Revelations of Divine Love

Overview

Julian of Norwich (~1342-1416) was an English anchorite — a woman who chose to be permanently enclosed in a cell attached to the Church of St. Julian in Norwich, from which she likely took her name. On 13 May 1373, during a severe illness that brought her to the point of death, she received sixteen visions or “shewings” of the Passion of Christ, which became the basis for one of the most extraordinary mystical texts in any language. She wrote an initial short account soon after the experience and then spent approximately twenty years in contemplation before producing the Long Text — a deeply reflective theological masterpiece that is the first book known to have been written in English by a woman.

Julian’s central message is the absolute, unconditional, and inexhaustible love of God. “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well” — this assurance, which Julian attributes to Christ himself, is not naive optimism but a statement about the ultimate structure of reality. Julian confronts the problem of evil directly and refuses to resolve it through any conventional theodicy. She does not explain suffering; she places it within a divine love so total that it will ultimately transform all things, including sin itself. Sin, she says, is “behovely” — a word meaning necessary, fitting, appropriate — not because evil is good but because God will draw from it a greater good than if it had never existed. This is theology conducted at the highest possible level, yet written in prose of luminous simplicity.

The hazelnut vision is one of the most famous passages in mystical literature. Julian sees something small, round, “the size of a hazelnut,” lying in the palm of her hand. She understands that it is “everything that is made” — the entire created cosmos — and she marvels that it continues to exist, being so small and fragile. The answer comes: “It lasts, and ever shall last, because God loves it. And in this way everything has its being through the love of God.” This vision encapsulates Julian’s entire theology: creation is infinitely small in relation to God, yet infinitely precious because God loves it. The ground of existence is not power or necessity but love.

Key Themes

• “All Shall Be Well” — The most famous phrase in English mysticism. Julian reports that Christ spoke these words to her directly, assuring her that despite the visible prevalence of sin and suffering, God will bring all things to a good end through means that are currently hidden. This is eschatological hope, not sentimental reassurance.
• Sin as “Behovely” — Sin is necessary and fitting within the divine economy — not because God wills evil but because God’s redemptive power is such that greater good will come from the existence of sin than from its absence. Julian explicitly compares this to the felix culpa tradition: “Sin is behovely, but all shall be well.”
• God as Mother — Julian develops an extended theology of divine motherhood, particularly in relation to Christ. “As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother.” Christ mothers the soul through the Incarnation, feeds it with the sacraments, and nurtures it through suffering. This is not metaphor but theological claim.
• The Hazelnut Vision — All of creation is a tiny thing held in being by divine love. This vision establishes Julian’s fundamental ontology: being is grounded in love, not in substance or necessity.
• No Wrath in God — Julian repeatedly insists that she saw no anger or blame in God. Whatever wrath there is exists only in the human soul, as a result of its own contrariness to the divine will. God’s response to human sin is compassion, not punishment.
• The Lord and the Servant — Julian’s most complex and carefully elaborated vision. A lord sits in peace; a servant runs eagerly to do his will and falls into a ditch. The lord looks on the servant with compassion, not blame. Julian spent nearly twenty years meditating on this vision and came to understand the servant as simultaneously Adam (fallen humanity) and Christ (who falls into the womb of Mary to rescue Adam). The parable is a complete soteriology in miniature.
• Substance and Sensuality — Julian distinguishes between the soul’s higher part (substance), which is eternally united with God and never falls, and its lower part (sensuality), which experiences the vicissitudes of creaturely life. Salvation consists in the reunification of sensuality with substance — the whole person restored to unity in God.

Historical Context

Julian lived through one of the most catastrophic periods in English history. The Black Death struck Norwich in 1349 — she would have been about seven — and returned repeatedly throughout her lifetime. The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 reached Norwich with particular violence. The Western Schism (1378-1417) divided the papacy and shook the institutional Church. The Lollard movement, which challenged clerical authority and sacramental theology, was active in East Anglia. In this context of plague, social upheaval, and ecclesiastical crisis, Julian’s insistence on the absolute goodness of God and the ultimate triumph of love is not escapism but a profound act of theological courage.

As an anchorite, Julian occupied a recognised and respected role in medieval society. Anchorites were enclosed with the rites of the dead — symbolically buried — and lived under a formal rule. They received visitors through a window and served as spiritual counsellors. Julian’s cell was attached to a parish church in a thriving commercial city, and she was consulted by, among others, Margery Kempe, whose own spiritual autobiography records a visit. Julian’s theology shows deep familiarity with Augustine, Gregory the Great, and the Pseudo-Dionysian tradition, though she claims no formal learning and attributes all her understanding to the shewings themselves.

Julian’s writings were preserved in a small number of manuscripts and were virtually unknown until the 17th century. The modern revival of interest began with Grace Warrack’s 1901 edition and accelerated through the 20th century. Julian is now recognised as one of the greatest theologians in the English language, and her influence extends well beyond Christian circles into feminist theology, process theology, and comparative mysticism.

Who Should Read This

Julian is for anyone who has struggled with the problem of evil and found conventional answers inadequate. Her theology does not explain suffering — it refuses to — but it places suffering within a framework of love so comprehensive that the question is itself transformed. If you have read the great philosophical treatments of theodicy (Leibniz, Hick, Plantinga) and found them intellectually interesting but spiritually unsatisfying, Julian offers something different: not an argument but a vision, grounded in direct experience, of a God who is nothing but love.

She is also essential reading for anyone interested in feminine images of God in the Christian tradition, in the history of English prose style (her Long Text is a masterpiece of vernacular theological writing), or in the contemplative tradition of the English Church. Readers coming from Buddhist or Hindu traditions may find striking resonances with Julian’s insistence on the fundamental goodness of reality and the illusory nature of wrath and separation.

Julian writes with extraordinary clarity and warmth. Unlike many mystics, she is not difficult to read. The difficulty is not in understanding her words but in accepting what they say — that reality is, at its root, completely and unconditionally loving. For many readers, this is harder to accept than any metaphysical abstraction.

Connections

• love-as-consequence-of-gnosis — Julian’s vision that love is not a means to knowledge but the very substance of reality
• problem-of-evil — Julian’s radical response to theodicy: sin is behovely, all shall be well
• god-as-pure-awareness — God as the ground of all being, known through love rather than intellect
• cloud-of-unknowing — Contemporary English mystical text with a complementary apophatic emphasis
• meister-eckhart-sermons — Continental parallel; Eckhart’s ground of the soul and Julian’s substance
• imitation-of-christ — Thomas a Kempis as a near-contemporary devotional voice, far more conventional in theology

Further Reading

Full text: Revelations of Divine Love