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

Introduction to Something

It’s 7.36 am and my daughter is probably getting ready to make dinner in Lithuania. I sit in Bakersfield, California, wondering why I am up so early. Yesterday, she sent me a picture of “Pesto noodles with cauliflower” that she made. We were both very proud. Her brother Keaton is the chef of the family, but she’s doing very well.

Her Lithuanian adventure enters its fifth week today. This past Christmas vacation, I spent my time nearly literally dying as she prepared to travel across the planet. She had never traveled this far. She had never traveled at all without me or her mother or her grandparents, so obviously I was terrified. I survived, thankfully.

A week or so before she left, I asked my children, specifically thinking of my sons, if they ever had the urge to “just fight someone”. It seemed like a good question. Conversation topics with teenagers are not my strength. My 17 year-old son replied, “Yes”, and so did Liesl, as she added, “with you.”

“Ha ha ha what?” I thought to myself. Then I remembered a conversation we had some time ago about the New Testament course she was taking at the expensive Christian college I wish I could afford.

“Do you believe women should submit to men? Do you really believe women should be silent in church?”

“Isn’t that what the Bible teaches?”

“My New Testament teacher says that that is just a cultural thing. She said that it only applies to the church there.”

“So, only that verse applies to only that church? What about the rest of the book? How do we know what to keep and what to toss out?”

We disagreed, and the whole conversation disturbed me. We disagree on comic books (these infidels like DC and I like Marvel), on television, on food, and video games, so disagreement itself wasn’t the problem. It disturbed me because my daughter was being taught Selective Bible Obedience, and because she is my daughter. The reality however, is that she is far from the only daughter learning that there are parts of Scripture that we can toss out because they make us uncomfortable, or because they don’t fit nicely into our modern culture.

Scripture does not exist to make us comfortable, and it definitely and defiantly does not exist to fit nicely into modern, anti-Christian culture. Submission is not comfortable, not because God or Paul or Alejandro are patriarchal chauvinistic bastards, but because we have all been conditioned this way, and also because of sin.

The point in all this, is this: men lead and women submit. This is not ancient, irrelevant, backwards Greek culture that we can toss. This is Scripture. This is God’s way. He has made men and women to be this way from the beginning, and at no place in Scripture has he indicated that anything has changed, modern, easily-offended culture be damned.

Boredom is the Root of All Evil

I don't think Sam Storms has any idea why people are in bondage to sin. I don't believe he has any experience at all in the matter. Experience assists in our comprehension of everything.
As a longtime pornography addict, I have experience, sadly enough. I can say unequivocally and without reservation that boredom was never the real factor in my addiction. At first glance, boredom definitely seemed to be the cause. As a child, I would often tell my mother how bored I was. She didn't know what to do with me.
My father was an angry man, and I needed relief from fear: fear of him, fear of God abandoning me (my parents were Pentecostal, and one of my most traumatic moments as a child was watching Salem Kirban's 666 at our local Assemblies of God), and fear of people in general. I was a sensitive child and I was full of anxiety. Later I absorbed my father's anger. I did not like people. I needed them but I did not want to know them. People were a disappointment. At the same time, I read the Bible and attended church. I loved Scripture. God offered relief from my fear and my anger, but God is Spirit remember? God does not always make his presence so easily known.
As a child, God delights to be easily found. We find him in Scripture, in creation, in the daily miracles of life, and so on and so on. As we grow older, and we encounter difficulties, he hides himself. He wants us to seek him with diligence, with faith, and with perseverance. These are character traits he seeks to draw out of us. Yet if we have been abused, if we struggle daily with anxiety, fear, insecurity, or anger because our most precious relationships have been more destructive than constructive, we lack these traits, and we find relief from this emotional trauma where we can find it easily. We find relief in sin. We find relief in pornography, in alcoholism, in outbursts of anger, in fornication, and now in the persistent audio and video that bombard us.
To say that boredom binds us is a very superficial analysis of the problem. Boredom is there, no doubt, but it is not the thing that we crave relief from. God is not a drag. In all my years of struggling with pornography, I never once believed that. Pornography always offered a much more accessible relief from the pain that I felt.
The struggle remains, yet today, after all these years, I am able, with small yet increasing amounts of perseverance, diligence, and faith, to find Him. With God, I have never been bored.

Closed mindedness

Closed mindedness (probably the most awkward of all the words) is right. Open mindedness is wrong. We close our minds to some possibilities because we know those possibilities are destructive. Sin is destructive. We close our minds to the possibility of sin because sin destroys us.
If we do not close our minds, we do not have standards of right and wrong. These standards are what maintain our cohesion as individuals, as families, and as a society. There are no alternative standards of morality. There is only Scripture.
We do not exist to please ourselves. We do not exist to pursue every pleasure that flitters across the fragile bow of our conscience. The pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, of whatever new sensation, of whatever forbidden relationship that catches our attention, is not what will bring happiness. Closing our minds to sin and opening our minds to trust in God will do that.

Church These Days

The role of the modern pastor is a sham. If he is a decent pastor, his church will measure in the hundreds, at a minimum, but then he will no longer be a decent pastor.

Every church I have ever attended on a regular basis has been a “megachurch”, meaning a church whose regular attendance numbered at least 500 people. In these churches, I learned a lot about God and about the Bible, but not until I began attending a recovery group for a pornography addiction, did I finally come to know God. The model of the modern church is ineffective.

Ask any pastor how well he knows the members of his church. He may know their names, where the children go to school, whether or not they play baseball or volleyball, but does he know them? Can he tell you what upsets them? Can he tell you their temptations? Does he know what makes them angry, or sad, or afraid? What makes his flock happy? What gives them joy? These things reveal who we are to others. Does he know every member of his church in this way? These are the things that a shepherd knows.

There are two problems that work together to destroy any pastor that is worth his faith: (1) the time that he steals from his family to care for his flock, and (2) the selfishness of people in large groups.

As I write this, I am contemplating a future for my children who desire to be useful to Christ. I desperately urge my son to avoid any kind of pastoring ministry. Either you have a family, or you have a church. You can’t effectively do both. The problem is people.

We Christians, as a group, do not embrace growth. Sure, we embrace bible study, and worship, and even church attendance and service, but genuine growth is not on this list. We know, either at a conscious level, like my father, who refused to ask for patience because he knew God would put in situations that required patience, or at some deeper subconscious level, that true growth requires pain. The Bible tells us “Those whom he loves, he disciplines” and “He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness”. Don’t confuse discipline with punishment; these two are not the same. Punishment is for the sinner; discipline is for the children. The purpose of punishment is the punishment itself; the purpose of discipline is holiness.

We are too happy to attend church, to sing, to read of His glory, to accept his temporary blessing, yet how many of us honestly and sincerely ask for the character of Christ? How many of us declare that we are his, that we will follow him anywhere, that we will do and say anything he commands? There is not one child of God in Scripture that did not suffer, either from failure or tragedy or both, on the path of knowing who God is.

We are selfish as a group because while we seek the peace and joy that come from church attendance, from prayer, from worship, and study, we at the same time neglect the true pursuit of God that requires stillness, solitude, sacrifice, patience, and humility (often with much humiliation). Like a swarm of leeches, we molest those in service to us until they have nothing to give to their own families. We do this because in our need, we only think of ourselves, and we decline to seek God on our own, unable to trust that while God gives us a pastor who cares for us, he is more willing to give himself. God is willing to give this trust, if we are willing to endure his discipline.

Facebook Crap

"Soteriology 101" is a Facebook page that relentlessly promotes arminianism. Dr Flowers proclaims himself a former calvinist who has "seen the light" of free will. I responded to a post about how God does not determine our actions, and that we do indeed have free will.

logically, all you need is one example.

if you say, all men have free will all the time, then one example will refute this. then you have to say, "all men have free will some of the time", or "some men have free will all of the time". then where are you? how do you know who has free will? why do some men have free will all of the time? Is it because some men have some hidden ability that others lack? why would this be? are we not created equally? why would all men have free will some of the time? because of God. God has to be the determining factor. then ultimately we are subject to his will. bam: calvinism.

Response

Alejandro Roberto Gonzaga My problem is the examples I see aren’t actually destroying the free will of the person in question. And by the same token- all you need is one example of one person having free will in one instance to show it exists. — Manipulation is also not the same as determination or humans could be said to have the same power as God

My response
The will is not "destroyed" as if we're mere machines. Calvinists do not believe this. The will is _subject_ to a greater will, God's. "The kings heart is like channels of water in the hand of God". "He leads the nations as with a hook in the mouth". "He raises up and he brings down". True, one person having free will should conclude all do. But what does scripture say is universally true? We are sinners. We are slaves to sin. We are dead in sin. This description is the opposite of someone who trusts, loves, or hopes in God. Sinners by definition do not trust in God. They have a will, no doubt. But it is not free to love God. "Every perfect gift is above". "None are good but God alone". Any example of a man who loves God and turns to faith is an example of a man whose sinful nature has been redeemed, whose heart of stone has been replaced. The scripture does not say we are good at our core, but that we are evil. "Traditionalism" is humanism.

But God does determine. This is the problem we all have with calvinism initially. Self determination is a western ideal. It is not a scriptural one. Yes we are commanded to live responsibly and we are held accountable for our actions, but we are vessels in his hands, for his purposes, for him to do as _He_ pleases, for either wrath or mercy. This is why Paul answers the question "why does he still find fault?" Because he knew the idea is baffling to our proud hearts. He answers, "who are you to answer back to God?" Why do you think we have nothing to boast of? Because every good thing we do is from him, and every evil thing is from us. The question is not why does he do these things and allow these other things, but will we trust him?

The free will camps

Let me give you free will-ians some additional information.
You are in the same camp as the Catholics. You sit beside every charismatic denomination, every prosperity teacher, every charlatan, and every false teacher of the gospel. Why do I say this? Because free will is attractive. It delights the fleshly  carnal human soul.
"I am free. I am not a slave to sin. Not really. I have the will to conquer my sin and reach for the garments of Christ on my own. I possess a core of invincible, immutable righteousness in my own self and there is a part of me, however small, that is able to defy the God of the universe and emerge victorious."
Why do you think the Catholics believe the church has authority over scripture, rather than scripture over the church? Why do you think the false teachers believer they can add to scripture whatever whim enters their deluded minds? Why do you think men believe they have authority (at their command, not that of the Holy Spirit) over poisonous snakes, over diseases, over the weather, and everything else they desire? They believe this because they believe the spark of their original righteousness is equal to God's.