Julian for Everyone

There are upsides to going to a college where students aren’t allowed to drink. It means that on a Friday night, fun-thirsty youth deprived of their keg parties instead pile into a lecture hall for a true rager: duelling perspectives on the theology of the fourteenth-century mystic Julian of Norwich offered by two Midwestern philosophy professors. On this recent occasion, my colleague Adam Wood made a case that Julian could be squared with Thomas Aquinas. My colleague Ryan Kemp, on the other hand, gave a more existential, Kierkegaardian approach to the anchoress (since published in his elegant book of essays). Both were brilliant, and both were right, because Julian’s writing is capacious enough to allow for both interpretations, and then some. About one hundred students showed up, as well as people from the community. It was hard to find a seat. Keg-party hangovers typically last a day, but all of us who attended this intoxicating evening are still thinking about it months later. I’m thinking especially about Julian’s perspective on unmerited grace.