the soul, understanding "soul" to mean the depths of human identity.6
Julian does not actually consider human embodiment in any systematic or extensive way. However, again it needs to be emphasized that she is free from any statements that devalue or demean the body. Indeed, as we have already noted, in chapter 6 Julian graphically illustrates how God is involved in even the lowliest of bodily functions, defecation. The important point is that Julian uses this involvement as an image of God's overall care for and service of humanity.
A man walks upright, and the food in his body is shut in as if in a well‐made purse. When the time of his necessity comes, the purse is opened and then shut again, in most seemly fashion. And it is
God who does this, as it is shown when he says that he comes down to us in our humblest needs. For he does not despise what he has made, nor does he disdain to serve us in the simplest natural functions of our body, for love of the soul which he created in his own likeness.
Most fundamentally, the notion of "substance" refers to the core or essence of our humanity that is by its nature and creation for ever united to God. It is also the self that God persistently "sees." In chapter 53 Julian uses the image of "knitting" to describe the distinctive relationship between God and humanity. Human beings are "knit" to God in their making and God is "knit" to humanity by taking flesh.
Therefore he wants us to know that the noblest thing which he ever made is mankind, and the fullest substance and the highest power is the blessed soul of Christ. And furthermore, he wants us to know that this beloved soul was preciously knitted to him in its making, by a knot so subtle and so mighty that it is united in God.
In this uniting it is made endlessly holy. Furthermore, he wants us to know that all the souls which will be saved in heaven without end are knit in this knot, and united in this union, and made holy in this holiness In the same chapter 53, Julian also writes of the "godly will." This will,
"which never assented to sin nor ever will," is an aspect of what Julian calls our "substance." This echoes Augustine's anthropology. Julian also adopts Augustine's notion of the imago Dei. The human person, whether female or male, is created in the image of God‐the‐Trinity (chapter 10) and this is humanity's true nature: a sharing in the nature and substance
Creation and Human Nature
of God. In chapter 10 Julian also notes that the human soul is an image of the Trinity. In her theological anthropology there is no hierarchy of male and female. Also, in Julian's exposition, the imago Dei within us does not imply that human existence is purely static. On the contrary, all humans have a dynamic tendency to return to God their origin. Thus substance
"could never and should never be parted from him [God]." Chapter 54 develops the theme further. God dwells in our soul and our soul, while created, "dwells in God in substance, of which substance, through God, we are what we are." Julian then offers a radical understanding of substance.
And I saw no difference between God and our substance, but, as it were, all God; and still my understanding accepted that our substance is in God, that is to say that God is God, and our substance is a creature in God.
Our soul is a created trinity, like the uncreated Trinity. "And so my understanding was led by God to see in him and to know, to understand and to recognize that our soul is a created trinity, like the uncreated blessed
Trinity" (chapter 55).
There is a mutual indwelling between God and the essence or substance of human beings. "Greatly ought we to rejoice that God dwells in our soul; and more greatly ought we to rejoice that our soul dwells in God." God and the human soul are united and mutually indwell from the first moment each human soul is created.
Turning to the second dimension of Julian's exposition of human identity, "sensuality," this aspect of human nature is broadly speaking changeable
(chapter 45). What is described as the lower part of the soul is united directly to the embodied dimension of human life in space and time. In a sense, sensuality expresses our incompleteness as human persons. As Julian puts it, "in our sensuality we are lacking" (chapter 57). However, this notion of "lacking" does not simply mean that we are faulty or flawed.
Rather, it also suggests that we are incomplete in a more positive sense.
We are unfinished beings and a "work in progress." As such we will ultimately be completed by God in heaven. In that sense, sensuality stands for the dimension of human existence that is necessarily a dynamic and evolutionary process. Importantly, Julian is clear that our sensuality is precious in God's eyes. Indeed, in and through Christ God dwells in our sensuality.
I also saw that God is in our sensuality, for in the same instant and place in which our soul is made sensual, in that same instant and place exists the city of God, ordained for him without beginning.