43 pages • 1 hour read
Julian of NorwichRevelations of Divine Love
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1393A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Man’s Will
The will, or the soul's faculty of choosing good or evil, is an essential concept in Christian theology. Julian speaks of two wills in the human soul—a lower or “animal” one, and a “higher” or spiritual one. According to Julian, in the elect, the higher will predominates and is incapable of truly consenting to sin, so closely is its union with God. Julian's discussion of the will serves her larger discussion of the nature and faculties of the soul and how they relate to God.
Sin
Julian describes sin as “the sharpest scourge that any chosen soul can be struck with” (95). Yet, following the model of St. Augustine, Julian considers sin to have no positive reality in itself but to be a privation or negation of the good.
Julian also uses such words as falling or failing to describe sin. In the parable of the lord and the servant, in Chapter 51, the image of a servant stumbling and falling into a slough serves to represent sin. Julian emphasizes that God continues to love human beings despite their sins and that Christ out of love suffered to redeem man from sin.
The Holy Trinity
Julian frequently discusses God in terms of the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (Spirit), each Person having its distinctive role while remaining united in the Godhead. She describes each of the Persons of the Trinity in varied and at times unaccustomed ways, with the Father also possessing the qualities of mother and spouse, the Son those of mother and brother and savior. In Chapter 59, Julian speaks of the Holy Spirit as conveyor of grace.
In Chapter 23, Julian correlates the three Persons of the Trinity with “three heavens,” or three types of delight that the Godhead takes in Christ's Passion: the pleasure of the Father, the glory of the Son, and the rejoicing of the Holy Spirit.
Passion and Suffering
From the Latin patio, to suffer, the Passion of Christ is the thematic starting point for Julian's book. In looking at a crucifix, Julian is led to contemplate the sufferings Christ endured on the cross. The details of the Passion—Jesus’s wounds, crown of thorns, bleeding, and death—form a good deal of the background and imagery of the showings, particularly in the early part of the book. These violent details are not valued in themselves but are taken as symbols of God's extreme love for mankind, a love that did not balk at the most intense and heroic suffering. Using the Passion as a starting point, Julian branches out to such other subjects as grace, the nature of the human soul, prayer, and the Trinity.
Our own sufferings in life can be united to Christ's Passion. Julian at the beginning of her story prays for “three wounds” that will allow her to share in Christ's sufferings and thus be more closely united to him.
