Julian of Norwich is Insane and Everyone Loves Her

I was assigned this book to read for my Church History course:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/julian/revelations
The book describes a mystical experience with Christ. Julian "sees" Christ, his crucifixion, and lots and lots of blood. Blood upon blood oozing out of bloody sores poring out of wounds everywhere blood blood blood. Also she sees Mary, the Single Greatest Thing Ever Created Ever. Also, God loves us so much that we are "his bliss his worship his meed (no idea)".
Do I need to say I hated this book?
Well, my professor loved it. He said I needed to evaluate the book "in context" of it being written in Middle English and during the Bubonic Plague.
(1) It's not the Bible. It's not "God-breathed" and it doesn't deserve context. If the book cannot stand on its own, it doesn't stand at all. We don't need it, and if it has no value in and of itself, why read it?
(2) See (1) above.
Scripture alone is scripture. Nothing else deserves our attention, much less, reverence unless it points back to scripture.
My professor didn't like that I pointed out that this book had no scripture references in it. "Lack of references isn't the problem," he said. "Faithfulness to scripture is what matters."
YES I KNOW THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT THIS BOOK SUCKS BECAUSE IT CRAPS ON SCRIPTURE BUT EVERYONE LOVES IT
Anyway, I got a C+ on the paper. I never get Bs, much less Cs. Oh well.

Painful Revelations Providing Painful Reading:
Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love.

Alejandro Gonzaga
HCHT 502
March 3, 2018
 
Poor English, explicit, gory detail, and questionable theology overwhelm the few barely recognizable nuggets of truth in Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love. Written in the fifteenth century , Julian attempts to present a comprehensive theological treatise through progressive "visions", but instead fails on nearly every point and swamps the reader with terrible syntax, unnecessary and unbiblical detail, and additions to scripture that would make any heretic blush. Julian received sixteen “shewings” from God and relates them to her readers in her book. In Revelations of Divine Love, Julian relates visions she has received that intend to display Christ’s love for his people. She begins by listing each revelation and explaining what happens in each. The visions range from perverse, bloody, obnoxiously detailed explorations of Christ’s crucifixion to visions of heavenly reward, or of Mary, second in worthiness only to Christ, who “after [Christ] is the most blissful sight” . Julian sprinkles in various bites of truth, but with absolutely zero biblical quotations, and only mild allusions to scripture, these bites do not satisfy; instead, they merely aggravate one’s appetite for clear, biblical truth, and cause one to wonder if this work is her attempt to add her name late to the holy canon.
Christ’s suffering features prominently in Julian’s visions. Other themes in her revelations include Christ’s love, Satan’s defeat, God’s comfort, Mary, and mankind, who is God’s “bliss”. Julian begins her journey by praying for sickness so she can suffer with Christ. “I desired a bodily sight wherein I might have more knowledge of the bodily pains of our Saviour,” she says.  She reasons that “after the shewing [of pain] I should have the more true mind in the Passion of Christ.”  Julian desired the pain so that she would better understand Christ’s suffering. She believed that the suffering would aid her in her relationship with God, and that she “would be purged, by the mercy of God, and afterward live more to the worship of God.”  She eventually received her request . All of this occurred before she received the first revelation.
Julian’s revelations contain an excess of explicit detail on Christ’s suffering on the cross. She “saw the red blood trickle down from under the Garland hot and freshly and right plenteously, as it were in the time of His Passion when the Garland of thorns was pressed on His blessed head.”  In Chapter 7 she adds, “I saw the bodily sight lasting of the plenteous bleeding of the Head. The great drops of blood fell down from under the Garland like pellots, seeming as it had come out of the veins; and in the coming out they were blood-red.” The second revelation adds more detail to her crucifixion vision, as she saw “half the face, beginning at the ear, over-gone with dry blood till it covered to the mid-face.”  Julian provides a level of detail not described in scripture. Many other chapters add even more detailed descriptions of Christ’s suffering.
Christ made man because of love, and through this same love, Christ redeemed man. “The blessed Trinity made Mankind to His image and His likeness… He that made man for love, by the same love He would restore man to the same bliss,”  she says. Christ was motivated by love to create us and to die for us.  There is no longer any wrath, “for our good Lord endlessly hath regard to his own worship and to the profit of all that shall be saved.”  Since Christ has died, God’s wrath is appeased.
Through Christ’s death we have God’s comfort. God desires us to seek him, and in seeking him we receive comfort and he condescends to us that we may know him. God wills “that we seek for and trust to [him], joy and delight in, [as he is] comforting us and solacing us.”  God gave Julian “pleasance in [her] soul,”  to overcome all sorrow and pain. God showed her that “it is speedful to some souls to feel on this wise: sometime to be in comfort, and sometime to fail and be left to themselves.”  God allows pain or comfort in our lives, and he keeps us secure in both “woe and weal.”
The Passion of Christ has overcome Satan. Christ, through his death, has overcome the “Fiend” and his malice and “all souls of salvation escape him, worshipfully, by the virtue of Christ’s precious Passion.”  Julian physically encounters Satan at one point, as the stench of the encounter “was so vile and so painful”.  Christ reveals the hatred of Satan. Julian “understood that all that is contrary to love and peace is of the Fiend and of his part.”
Mary occupies a special place in these visions, and a special place in Christ’s affections, according to the visions. Mary is above all else in creation and is only lower in prominence than Christ. In Julian’s vision, “she is more than all that God made beneath her in worthiness and grace; for above her is nothing that is made but the blessed Manhood of Christ” . Her loves for Christ causes her pain as he suffers. Mary and Christ are particularly united, “for Christ and she were so oned in love that the greatness of her loving was cause of the greatness of her pain.”  Mary is the “highest joy” of Christ, and “most pleasance and worship to me; and most she is desired to be seen of my blessed creatures.”  Julian’s visions revealed Mary to be near Christ himself in glory and beauty.
I had great difficulty reading through Revelations. The language is poor. Julian admits that she was a “simple creature unlettered,”  and her lack of education shows. Difficulty also arose in comparing Julian’s revelations to scripture. There is absolutely no scripture in Revelations. Faint allusions are scattered throughout. There are mentions of the crucifixion. Christ, God, Mary and Satan are all obvious characters, but in places where scripture would have greatly strengthened the impact of her visions, she refuses to give even the slightest nod to the Word of God. Mary receives a place in Julian’s revelations that is completely unwarranted by anything in scripture. The detail given to Christ’s physical suffering is grotesque. On top of all of this, Julian declares that instead of God delighting in his Son (Matthew 3.17), “we be his bliss, we be his meed, we be his worship, we be his crown.”
Revelations was written in Middle English, instead of Latin, which was the standard for religious texts of the time. Pains have been taken to translate into modern English, but confusion still abounds. Julian says “oned” instead of “united”. She uses words like “meed” and “ruth” which are not clearly defined anywhere in the text or in the footnotes. One is left to decipher on his own.
Revelations does not disappoint those with an appetite for blood. Julian adds details not given in the historical Gospel accounts. In these visions, she saw “the body plenteously bleeding in seeming of the Scourging, as thus:--The fair skin was broken full deep into the tender flesh with sharp smiting all about the sweet body. So plenteously the hot blood ran out that there was neither seen skin nor wound, but as it were all blood.”  She describes Christ’s bloodless body: “all the precious blood was bled out of the sweet body.”  She describes his “dried flesh”. In scripture, we see beating, a crown of thorns, crucifixion, yet this level of detail is not present. One wonders how this adds to devotion.
Consistent with Catholic teaching, Julian creates a sort of demigod out of Mary. She is especially “oned” to Christ. She possesses “high Wisdom and Truth in beholding her Maker so holy, so mighty, and so good.”  She has compassion that no other character in these revelations has except Christ.  Christ invites Julian to take joy in Mary “in the love that I have in her and she in me”.  Scripture does not invite us to take joy in Mary, nor does it place Mary above any creature particularly. Mary is “favored”, but not “most beautiful above all of creation.” Mary trusted in Christ and she played her role well, but any faithfulness in her is because of God’s grace. We are all sinners (1 John 1.8).
Julian’s revelations unjustly center on man. For her, we are the center of God’s world, and that is why he sent his Son. To Julian, we are God’s bliss, worship, and crown.  Scripture repeatedly declares that God works for his name, and not for our sake (Isaiah 48.11; Ezekiel 20.9, 14, 22; 36.22; Romans 9.17, 22). God’s glory is his crown, and this he will give to us, but we are not his crown (Psalm 8.5; 1 Peter 5.4). Christ is his happiness, and his holiness is his own cause to worship, not us (Isaiah 6.3; Revelation 4.8). Our faith in Christ pleases him (Hebrews 11.1), but the extent to which Julian ascribes God’s worship and bliss to men is antibibilical.
Julian has taken characters from the Gospels and fashioned a sort of crucifixion play. Christ and his death, with all of its gory detail, plays the lead role, with Mary supporting him, his beloved mother, “oned” to him in a sort of perverse union, above all else of creation. Satan is the antagonist, creeping around, causing pain and sorrow to the believer. God gives comfort, orchestrating everything, “for there is no doer but He.”  The Holy Spirit has a minor role, giving grace when needed. Briefly, this play gives fleeting moments of inspiration, yet the reader cannot help but be overwhelmed by difficulties in language, in doctrine, with unnecessary gore, and worship of Mary and men. The absence of scripture is glaring and this book is best left unread for any who desire true devotion to Christ.
Volz, Carl A. The Medieval Church: From the Dawn of the Middle Ages to the Reformation. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997).
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love. Retrieved from http://www.ccel.org/j/julian/revelations/
My thoughts:

1. It’s clear that the 1901 translation of the Middle English coupled with the emphasis on the physicality of Jesus’ death and suffering in Julian had a visceral effect on you. For this reason, you really could not interpret her correctly. I found a lot of distortions in your paper. You did not even try to understand her on her own terms. Instead, most of your effort was to turn her into a heretic. So, even though she quite clearly says, “For He is the endlessness, and He hath made us only to Himself, and restored us by His blessed Passion, and keepeth us in His blessed love; and all this of His Goodness,” indicating that it is on the basis of God’s goodness that salvation occurs, you claim she is “man-centered.” Why don't you respond to the "we are His bliss" quote?

Or, take this rather long quotation and not how many times she mentions God’s goodness: “And we pray by His holy Cross that he died on, and all the virtue and the help that we have of the Cross, it is of His Goodness. And on the same wise, all the help that we have of special saints and all the blessed Company of Heaven, the dearworthy love and endless friendship that we have of them, it is of His Goodness. For God of His Goodness hath ordained means to help us, full fair and many: of which the chief and principal mean is the blessed nature that He took of the Maid, with all the means that go afore and come after which belong to our redemption and to endless salvation. Wherefore it pleaseth Him that we seek Him and worship through means, understanding that He is the Goodness of all.”

You do realize that the phrase “of His Goodness” means “on the basis of” or “grounded in” or “a result of” or “from” the goodness of God. This completely contradicts your claim of Julian being “man-centered.” I am flabbergasted by this interpretation. Because you are Catholic and absorbed in Catholic Tradition

2. If you did not like the translation, why didn’t you get another translation? I gave you more than one option? While I realize that you don’t have a lot of time, given your reaction to her, I think you owed it to Julian to get the most modern translation of her work in order to better judge what she wrote. The bad grammar and language was a side issue.

3. You left out a number of themes in Julian. In fact, I did not detect much effort to synthesize her ideas. For example, Julian’s desire to have the three wounds and the sickness at the beginning is really a desire to enter fully into that passion. In the face of the Black Death, she is striving to see life from God’s perspective, which she thinks requires a complete immersion into the work of Christ. It is also crucial to see that Julian does not remove wrath and judgment from the equation. She just places it within creation rather than the Creator. There are real consequences for sin in Julian’s world. Also, you did not mention Julian’s understanding of Christ as mother, which is a crucial theme. In a world where male knights are running around killing people and where kings literally use the sword and where people are saying that the Black Death is the judgment of God, Julian chooses the image of mother and applies it to Christ to reveal his status as one who enters humanity and suffers for humans. False. You just don't like the themes I pointed out.

4. You need a clear thesis. You don’t have one. Your citation of Julian is incorrect. MY FIRST SENTENCE IS MY THESIS 

Grading Rubric Points
GUM (Grammar, Usage, Mechanics) (5%) 5
Proper Use of Turabian (5%) 3
Clear Thesis (2%) 1
Synthesis (44%) 35
Analysis (44%) 35
Final Grade 79