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Jessica has written eloquently on a question deriving from Mother Julian’s “showings” – God’s wrath. If we take away the idea of God’s wrath then one might well ask why it was that Jesus died upon the Cross. If, as Mother Julian states:
God is the goodness that cannot be angry, for he is nothing but goodness
Chapter 46
then our traditional theology needs a rethink.
One way of dealing with this dilemma is to do what both Mother Julian and Jessica do, which is to hold it in tension: we are sinners, God is love and loves us, how the two are reconicled by Jesus is a mystery; it is sufficient for us to know that it will be reconciled.
There is a level at which this must be true. It may be a “Man thing” but I want to worry away at it a little so bear with me.
Julian herself provides us with some clues for how we might proceed; so let us follow and see where, if anywhere, they might lead.
I saw no anger except on man’s part, and he forgives that in us; for anger is nothing else but a resistance and contrariness to peace and to love, and it comes either from lack of strength or lack of wisdom, or from lack of goodness – and this lack is not in God, but is on our part; for through sin and wretchedness we have in us a wretched and continual resistance to peace and to love, and he revealed this very often in his loving expression of pity and compassion.
Chapter 48
We are in what might be called classic Romans 7 territory – however much we will the good, we do the opposite. We know that this, by our standards, deserves condemnation – after all we are very free in condemning bad bahviour in others, almost as free as we are imaginative in finding excuses for our own. We cannot be in eternal bliss, as she goes on to say in chapter 49, until “we are all at peace and love; that is to say, in full contentment with God, and with all his works”.
Only through the working of Grace can we be made humble and gentle enough to surrender our will to God’s will:
Suddenly the soul is united to God when it is truly at peace in itself, for no anger is to be found in God
Chapter 49
As we receive the Lord in the sacraments, as we pray to Him, as we meditate on his life and teachings, as we try to follow Him, we are directed where we need to be, recognising in His love and compassion that we are loved, and responding to Him in return. The Holy Spirit is at work in us, in the Church, and as Julian puts it:
… the Holy Spirit, who is endless life dwelling in our soul, protects us most securely, and effects a peace in the soul, and gives it comfort by Grace, and accords it to God, and makes it compliant. And this is his mercy and the path on which Our Lord continually leads us, as long as we are in this changeable life
Chapter 48
God works with us in our daily lives, and so often it is here, rather than in the spaces we reserve for God, that we go wrong. Original sin, Chesterton said, is the one theological reality you can see by looking in the mirror. Is God wrathful, or do we, in our hearts, need Him to be because of our shame at our own sinful ways? Or is the idea of a wrathful God so central to our vision that even trying to understand what Julian is saying, is enough to cause wrath to rise at the very idea of a God who is not angry with us, but, saddened by our anger with ourselves, wishes to save us through Christ – to save us from ourselves and the work of sin within us?
There, I have worried away at it, not I think to any great result, but sometimes worrying away at things can be enough.
#lentbookclub is on Twitter as #LentBookClub, Facebook as https://www.facebook.com/groups/LentBookClub, and is using The Way of Julian of Norwich by Sheila Upjohn which can be bought here rather than Amazon. It runs from Ash Wednesday 20210219 to Easter Sunday-ish 20210404 and we are doing a chapter a week, roughly. Folk who are blogging about this are: Graham, at https://grahart.wordpress.com/, Andrew at https://www.shutlingsloe.co.uk/, Eric at https://sundrytimes2.wordpress.com/, Soobie at https://soobie64.medium.com/, Ruth at https://becausegodislove.wordpress.com/. Come join the pilgrimage with Julian to Norwich!
All Along the Watchtower 
If I were to noodle on this I might think that I should perhaps make a distinction of the subject and the object of my anger or any other sensibility that might be distorted. Anger, if directed to an end which is The Good and not self-serving, is in and of itself a good . . . just as Greed for Holiness or Grace can be a good rather than a shortcoming. Left as it is here, it seems to be the mother of all excuses. Is it an act of love to accept all horrors and distortions to the good or purge ourselves of any response other than pity? indifference? acceptance? etc., whether the fault is in ourselves, our family members, neighbors or outright enemies? Is The Good opposed to evil and evil to good? If so, then is there an anger that is justified? like the chastising of a child. In Hebrews we are told that God chastises those that he loves. Are we (being in the image of God) not rightly created to have a natural revulsion to evil and all attacks on the Good? Just some things that I think we need to clarify in our own behavior. Obviously if the end is our own satisfaction and not that of the God or The Good, then our actions and responses are in themselves distorted. Otherwise? Are they?
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What I do believe is that I don’t really understand the Cross or various aspects of our theology at a deeper level. I understand enough in order to have faith, but there are things too big for me to get my head around. I consider also that if Christianity is not true, then nothing of spiritual significance is, for all the other religions show themselves to be fundamentally flawed.
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The “mystery of iniquity” and the “mystery of redemption (self-sacrifice)” are just that: mysteries. But I suppose all we need to know is that one requires the other for the sake of Justice as you pointed out. They may be unfathomable but they are balanced in their unique way.
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BTW did you receive my email. Interested in your take on the article.
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I’m still mulling the article as I have no fixed view on the False Prophet of Revelation at the moment. Some people see the False Prophet and Antichrist as the same person, but I tend to view the Antichrist as the beast from the sea and the False Prophet as a supporting figure. I believe the Antichrist will claim to be Islam’s awaited Mahdi.
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Now I want to read the email and Nicholas’ reply!
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I still don’t understand how this comment section works. I thought I was telling you but it turns out I was telling Nicholas but here’s the deal – what was the email about and I’m eager to find out Nicholas’ answer!
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It was simply a guest article that was posted by Ann Barnhardt that had to do with the end times; as that is something Nicholas has been studying quite a lot. I was simply interested in his take on the article which I found interesting though I hold no opinion one way or another even if it has merit as a personal opinion on the subject. The link is as follows:
https://www.barnhardt.biz/2021/02/23/guest-post-the-false-prophet-jorge-bergoglio-by-benedict-carter/
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I tend to find Traditionalist Catholic eschatology problematic for two main reasons. 1: although I actually do like to see good use of patristic material, we have to remember that they lived a long time ago. They will therefore have biases and conditioned perspectives from their own eras that may be less relevant now. Jerome for example lived before the advent of Islam. In that regard, I actually think Byzantine and medieval Catholic sources may be more relevant than Late Antique ones.
2: this type of eschatology can be a bit too focused on Catholicism, which runs the risk of missing the wood for the trees. We need a broader view of thinks that takes account of what’s happening in Israel.
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We can perhaps draw a distinction between our anger, which no one is denying, and the idea that God is angry with us?
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I’m not sure how we do that C? On the one hand we know that God is completely and eternally happy in Himself. Nothing can disturb that. Then, as Nicholas speaks of we see the mysteries of evil and of reconciliation. We see in Christ’s human nature anger at the misuse of His Father’s House. We see the Father’s disdain for evil in many places in the OT especially in the destruction of entire cities and tribes etc. Justice, I think has both a good and holy anger for our heard heartedness and for our reluctance to do what that which is good for us; which, of course is to love God and our neighbors as ourselves. But if we do not do that then is it that we have an anger toward God, in a sense. And is that tolerable for God, at least in the sense of a total rejection of a God would give Himself over entirely to the merest of creatures? I don’t know the answer as all I can do is meditate upon these mysteries.
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I do wonder if we do not make too much of Christ’s actions in the Temple? It is the sole example of His anger we are shown, and to build on it a direct connection with what the Jews believed God to be is, of course, tempting, and we have done it.
But it fails to answer the question of how a God who is omnipotent and could, at a stroke, remove the sin from our hearts, should feel anger with those whom He created. I am unaware of any theodicy which demonstrates how the omnipotent goodness of God and His love for us is reconciled with our sin and traditional views of Hell.
We are here at the heart of a mystery. What seems clear is that Julian’s vision offers us, as I suspect real visions do, more, and more interesting questions, than it does answers.
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A mystery indeed and of a theodicy I am afraid that we are stuck with the NT references to the anger and weather of God and ourselves by simply looking up all the occurrences of the two words. They, themselves, create a type of theodicy but not of the clearness which we would like.
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We are, and I am intrigued by Julian’s referring to us as the source of the anger. That certainly fits with Romans 7.
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For me the wrath of God is a scriptural teaching, since Christ Himself speaks of it and since the Prophets and Psalmists speak of it. I understand it as part and parcel of God’s justice, His response to the corruption of and attack on goodness seen in this world. Truly we cannot fathom or describe it, but I like your point that a facet of it is grief for the suffering and contortion of His creation.
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It is not, as I hope I make clear, denying God’s wrath, but it is trying to understand it in the context of what Julian has to say.
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I think the context is syllogisms and the logic of the scholastic period – which sounds clever and indeed pious and Holy – until we see that it simply doesn’t work.
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Chalcedon – I should suggest that rather than `our theology needs a rethink’, it would be better to suggest `Mother Julian needs a rethink’.
There is always a problem with `if …. then ….’ statements of this nature.We’re all familiar with Exodus 32 – take it from verse 10
Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
But Moses sought the favour of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? …….. relent and do not bring disaster on your people.
Applying logical `if …. then ….’ reasoning gets us into a terrible mess. Earlier in Scripture, it is made quite clear that the Messiah is going to come from the line of Judah – and not from Levi; this clearly could not be fulfilled if God carried out his will to destroy them.
Yet – at the same time – the passage makes absolutely no sense at all unless the intercession of Moses is very real and that God really was of a mind to destroy them – and only relented as a result of the prayers and intervention of Moses.
You really have to castrate Scripture of huge swathes if you want to take the Julian of Norwich line that `God cannot be angry, because ….’ when there are so many passages of Scripture that indicate that there is very real wrath.
There are many things in Scripture that we shouldn’t really try to reconcile – just as Moses did, we should get on with it and pray, with assurance that God listens to and answers our prayers.
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That there is a contrast between the way the ancient Israelites perceived God and the way Jesus presents God to us it hardly a new observation. The overwhelming perception in the Psalms and the OT is God as a tribal God. The chosen people are just that, and the Law is just that. These things caused rifts in the early church. It is clear that the men “from James” took the view that there was only one way, the traditional one, of reading what Deuteronomy and Exodus said about who God had chosen. Paul dissented. It gives me pause before presuming that the way the writers of the OT was the way we perceive Him through the Grace of Christ.
God is love, we are told. How we reconcile that with the traditional teaching that many, nay most, may be damned for Eternity, is a question that Moses never answered because he never asked it, indeed there is no sign that it occurred to any of the prophets of old. I have no answer to it either, but I do think it a question which ought to exercise us more than it does, and I doubt that the answer if to be found in proof-texting from the OT.
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Chalcedon – well, I’m not a fan of proof texting either. But you have to start somewhere and the words are presumably meant to mean something reasonably close to what they say.
As far as I can see, Moses is a very good example here. He didn’t ask such a question – he simply got on and prayed for their salvation.
The books of Numbers and Deuteronomy are reasonably clear that it was because Moses identified himself with the Israelites that he did not cross over to the promised land.
I’d say that we can derive something very important here from Moses – he didn’t ask such questions; he simply got on with praying for people.
If instead of wondering whether person x, y or z reaches heaven you actually pray for it, then it is much more likely to happen, since God listens to such prayers. He doesn’t listen to theologians philosophising about such things.
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All very true Jock, but not, I suspect, good for blogging on.
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Chalcedon – In more detail, I’m inclined to disagree with just about everything you write here; `That there is a contrast between the way the ancient Israelites perceived God and the way Jesus presents God to us it hardly a new observation’ but it is a wrong observation, or at least it is very easy to over-egg the pudding and use this mantra to dump much from the OT that is extremely important.
I’d say I disagree with you about the Psalms. Some of them yes – they seem a bit `tribal’, but others overwhelmingly no and I find that many of them provide a good basis for learning how to pray (e.g. Psalm 139 – the whole of the Psalm) – and when I learn how to pray from the Psalms, I do not dump the awkward bits..
We see several strands in the OT. Indeed, one of them is the sanctimonious Levitical strand (but I’d hardly put the conversation that Moses had with God from Exodus 32 into that category – are you saying that such a conversation did not take place?) As far as I’m concerned, by the time of Ezra and Nehemiah it really had reached rock bottom – these two were (from my point of view) a pair of ugly racists.
Exactly the same sanctimony permeated through until the time of Christ – and we see it in the choice remarks that Jesus made about the Pharisees, so it isn’t surprising that some of it had rubbed off on the `men from James.’
Are you suggesting that it is any different today? I see the same sanctimony and superiority in the church today, based on sets of rules and who is best at observing them, just like the Pharisees whom Jesus didn’t like very much as related in the gospels.
The ancient Israelites perceived God in a way that was different from the way that Jesus presented God; exactly the same is true of people today (the perception of God is different from the way that Jesus presents God).
At the same time, there are huge swathes of the OT which present God in a way that is exactly in line with the way that Jesus presents God – and indeed the entire Christian theology is presented in the Old Testament.
You simply cannot dump important parts of the Old Testament (for example the conversation between God and Moses in Exodus 32) on grounds that the whole OT was tribal and parochial and therefore completely different from the way that Jesus presents God to us.
By the way – I have no information on matters such as who is saved, or who is damned for eternity – and I like Barth’s mantra `Let God be God’. The take home message of Exodus 32 is – if you don’t want to see people damned for eternity, then you have to pray for them – and God answers prayers.
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I hope that others didn’t get the impression that I was suggesting dumping large chunks of the OT, as that wasn’t my intention.
What I was suggesting is that there is a problem here which is worth trying to address, and that citing OT sources was not the most useful way of approaching it, mainly for the reason you give in terms of pharisaical sanctimony, but also because of the absence there of an articulation of the Trinity. It is not clear to me that if you had told the Israelites that God is love, they would have agreed. The overwhelming sense there is of a God who will punish you for stepping out of line. Having just come through the first six chapters of Jeremiah, following a large dose of Hosea, my overwhelming feeling is they needed help with “harlotry” – and quite why anyone would have been persuaded to do as they want other than sheer fear of not so doing is unclear. That seems a poor basis for a relationship, though I can see how it has suited church hierarchies down the ages, especially those seeing themselves as God’s agents – the old schoomaster’s “this is going to hurt me boy more than it hurts you, but if is for your own good” comes to mind.
The question of how we reconcile God being love and God’s wrath is not one I think we can resolve, but I do think Julian offers interesting routes into discussing it.
I am not sure that helps, but I think it moves us along.
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Chalcedon – well, it does depend on when you tried telling the Israelites that God is love – during the reign of Solomon, they probably would have agreed. Some of the psalms, while the psalmist might not state it so explicitly do look as if the author of the psalm would have agreed – and that this is exactly what he is expressing.
On the whole, you’re right about the Old Testament – it is heavy reading – by which I mean that huge chunks seem far too heavily concentrated on genealogies; Kings and Chronicles seem completely uninterested in moral principles – a `good’ king is one under which the temple worship was done properly with all the i’s dotted and all the t’s crossed and there were no `high places’ (and whether or not people were doing bad things to each other seems irrelevant). These books don’t seem to have much at all about the guiding moral precepts.
The love of God, when rejected, turns to judgement – and with Jeremiah and Hosea, you do choose a periods of wilful moral depravity – i.e. Jeremiah and Hosea are writing to / about people who, knowing full well the moral precepts have decided not to take them seriously.
Do you think that Boris Johnson needs help with `harlotry’? I’m not sure he would accept the help even if you tried to give it to him. He is utterly depraved and I don’t really understand how such a person could have become Prime Minister. No matter what approach you adopt trying to explain to him the error of his ways, I’m not at all sure you would have much success. You could explain the basic ideas of the Trinity and the Love of God in whatever way you liked – the chances of a positive outcome would be practically zero – I still don’t think he would take on board the basic point that harlotry is despicable.
It is in this context that I read the works of Jeremiah and Hosea – and if God were to send prophets today, there is every reason to expect that the writing style would be similar.
But you’re absolutely right about the OT – it is heavy going for the reasons you say – and it isn’t completely clear to me that the Trinity was properly articulated in writing before Athanasius.
In the context of Julian of Norwich, though, I’d say that two wrongs don’t make a right. The church (as seems inevitable – look at the church at the time of Christ) may have become far too Pharisaical (or at least some parts of it) and may be too concentrated on the wrath of God; the book of Jeremiah, which you pointed to, where the people are being kicked out of Judah and forced to re-settle in Babylon or Egypt, would strongly indicate that God can be angry – and indeed was angry (if you don’t want to use the word `angry’, you need a different word implies similar consequences). At the same time, he is `nothing but goodness’ – so it goes wrong when she tries to make a logical deduction which on the one hand looks reasonable, but on the other hand doesn’t correspond to the information we have from Scriptures.
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Thanks Jock. I am not sure you are quite interpresting Julian correctly – she holds both parts in tension, not trying to resolve the problem but telling us that God alone can do that.
I hope to write a bit more on this when I get my time to get my head around it!
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