Julian and Apophatic Anthropology
Julian and Apophatic Anthropology
He comes into this city and will never depart from it, for God is never out of the soul in which he will dwell blessedly without end.
(Chapter 55) Sensuality may also be said to stand for the dimension of the human self that we perceive in our bodily, historical, context‐specific lives. Neither image of "the self," whether substance or sensuality, is exclusively true.
However, neither aspect is untrue. The paradox of human identity is somehow caught in the image of "the crown." We are God's crown. This is both a crown of thorns as Jesus Christ suffers for our sins (chapter 4) and also a crown of glory "which crown is the Father's joy, the Son's honour, the Holy Spirit's delight, and endless marvellous bliss to all who are in heaven" (chapter 51).
Yet we need to be careful. Substance and sensuality are not unequal or radically separated. "As regards our substance, it can rightly be called our soul, and as regards our sensuality, it can rightly be called our soul, and that is by the union [Middle English "oning"] which it has in God" (chapter 56).
Our substance and sensuality are united through God's incarnation in human history. "And so in Christ our two natures are united." Also, "For the same time that God joined himself to our body in the maiden's womb, he took our soul, which is sensual, and in taking it, having enclosed us all in himself, he united it to our substance" (chapter 57). Thus sensual human life is gradually drawn up into the eternity of God.
In Julian's theological anthropology, her conception of human identity is fundamentally positive because it is grounded in her experience of God‐as‐love provoked by her dramatic visions of the sufferings of Christ on the cross. As Julian sees it, the cross is both a sign of our need for healing and also of our eternal and basic worth "in God's sight." In the end, Julian images our human nature as an "honourable city." Sensuality has dignity too. "That honourable city in which our Lord Jesus sits is our sensuality, in which he is enclosed; and our natural substance is enclosed in Jesus, with the blessed soul of Christ sitting in rest in the divinity"
(chapter 56).
Julian and Apophatic Anthropology In the minds of many people, the rich imagery used by Julian of Norwich in her text precludes thinking of her in terms of apophatic theology. Yet, while on the face of it, Julian has an overall "positive" or kataphatic approach to theology, I would suggest that in the end she also has an apophatic or "negative" dimension. Most immediately this applies to her theology of God. Thus, while the final chapter 86 of the Long Text
Creation and Human Nature
indicates yet again that "Our Lord's meaning is love," and only love, on another level, as the same chapter also underlines, Julian's book, while begun by God's gift of "seeing," is "not yet completed." Julian's own theological journey as well as her theological teaching is necessarily incomplete because her theological reflections take us to the boundaries of the knowable to touch upon what cannot be fully known. In her own words, there is always and necessarily "a marvellous great mystery hidden in God" (chapter 27). Her theology is at the same time one of "seeing"
(or knowing) truly in a new way and also of apophatic unknowing at the deepest level. This "negative" or apophatic dimension of Julian's theology does not concern only her approach to the reality of God. Precisely because human beings are created in the image of God and are forever united with God in their substance, this apophatic dimension to theology also applies to our inability to grasp the full depths of our human identity.
Julian's apophatic approach to human identity is hinted at in several places and in a number of different ways. For example, in the parable of a Lord and a Servant (chapter 51), the fallen and injured servant in the ditch cannot see himself truly precisely because he cannot see his lord who looks on him with pity rather than blame. Also, as we have noted earlier, in chapter 56 the true knowledge of our own soul (our fundamental identity) is dependent on having knowledge of God, because our identity is "in God." "And therefore if we want to have knowledge of our soul, and communion and discourse with it, we must seek in our Lord God in whom it is enclosed" (chapter 56).
Equally, when "oned" with God, I cease to be – or, rather, discover myself not to be – a "self" apart from God in the sense of an individualized and free‐standing self. Julian echoes Augustine in seeing our deepest self, symbolized as the "heart" in Augustine and our "substance" in Julian, as the true "I am." This is where I am at one with God. In our highest powers, our "substance," we become by grace a "self" that cannot be distinguished from God except that we are created and God is not created
(chapter 54).
Our soul is made to be God's dwelling place, and the dwelling place of the soul is God, who is not made. It shows deep understanding to see and know inwardly that God, who is our maker, dwells in our soul, and deeper understanding to see and know that our soul, which is made, dwells in God's being; through this essential being – God – we are what we are.
In essence, in her quest to understand human nature, Julian is not given conclusive knowledge‐as‐fact but persistently senses a "surplus of