Abstract
This article analyzes the perspective in Julian Norwich's words, “All Shall Be Well” through the lens of the Korean Presbyterian Church, specifically its focus on sin and repentance as a practical interest. Examining the concept of sin that is emphasized in practice, I compare John Calvin’s theology of sin with Julian’s to reconsider a comprehensive understanding of sin for helping Korean Christians on their spiritual journey.
Introduction
In Korean Presbyterian worship or prayer, the repentance of sin is emphasized. The emphasis on the confession of sin is part of the heavy influence on Korean Presbyterianism of sixteenth-century reformer, John Calvin. While Calvin's theology of original sin can assist us to recognize deeply the grace of God, Korean culture often regards personal suffering as being not only a personal sin or fault but also a community or ancestor's sin or anger. 1 This understanding of sin can lead to feelings of guilt or shame for those who are already experiencing suffering and hardship, and this can interfere with their spiritual growth. I have often heard the family curse (Gagyeui Jeoju) blamed for individuals’ sufferings such as illness, misfortune, or disabilities. To fight off the curse, they need to repent from their ancestor’s sins. The family curse seems like a version of the doctrine of original sin in Christianity. In this article, I pay attention to the fourteenth-century English writer Julian of Norwich, who said, “Sin is necessary, but all will be well, and will be well, and every kind of thing will be well.” 2 Her words were meant to help those who are experiencing suffering and hardship to encounter the presence of God. The words of Julian of Norwich originated from her different perspective on people's sin.
Original Sin and Human Suffering
Julian's words are not meant to be a common positive maxim. They come from her spiritual journey within the violent and turbulent historical context of the Hundred Years’ War between England and France and the scourge of the Black Death. Medieval theology blamed people's suffering and widespread social unrest on the people because they were born with “original sin.” 3 This was also given as the reason, in the fourteenth century, for the cause of the Black Death, which killed almost half of the population of Europe. The sudden reduction of population led to the collapse of serfdom in the medieval economic structure, but the English government tried to sustain the existing social and economic system by force. This caused the peasants to raise an insurrection in 1381. 4 At the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War with France, there was “national xenophobia” and hatred and violence was also directed against Jews, because the Jewish community seemed less susceptible to the plague than Christian villagers. That belief led to a rumor that the Jews had dissolved poison in their neighbors’ wells. 5 The chaos and violence brought people to question: where is our good-natured God who creates all things?
The writings of Augustine set forth the notion that, since all people already had a bias towards committing sin, their suffering comes from “God's wrath” against their sin. 6 Augustine in his youth had been absorbed in Manichaeism, which provides an explanation for the existence of evil in the world. According to Manichaeism, there is a spirit, which is created by a good deity, and there is the material world, which is made by an evil deity. 7 This explanation of the existence of evil dangerously separates the world into physical and spiritual elements. In light of this, Augustine's concept of original sin and the punishment of that sin could not only preserve the “free will” of human beings but also provide a reasonable explanation about a theodicy of “God who is all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing.” 8
When Pelagius, an English monk in the fourth century, insisted on the possibility of human beings’ ability to restore or redeem themselves from their sin, Augustine strongly contradicted him because of his belief that human beings’ magnitude of sin comes from Adam's disobedience. 9 Augustine, in The Retractions, notes that “God helps those who cannot help themselves.” 10 So, fragile and sinful human beings can only receive their redemption as an “undeserved gift” by God's grace. 11 Likewise, Augustine's thought led people to attribute their suffering and evil ways to their “original sin” from Adam. Augustine's concept of sin could not only help people to understand the existence of evil in the world, but also legitimize God's punishment against sinners.
As discussed above, the Augustinian view was used by the English to explain the events of the war and the plague, but Julian of Norwich and John Calvin reacted against this notion with their own understanding of human sin.
Calvin on Original Sin
Calvin builds on the viewpoint of Augustine's “original sin” by introducing a doctrine, which later reformed theologians call “total depravity.” 12 Although Calvin mentions the “natural excellence” of human beings in the creation of the first person, Adam, that excellence suffered a severe harm by Adam's original fall from God's grace, so human beings fell into a “miserable condition.” 13 In John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, he uses the argument of Augustine against Pelagius to describe the close relationship between humankind and original sin as follows: “When it was clearly proved from Scripture that the sin of the first man passed to all his posterity, recourse was had to the cavil, that [Pelagius noted] it passed by imitation, and not by propagation. The orthodoxy, therefore, and more especially Augustine, laboured to show, that we are not corrupted by acquired wickedness, but bring an innate corruption from the very womb.” 14 On the “nature of original sin,” he continues: “Original sin, then, may be defined a hereditary corruption and depravity of our nature, extending to all the parts of the soul, which first makes us obnoxious to the wrath of God, and then produces in us works which in Scripture are termed works of the flesh. This corruption is repeatedly designated by Paul by the term sin.” 15 In the case of original sin, Calvin embraces the traditional thought of Augustine, who predicted that “pride was the beginning of all evil.” 16 But Calvin envisions the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” as an “exercise of faith,” which is God's text about the obedience of human beings. 17 When the serpent asks Adam and Eve in Gen 3:1, “Did God really say….,” Calvin notes that Adam and Eve minimized God's Word and harbored suspicions about the Word in their answer to the serpent's question. 18 The doubt, for Calvin, is nothing less than the root of all humankind's sin, so he advances Augustine's traditional concept of the root of sin into the field of faith. “Not listening to God” marks the beginning of the severance of the relationship between God and human beings. 19
Julian of Norwich on Original Sin
While Augustine and Calvin may concentrate on finding a rational root for sin, Julian of Norwich pays more attention to people's confinement under the “weight” of original sin. 20 In the 51st chapter of her Showings, she uses the visual analogy of the “Lord and the servant” to express the relationship between Adam and God. Julian often uses the word “lord” to indicate “God” or “Christ” in her writings, because her social context was the feudal system in the fourteenth century. When the Hundred Years’ War and the Black Death were breaking up feudalism and the widespread tension between lords and serfs was boiling over (1381), Julian presents a lord, unlike the existing lords, who has an unusual relationship with his servant: when the servant becomes estranged from his lord because of the servant's fault, “his loving lord looks on him most tenderly.” 21 This is because Julian denies “God's wrath” against the existence of evil that comes from “original sin.” 22 Another allegory of lord and servant is in the seventh chapter of Showings which also expresses a close relationship between a “great lord” and his “poor servant.” 23 The familiar relationship between lord and servant could be difficult to find in the traditional medieval hierarchical structure, so Julian uses the analogy of lord and servant to present to people an alternative and a positive perspective instead of the traditional emphasis on “original sin” of Adam and the wrath of God.
Comparison between Calvin and Julian's Approach to Original Sin
Looking more closely, John Calvin notes that Adam originally had an ability to give thanks and praise for “God's glory” because God conferred his “excellence” and “image” to Adam. 24 Calvin interprets the term “image” as a “mirror” to reflect God's glory, so “God as Fountain of Good has His counterpart in man as His thankful creature.” So, the meaning of redemption for humanity, for Calvin, is to recover the image in Christ which God gives to all people. 25 Although Calvin, like Augustine, embraces humanity's corruption by original sin, when compared to other animals, he believes in the small possibility that humanity may be able to faintly discern God's Word. The possibility is an intellect “weakened and partly corrupted” by Adam's sin, 26 so Calvin provides us with glasses—in the form of the Bible—to help us see the “true God Clearly.” 27
Here, we may catch a glimpse of Calvin's positive correlation between us and God, but he, like Augustine, seems to ascribe the cause of original sin to Adam's free will. Also, Adam can use his “intellect” to discern or choose his own way, whether good or evil, because “God has provided the soul of man with intellect.” 28 As a result, for Calvin, Adam's own free choice could become the crucial cause of the sin of his descendants. This provides an explanation for why Korean Presbyterian (Tonghap)'s doctrine emphasizes original sin as sins of the father: While our progenitor, Adam, has the free will to distinguish good from evil, he voluntarily committed a sin against God because he, Adam, failed the test of faith. The sin, which is called original sin, becomes the cause of the corrupted nature in Adam's descendants. 29
Interestingly, in the analogy of lord and servant, Julian of Norwich, like Augustine and his followers, accepts that Adam was a “representative person” who committed original sin: “For in the sight of God all men are one man, and one man is all men.” 30 That is, she recognizes Adam's importance in the understanding of original sin, but she obviates the “disobedience” of humanity, which Augustine and later mainstream theologians regard as a reasonable cause of original sin: the free will of Adam and his descendants. 31 According to Augustine and his later supporters, Adam and Eve were expelled because of their own choice of evil even though they were living in the Garden of Eden. 32 Despite the depravity of human beings by their own fault, Calvin appreciates the nature of humans who originally had an ability to reach for “God and eternal happiness.” 33 Emphasizing the free will of human nature to decide whether to do good or commit sin, for Calvin there is no apparent connection between God and the cause of sin and between God and the existence of evil. The beginning of sin and evil can be understood by human beings’ own voluntary decision.
Julian's lord and servant analogy puts the incarnation of God, Jesus Christ, in the place of Adam (all people), and says the Lord views “his own Son and Adam as only one man.” 34 This thinking resembles Paul (Rom 5:12–19), but Bernard McGinn notes that while Paul viewed the relationship between Jesus Christ and Adam as a “contrasting” relationship, wherein sin comes from Adam, and the gift of grace comes from Jesus Christ, Julian of Norwich envisions both relationships as “the true union.” 35 She views Christ as follows: “When I say ‘the Son,’ that means the divinity which is equal to the Father, and when I say ‘the servant,’ that means Christ's humanity, which is the true Adam…. When Adam fell, God's Son fell; because of the true union which was made in heaven, God's Son could not be separated from Adam, for by Adam I understand all mankind.” 36
She believes that humanity “eternally” dwells “in,” “with,” and “through” the salvation of Christ while she understands the “Fall” of original sin and Christ's incarnation each as historical events. 37 This means that Christ is in Adam (all humanity) and Adam (all humanity) is in Christ. 38 By humanity's dwelling “in,” “with,” and “through” Christ, people deeply experience the “passion” and “resurrection” of Jesus Christ in their “falling” and “rising.” 39
Not much is known about Julian of Norwich's individual life, but her writings provide us with enough information to guess at her life from 1342 to 1416. As previously mentioned, the period was filled with pains, agonies, frustrations, and a great number of deaths because of war and the Black Death. 40 Julian does not directly mention these difficulties, but her perspective on the union of Jesus Christ and Adam could help people to “practically” overcome or understand their sin and suffering because Julian does not focus on Adam's sin but instead on Christ's role in the fall of Adam and his descendants.
True Spirituality Based on Body and Soul
Indeed, instead of directly speaking about people's suffering, Julian of Norwich leads us to envision the nature of divine as love by using our five senses as follows: “We shall all be endlessly hidden in God, truly seeing and wholly feeling, and hearing him spiritually and delectably smelling him and sweetly tasting him. And there we shall see God face to face, familiarly and wholly.” 41 Given the social and political confusion at that time, people interpreted the Black Death as a symptom of the end of the world. The eschatological mood caused them to despise the physical and to be enthusiastic about encounters with the divine. 42 For example, some religious groups, such as Flagellants, tormented their own bodies as a “warning” of sin before the coming of the end of the world. 43
By contrast, “Julian sees God, and sees all things in God.” Also, she understands “all substances” as coming from God, so she cannot find “sin” in “all substances.” 44 While Calvin emphasizes the “loss” or “corruption” of God's image in humanity by Adam's sin, 45 Julian of Norwich puts the accent on the original image even if “the sin” leads to distortion of all substances which receive God's image. 46 To articulate the goodness of human nature's original image in the 55th chapter of Showings, she even uses the term “sensuality” to place not only God in “our substances,” or “physical space,” but also in “our sensuality.” 47 The word “sensuality” means “relating to or consisting in the gratification of the sense or the indulgence of appetite.” 48 For Augustine, “sensuality” became not only the “stigma” of original sin but also showed that the “stigma” is perpetually engraved on both soul and body of human beings. 49 This is because he believed that the sin changed the nature of human beings from “ethereal nature” to “material” and “fleshly.” So, Augustine viewed the “sensuality” of humanity as being already totally corrupted by sin. 50 Most medieval theologians, who followed Augustine's thought, regarded “sensuality” as the “fallen nature” of humanity. 51
In Calvin's case, he expresses not only the nature of human beings as “corruptible” and “unstable” but also says the experience of human beings in relation to the world is a “slippery place.” 52 Calvin asserts that all “flesh” of human beings antagonize God, so the “first step” in our “obedience” to God's law needs to be the “renouncement of our own nature.” 53 This is because Calvin's greatest concern is that “the glory of God” dramatically manifests itself in all nature. The “pervasiveness” and “finality” of “God's ubiquitous” nature fills the world. 54 At present, Tonghap doctrine follows the logic of Calvin, and shares his belief that human flesh's desire is at its core sinful by its opposition to the Spirit. What if the Korean Presbyterian Church adopted an understanding of sensuality, and therefore a theology of sin more closely aligned with Julian of Norwich?
Gillian Ahlgren in her article “Julian of Norwich's Theology of Eros” notes that “well-being” encourages our heart to touch our organisms, body, and word, so the sensitive mind naturally leads us to exhibit a warm attitude to other people: kind handshakes, bear hugs, and embraces. The opposite case creates an opposite heart and attitude in us and our people. 55 For Julian, the term “sensuality” embraces the whole nature of human beings such as “bodiliness,” “consciousness,” “senses” and “mind” in our daily life. She says that “when our soul is breathed into our body,” the soul makes the “sensual.” 56 There is God, but the nature of God has already dwelt in the incarnation of Jesus Christ on earth with us. Julian places God in all nature of humanity to expand the “divine love,” which was manifested in the suffering of Christ on the cross, into people's daily lives in fourteenth-century England. 57
The expansion of God's presence is based on the real union between “body and soul” and between people and their neighbors, and the “reality of divine presence” can provide us with a possibility to experience God's love in the limited space and time in our lives as follows: “I also saw that God is in our sensuality, for in the same instant and place in which our soul is made sensual, in that same instant and place exists the city of God, ordained for him from without beginning. He comes into this city and will never depart from it, for God is never out of the soul, in which he will dwell blessedly without end.” 58
The emphasis on the presence of God shows the need for “God's stability” against the historical background of the fourteenth century. 59 As the Black Death was raging in the mid-fourteenth century, many people blamed the pontiff's “absence” from Rome for the disease. From 1309 to 1377, the Vatican moved from Rome in Italy to Avignon in France, because when Pope Boniface was struggling with King Philip IV of France in 1303, the Pope was captured by the French army. The Pope continued to languish in Avignon for 70 years. 60 The event is called “Avignonese Captivity,” borrowing the phrase from the Israelites’ “Babylonian Captivity” during which Babylon had forced the Israelites to live in Babylon as described in the Hebrew Bible (Jer 29:10). 61 Rome served as a religious and political symbol in Western Europe and the Pope served as a symbol to unite Europeans, 62 so the “absence” of the Pope from Rome might mean the loss of their spiritual center in dealing with their sufferings from the horror of plague, famine, and war at that time. Against this background, the presence of God for Julian of Norwich could help not only to lend “stability” to each heart, but also to see the sinful nature of humanity but seen “through God's eyes.” 63 They saw God was with them in the midst of their brutal situations, where they could not find any hope.
Seeing Our Sin through God's Perspective, Not Human's Eyes
In chapter 34, Julian of Norwich says that “God did show me about sin, then he said: All will be well.” 64 God regards sin as being ultimately eliminated by the divine's own eternal goodness. Philip Sheldrake notes that Julian's thinking is based on “proleptic eschatology.” 65 Proleptic (from the Greek prolepsis) means to “already experience the future in our midst.” 66 Here, Julian's point is not to insist that sin will disappear in the future, in heaven, so that it can be ignored now. Certainly, we should be wary of the danger of a sinful nature to lead us to do wrong doings, but we should also remember that the fallen nature of human beings is not final in God's Eyes. As noted above for Julian, the “story of the Adam (the Fall) and of Christ (the Incarnation)” is not two separate things but a single reality. Our sinful nature will be “healed, sinless, and glorified” in Christ like Christ's resurrection from the cross. 67 Christian worship is a place to proclaim Christ's redemption work from our sin in the world.
In the first part of his Institutes, Calvin explains that “true and solid Wisdom” is divided into two parts: “the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” 68 If we deny, or neglect to confront, our real nature or to understand God's knowledge, we cannot understand either the “knowledge of God” or of ourselves. But the trouble is that the whole nature of all human beings has been corrupted by Adam's sin. This leads us to our failure to see or experience the “glory of God.” 69 When we realize our own corruption and incompetence, we can start to know the “glory of God.” Calvin uses the “Ten Commandments,” which is one of the Law's examples, to recognize our own sinful nature and fault. 70 To emphasize the importance of our sinful nature, he places the prayer of confession in the first part of his liturgy and leans heavily on repentance as follows: “incapable of any good, and that in our depravity we transgress thy holy commandments without end or ceasing: Wherefore we purchase for ourselves, through thy righteous judgment, our ruin and perdition … beseeching thy grace to relieve our distress.” 71 After the confession, the absolution follows, and then the Decalogue is sung to remind participants of their sin and fault. 72 Liturgical theologian James F. White notes the atmosphere of Calvinist worship is heavily “penitential” and “didactic.” 73
My denomination's Book of Common Worship also regards confession and absolution as important orders with the Decalogue. 74 The orders can help a person to deeply understand the corruption of their nature and the “divine judgment” for their sin. It leads the penitent to hate their own sin until they long for “the goodness of God.” 75 Calvin believed that the recognition of our sinful nature could be a taste of the joy of redemption by only God's grace, and the joy could lead us to continuously give thanks to God and follow his will. 76
Julian of Norwich, like Calvin, mentions the “pain” of our sin even though she provides a positive perspective on sin by the use of “proleptic eschatology.” 77 As noted above, she also emphasizes the need of sin: “Sin is behovely (necessary).” The word “behovely” can interpret the “pain” of sin as “pedagogical” because sin provides us, as in Calvin's thinking, an opportunity to experience “self-knowledge” and “knowledge of God.” 78 The phrase “Sin is behovely,” however, depends on God's (proleptic) eyes, so that phrase can be added to the next phrase “All shall be well.” 79 The paradoxical phrase could provide us with a “positive” understanding of sin in our nature. This is different from Calvin's viewpoint.
Conclusion
Julian practically places God and Jesus Christ in people's soul and body to comfort their sufferings. Particularly Julian of Norwich's different understanding of sin could help people's eyes to see that in the future, “All shall be well”—beyond their brutal situation. Someone might be concerned that her positive understanding of sin might make people deal less seriously with their sins or faults. But when we think of those who are in unspeakable suffering and under the weight of sin, often blaming their fault on their ancestor’s sin, Julian's words are not simply limited to words of hope. Instead of focusing on why the difficulties happen in their lives, Julian's different understanding of sin could help to find hope in seeing Christ who is suffering with them together. Perhaps, we should proclaim the phrase, “Sin is behovely (necessary)! All shall be well, with the absolution, after the Confession of sin in today's worship.”
