Julian of Norwich and the Mystical Body Politic of Christ

Julian of Norwich and the Mystical Body Politic of Christ provides a close and historically sensitive reading of Julian's Revelation of Love that addresses the question of the relationship between our understanding of God and our vision of human community. By examining Julian's images of Christ's body, this book seeks to discern the "political" meaning of her theology. Locating these images within the context of late medieval debates over the nature and extent of divine power, the book argues that Julian presents an alternative account of divine power in which the crucified body of Christ becomes the focus and shape of divine omnipotence. This account of divine power serves as the norm of all human exercise of power, rendering the possibility of the "mystical body politic of Christ" as the exemplary form of human community. In this reading, the theological is irreducibly political and the political is irreducibly theological. As such, Julian is presented as both a theologian of the first rank and one who "imagines the political".