Julian of Norwich and the Mystical Body Politic of Christ

Spiritual Life, Winter 2001 by Caplin, Diane M

Bauerschmidt turns his attention in Chapter 4 to the Trinity by way of theological anthropology. The trinitarian relations of Father, Son, and Spirit, he says, help Julian to reread the social relations of feudal times. "Julian," he argues, "imagines Christ's body as a sociality in which the gift-exchange between lord and servant is purified according to the model of trinitarian reciprocity, rendering not the static egalitarianism of modern liberalism, but the drama of the servant's exaltation" (p. 189). The "reciprocal exchange of gifts" that marks the Trinity becomes for Julian the trinitarian charity that ought to mark social and political relations.

The accumulated power of this extraordinary work is summed up in Bauerschmidt's concluding chapter where he applies what he has learned from Julian's politics to contemporary challenges in political and social life. In his reimagining of the political, Bauerschmidt suggests some very unpopular ideas: that obligation is the ground of human freedom (p. 196), that acting in the world by "performing" the Gospel offers a mythos out of which we might live political life (p. 197), that human beings redefine the polis "not by borders or geography but by the practice of ongoing discernment of the mystery of God in Christ" (p. 197), and that nonviolence and compassion characterize human action (p. 195). I highly recommend this original, insightful, and provocative study.

Diane M. Caplin, Ph.D., is the Associate Director of the Mount Saint Agnes Theological Center for Women in Baltimore MD.