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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2024
It is now time to consider certain charges of unorthodoxy which have been levelled against Mother Julian of Norwich. In the question of sin and the salvation of the elect both David Knowles and Roger Hudleston accuse her of unorthodoxy. They do not of course suggest that her doctrine in general is suspect, but rather that she has fallen briefly and inconsistently into an unorthodox view. The point arises out of her solution of her ‘great difficulty’ (p. 127) that all can be well and yet men can sin and send themselves to hell. She appears to restrict her understanding of this intuition of all being well simply to the elect, to the predestined who are to be fully graced in the end.
1 Revelations of Divine Love … Edited by Dom Eoger Hudleston, (Orchard Series) p. xxxiii of Introduction; The English Mystics by Dom David Knowles, pp. 144 et seq.
2 Compare Hilton, Scale ii, 13 (p. 216) where he makes the very distinctions between the man of the ‘over-part’ and the woman of the ‘nether-part’. It is likely that he was influenced by Eckhart.
3 Meister Eckhart. Trans, by C. de B. Evans (London 1924), Vol. I, pp. 89-92.
4 Blosius. Spiritual Instruction (written in 1551), trans. by Wilberforce, O.P. (London, 1925) pp. 2-3.
5 Cf. I, 79, 9. For an excellent historical discussion of this cf. M.-D. Chenn, O.P. Ratio Superior et Inferior (Revue Sciences Phil, et Theol., Jan., 1940, pp. 84-9), translated into English in Downside Review, Oct., 1946. Also see La Structure de l'Ante by Pére A. Gardeil, particularly in the first volume.
6 All this is set out at length in the De Veritate qq. 15 and 16. It would be unavailing to give any more precise reference as the whole of this section demands close study. Compare especially the Godly will which never sins (c. 53, p. 127) with the unfailing element of synderesis (De Verit., 16, 3).
7 She is, in fact, only concerned with the well-disposed, who ‘for God's love hate Bin’ (c. 73, p. 178). And the Lord showed her ‘no souls but those that dread him’ (c. 76, p. 185).
8 p. 142. The author interprets Mother Julian from this angle and is rightly Unwilling to condemn her for any serious error, though he indicates some of the confusions info which her mind, untrained in theological precisions, might understandably have fallen.
9 Cf. La Providence by Pére R. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., particularly III, 5 and IV, 1.
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