Julian of Norwich: In God’s Sight: Her Theology in Context by Philip Sheldrake

Abstract

Reviewed by: Julian of Norwich: In God’s Sight: Her Theology in Context by Philip Sheldrake Wendy Farley, Rice Chair of Spirituality (bio) Julian of Norwich: In God’s Sight: Her Theology in Context. By Philip Sheldrake. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons Ltd., 2019. 175pp. E-book, $27.50, Paper, $35.95, Hardcover, $95.94 Julian of Norwich has entered popular consciousness: jewelry, t-shirts, journals, greeting cards. “All shall be well” is an optimistic or naïve mantra. She conveys a sense of hope that at the moment is in short supply. But she is a theologian for our [End Page 280] time in a much more profound sense, as Philip Sheldrake makes clear in his fine analysis of her writing. Julian lived in tumultuous times. It was “one of the bleakest periods in medieval history characterized by the diversity and magnitude of human suffering” (29). The Black Death wiped out some 60% of the population of her port city. Farms lacked farmers, contributing to economic decline. The decimation of the clergy threatened the basic rites of social life: marriage, baptism, extreme unction. Climate change produced waves of flood and famine. Competing popes generated spiritual confusion. Brutal warfare added to mass death and created mercenaries who directed their violence toward civilians. A peasant rebellion was savagely put down. The English Inquisition began. Julian’s confidence that “all will be well” was not generated by turning away from the scope and intensity of suffering but by penetrating to their deeper significance. As we face our own wars, pandemic, environmental and social tumult we discover her fresh voice as if peering through “a distant mirror.” Sheldrake acknowledges that the impetus for Julian’s reflections was some form of mystical or visionary consciousness. But he rightly identifies her genre as “not essentially a devotional work but [as] a work of ‘theology in context’ in a variety of senses” (3). Of course, all theologians write in and for their context: Augustine penning The City of God as Rome falls, Luther helping to usher Christianity into the modern era, Delores Williams responding to the sexism and racism of our time. It is useful to recognize the more specific ways Julian is responding to her own “age of anxiety.” Interpreting theology during periods of collective trauma deeply shapes how one will navigate the meaning of Christian loci, texts, and symbols. It is a common human response to extreme suffering and social dislocation to assume that God is angry and punishing people for their unimaginable sins. The anxiety this generates compounds the acute disquiet of an already troubled population. The threat of dying without benefit of clergy and facing the divine rage unshriven would only amplify these concerns. As Sheldrake indicates, Julian’s theology addresses the “urgent needs of her audience at a time of great political and economic uncertainty, war, plague, social disturbance, and major divisions in the Christian community” (4). Like other medieval contemplative theologians, she provides an alternative way of understanding “who God is and how God works in the world,” (7) good news for a population struggling with confusion and despair. Julian’s theology knits together elements that are sometimes disconnected. One can discern the outline of a systematic theology: doctrine of God, sin and salvation, Christ, the Trinity, theological anthropology, and eschatology. But these themes are couched in terms of personal experiences and fundamental pastoral concerns. Why do we suffer? What can we hope for? How are we to live? Julian wrote a long and short version of her text. The short version is more like journal notes on a somewhat strange experience. The Long Text is written in stages, but the bulk of it is the result of some twenty years of reflection and at least one additional intervention by Christ to prod her toward understanding. It reflects Julian’s struggle to reconcile her radical vision of unconditional divine compassion with church teachings emphasizing wrath and punishment. The basic shape of the original insight emerges from a “showing” of the passion of Christ. But rather than experiencing the suffering of Christ as the painful atonement to the Father for [End Page 281] humanity’s sin, she understands that this...