Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love grapples with the same fundamental question that has vexed philosophers and theologians since the advent of monotheistic religion, and continues as a barrier to belief for many today. Namely, if God is so good, how can natural disaster, genocide, trauma - and my present suffering - occur? Historically, there have been two apparently very different approaches to the problem: the pastoral, or practical, on the one hand and the systematic on the other. Richard Norton, however, suggests that these two lines of thought may not be as separate as they seem, and may indeed be dependent on one another for their cohesion. Drawing on Julian’s medieval experience of personal and population-wide suffering, alongside that of more recent theologians such as Dorothy Solle and Jürgen Moltmann, Norton constructs a compassionate model of theodicy that can be of use to both pastoral and systematic theologians. Throughout, he remains sensitive to the raw atrocity of evil, while preserving a vision of God as the one who ensures that all shall be well.

The 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich has inspired generations of Christians with her reflections on the "motherhood" of Jesus and other writings. Here Denise Baker reconsiders Julian as an evolving theologian of great originality. Focusing on Julian's BOOK OF SHOWINGS, in which she recorded a series of revelations received in 1373, Baker provides the first historical assessment of Julian's significance as a writer and thinker. 3 halftones.

Julian of Norwich the best-known of the medieval mystics today. The text of her Revelation has circulated continually since the fifteenth century, but the twentieth century saw a massive expansion of her popularity. Theological or literary-historical studies of Julian may remark in passing on her popularity, but none have attempted a detailed study of her reception. This collection fills that gap: it outlines the full reception history from the extant manuscripts to the present day, looking at Julian in devotional cultures, in modernist poetry and present-day popular literature, and in her iconography in Norwich, both as a pilgrimage site and a tourist attraction.

The Life and Text of Julian of Norwich considers the Long Text of the Medieval mystic Julian of Norwich from a literary and rhetorical perspective. Dr. Krantz analyzes Julian's text as a product of both the mystic's piety and the pressures of her time. Julian's calling and her text are reflected in and reflect, structurally, imagistically, and thematically, the centrality of the enclosing Mother in her life and thoughts.

Harsh asceticism, including ritual self-mortification, remains one of the most troubling and least understood aspects of monastic life in the Later Middle Ages. The nuns whose austere lives are celebrated in spiritual biographies and autobiographies in the Order of Preachers were long dismissed by traditional scholars as hysterics or inferior mimics of true mysticism. Some recent feminist studies either gloss over asceticism or portray its practitioners as traumatized victims of patriarchal oppression. Traditionalists and progressives seem to agree: extreme asceticism is best understood as pathetic or even pathological behavior. David Tinsley seeks to temper this view by exploring late-medieval asceticism on its own terms. Building on the work of Caroline Walker Bynum, Peter Dinzelbacher, and Jeffrey Hamburger, Tinsley analyzes the ascetic mentalities of Dominican convent culture in the 14th century, including the sources the nuns read, the famous ascetics they venerated, and their most common rituals and practices. The key question is how these nuns could see self-imposed suffering as so crucial to shaping the questing soul's journey to God.

Beginning with a group of essays on education, the author shows the constricting and limiting effects of empirical assumptions. In his essays on values, he makes it clear that the ethics of empiricism so pervade modern moral philosophy that it can find no place for the notion of absolute value.

This 2 volume set presents new and innovative research by current scholars as well as the work of female religious scholars of the past. The 600 entries include comparative study of issues such as mythology, ordination and afterlife; Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism; relationship of religion to study of art, literature, and science; historical perspectives on religions both new and prehistoric; biographies of religious leaders and scholars; methods and theories for study of women in religion.