In 2023, I shared six online reflections in a series exploring the theology of Sergius Bulgakov (1871–1944). I’m pulling those posts together here in a single, summative essay.

As I mentioned in that original series, Bulgakov’s theology—specifically what is called sophiology—can feel strange. This stream of Christian thought will be foreign to many readers. But I encourage you to push past that initial reaction. The strangeness is worth it. There are insights in Bulgakov's theology that can disrupt some deeply ingrained, often unhelpful habits of theological imagination.

The Big Question: How Does God Relate to the World?

Most theologians have a central project, a question that organizes their work. Bulgakov’s project, as I understand it, concerns divine mediation: How does God relate to creation? How does the Infinite relate to the finite, eternity to time, heaven to earth?

This issue might sound abstract, but the question of divine mediation sits at the heart of everyday faith. How does God answer prayer? How do miracles happen? What does the Holy Spirit actually do in our lives? Does God control events?

Most of us imagine the answer in terms of causality: God causes things to happen. God acts upon the world like a force pushing objects around. Bulgakov thinks this is a mistake. God doesn’t shove the world. Instead, he relates to creation through Divine Wisdom, what he calls Sophia. God doesn’t stand outside the world, pushing it around. Rather, God inhabits the world—and the world exists within God—through this mediating reality of Divine Wisdom.

No Gap: The Panentheistic Vision

To understand this, we need to confront a basic assumption many of us carry: that there is a “gap” between God and the world. Bulgakov rejects this.

His theology is explicitly panentheistic. That means everything exists in God, even as God remains more than everything that exists. This is not the common picture many Christians imagine, where God exists “outside” the world and occasionally intervenes. That view turns God into an object among objects and raises impossible questions about what contains both God and the world.

Nor is this pantheism, where God and the world are simply identical. Instead, in Bulgakov’s vision, God is the infinite fullness of Being, and the world exists within that divine life. God is the ground of all existence. Nothing exists outside or alongside God. As Bulgakov puts it, “The world exists in God.”

This means there is no gap between you and God. Because you exist, you are already held within the divine life. As Bulgakov says, "the world participates in the spirit by the fact that it is real." Augustine put it this way, God is closer to you than you are to yourself. Or as Paul writes in Acts 17, “In him we live, and move, and have our being.”

Sophia: The Wisdom of God

This brings us to Bulgakov’s central idea: Sophia. Drawing from biblical texts like Proverbs 8, where Wisdom is personified and present within creation, Bulgakov identifies Sophia with the very divinity of God—God’s ousia, God’s “god-ness.” As he writes, “The three persons of the Holy Trinity have one life in common, that is, one Ousia, one Sophia.”

Given that God has created the world from within his own being, as mentioned above, Sophia now has two aspects. Divine Sophia is God's own divinity and substance. The divinity of the created world, by contrast, is what Bulgakov calls the "creaturely Sophia." Simply put, creaturely Sophia is the world. 

Divine Sophia: God’s own life and being

Creaturely Sophia: the created world that exists within God

As Bulgakov puts it, “The created world, then, is none other than the creaturely Sophia.” Creation is not separate from God, nor identical with God, but participates in God. The world is grounded in the divine life. Because you are real, you are connected to God.

An Enchanted World: Beyond Materialism and Mechanism

One immediate implication of this vision is that everything is spiritual. This is not to deny the physical, but to reject the notion that reality is merely material, inert, or mechanistic. Bulgakov’s theology is deeply enchanted: the world is alive with divine presence.

As Bulgakov writes, "the primary foundation of the world is rooted in divine Sophia." Since the world was created "out of nothing," it needs some ontological backing. That backing, that ground and foundation, is Sophia, God's divine being. Bulgakov: "That Wisdom, which is an eternal reality in God, also provides the foundation for the existence of the world's creatures." 

Sophia, then, is the "link," the "connection," the "tether" between God an the world. This vision is taking a cue from Proverbs 8, where Sophia says, "When God established the heavens, I was there" and:

when he set a limit for the sea
so that the waters would not violate his command,
when he laid out the foundations of the earth.
I was a skilled craftsman beside him.
I was his delight every day,
always rejoicing before him.

Bulgakov describes creaturely Sophia as the “world soul,” the living foundation of creation.  Sophia, Bulgakov says, is "the life of the world." Reality is not a machine. The cosmos is vital, dynamic, and participatory.

This means rejecting the idea that God relates to the world through mechanical causality. God is not the Big Domino knocking over smaller dominos. God is not the cause of the world. God is the Creator of the world, a category that transcends a mere mechanical relation. As Bulgakov says: "God is not the cause, or mover, of the world. He is the world's Creator." Through Sophia, God’s life fills and animates creation. God's relation to the world isn't mechanical, but sophiological. God acts within the world through the world soul.

Sophia is also the "entelechy" of the world. Entelechy was a word coined by Aristotle, and it describes how being actualizes in moving toward its final goal, how the potentialities of being come to be fully realized. So, it's not just that creation has a divine foundation, the world soul is also dynamically and actively drawing creation toward its final end. Creation is "going somewhere." Since the creaturely Sophia abides in the divine Sophia, God uses this sophianic connection to draw all of creation into a sharing of his divine life. As Bulgakov says, "The creaturely Sophia is becoming the image and likeness of the Divine Sophia." This is the Orthodox idea of apokatastasis, the divinization of the whole of creation.

Grace and Salvation: An Ontology of Participation

For Bulgakov, therefore, salvation is not primarily forensic—about guilt and punishment—but ontological, about healing and transformation. Salvation is not mainly about forgiveness but theosis, our participation in the divine life. Salvation is an ontological transformation.

How, then, does grace “connect” to human nature? Bulgakov’s answer remains sophiological. Grace flows from Divine Sophia to creaturely Sophia. Because human beings are already grounded in the divine life, there is a built-in capacity for grace. As he notes, “The ontological possibility of ‘salvation’ through deification is predetermined by the very creation of man in the image of God.”

Three key points follow:

1. Our connection to God has never been severed. Sin darkens but does not erase the image of God. As Bulgakov says, the "connection [between the Divine and creaturely Sophia] is never interrupted, never terminated, for otherwise the foundations of being, unshakably laid by God, the Creator and Almighty, would crumble away." Bulgakov describes the effect of sin as "only a certain darkening...of the image of God with the weakening of freedom." Humanity possesses, with God's help, "the capacity for good in counteraction to evil." Though fallen, "man's creative power is, in general, preserved."

2. Human freedom is preserved. Given the sophianic connection between God and humanity, God works synergistically with human freedom rather than coercively. As Bulgakov explains, “Divinity can act upon the person only by interacting with it on the basis of creaturely freedom…[God] acts without coercing; that is, He persuades, limiting his power to the measure of creaturely receptivity.”

3. Human nature has a capacity for grace. Grace fulfills, rather than overrides, our nature. Humans are naturally endowed with a desire and capacity for a supernatural end. Grace is the actualization of what we were created to be, not an alien imposition. As Bulgakov says, "Grace is not a divine coercion over the human nature; it is not something accidental, something alien to man, that does not have to be, that exists as a kind of happy caprice. On the contrary, grace is the actualization of the Divine-humanity of which the seed was implanted in man by virtue of his creation in the image of God..." 

The End of All Things: Transformation and Universal Reconciliation

Finally, Bulgakov’s vision culminates in a striking eschatology. The world to come is not a different world but this world transformed. “There is an ontological connection…between our world and the world to come. They are one and the same world in its different states,’” he writes.

This leads to a controversial but coherent conclusion within Bulgakov’s system: universal reconciliation. Because everything exists in God, God will draw the whole of creation to Himself. More, because Christ assumed human nature universally in the Incarnation all of humanity was also raised to life. As Bulgakov writes, "In Christ's resurrection...the whole human race was pre-resurrected, receiving the power of resurrection...The resurrection of the dead is universal...The universality of the resurrection corresponds to the universal power of the Incarnation, in which the Lord assumed the entire human nature without any restriction or exclusion; and in his glorious resurrection all humankind is raised."

As humanity is drawn toward Christ it faces its judgment, symbolized by fire. Not a destructive fire, but a purifying and transfiguring fire. Judgment is self-revelation in the light of Christ. As Bulgakov says, "Every human being will be placed before his own eternal image in Christ, that is, before Christ. And in the light of this image, he will see his own reality, and this comparison will be the judgment. It is this that is the Last Judgment of Christ upon every human being." This confrontation is transformative because, as Bulgakov says, “It is impossible to appear before Christ and to see Him without loving Him.” Exposure to Christ transforms and heals.

For Bulgakov, apokatastasis is the logic and justification of creation. In fact, apokatastasis simply is the completion of creation, God finishing his work as Creator. He writes, "While belonging to the creaturely world, all human beings are, so to speak, obligated by God's love to live in divine life, in glory and deification. This is God's inalienable gift to creation, the completion of His work on the world." For Bulgakov if even one soul were eternally lost, creation would fail in its purpose. 

As Bulgakov puts it, “Only deification is capable of justifying creation. It is the only theodicy.”

There's a clip from an interview with the musician and author Nick Cave about the contrast he sees between religion and spirituality.

Cave is asked the question: "You talk about a very definite difference between being spiritual and being religious."

Cave's response: "You know, I think religion asks something of us, it asks something of us. And spirituality is a little bit more amorphous. And we can all be spiritual, and we are all spiritual, and like, well, of course, we are all spiritual. But religion...it's spirituality with rigor... it requires something of us and that action, I think, is what it's probably all about."

"So what does being religious require of you?"

Cave replies, "For me, I'm more inclined to do religious things, like go to church, pray, read Scripture."

Cave goes on to talk about his lingering doubts and difficulties with religious belief, but I want to highlight his contrast between religion and spirituality. Specifically, that religion "requires something of us."

This aspect of religion is something I highlight in Hunting Magic Eels, how an embrace of spirituality tends to default to a curated, bespoke, and self-indulgent pursuit of enchantment. And what's so delightful about this approach is how it makes no demands upon us, especially moral demands, duties, and obligations. I can cleanse my spaces with sage. Do yoga. Surround myself with crystals. Practice mindfulness. Set up a shrine to a god or goodness. Manifest abundance. None of it presses back upon me with an ethical obligation. And this is precisely the allure. A feature, not a bug. More, I can skip all of this, forget to do any of it, and that apathy and indifference is perfectly fine. There is no ongoing commitment to care about any of it. All the woo is wholly optional.

Like I said, I've made these points before. But what I want to do here is make a connection between Cave's description of religion and Hartmut Rosa's work on what he calls "resonance."

According to Rosa, a resonant experience with life involves the following:

• We can be addressed, reached, and touched by the experience.
• We can respond to the experience and call.
• We can be changed by the experience.
• We cannot control the experience.

The key theme here is that a resonant experience is reciprocal. Two distinct realities are encountering each other, mine and another, and that encounter has consequences for me. I expect you can see the connection between Rosa's description of resonance and Cave's description of religion. Religion, Cave says, asks something of us. Religion requires something of us. 

Borrowing from Rosa and Cave, therefore, we might arrive at this definition of religion: Religion is a resonant relationship with existence. Our life is addressed by Being, an address we cannot control, an address that asks and requires something of us. And in responding to this address, we are changed and transformed.

"I saw Him rialy regne in His hous, and fulfillid it with joy and mirth"

In Chapter 14 Julian shares her sixth showing:

And in this myn understondyng was lifted up into Hevyn, where I saw our Lord as a lord in his owne house, which hath clepid al his derworthy servants and freinds to a solemne feste. Than I saw the Lord take no place in His owne house, but I saw Him rialy regne in His hous, and fulfillid it with joy and mirth, Hymselfe endlesly to gladen and to solacyn His derworthy frends ful homeley and ful curtesly, with mervelous melody of endles love in His owen faire blissid chere...

Translation: 

And in this my understanding was lifted up into Heaven, where I saw our Lord as a lord in his own house, to which he had called all this dearworthy servants and friends to a solemn feast. Then I saw the Lord take no place in his own house, but I saw him royally reign in His house, and fill it with joy and mirth, Himself endlessly to gladden and to comfort His dearworthy friends full of intimacy and courtesy, with a marvelous melody of endless love in His own fair, blessed countenance...

Pulling from rich biblical imagery, Julian views a heavenly banquet in the Lord's house. There the Lord's dearworthy servants and friends are hosted, and the house is filled with "joy and mirth."

I've just finished my summer re-reading of The Lord of the Rings. And one of my favorite images from Tolkien are those where the travelers come to a house filled with joy and mirth. The house of Farmer Maggot:

The sun was already behind the western hills, and the light was failing. Two of Maggot's sons and his three daughters came in, and a generous supper was laid on the large table. The kitchen was lit with candles and the fire was mended.

Merry and Fatty's welcome at Crickhollow:

Frodo knocked on the door, and Fatty Bolger opened it. A friendly light streamed out.

The house of Tom Bombadil:

The path was now plain before them, well-tended and bordered with stone. It wound up on to the top of a grassy knoll, new grey under the pale starry night; and there, still high above them on a further slope, they saw the twinkling lights of a house. Down again the path went, and then up again, up a long smooth hillside of turf, towards the light. Suddenly a wide yellow beam flowed out brightly from a door that was opened. There was Tom Bombadil's house before them...

It's a quintessentially English image, one that made the painter Thomas Kinkade famous. The weary traveler arriving home just as night is falling. Yellow light twinkling out. A fire within and a meal prepared. In fact, it's the final image of The Lord of the Rings:

At last the three companions turned away, and never again looking back they road slowly homewards; and they spoke no word to one another until they came back to the Shire, but each had great comfort in his friends on the long grey road.

At last they rode over the downs and took the East Road, and then Merry and Pippin rode on to Buckland; and already they were singing again as they went. But Sam turned to Bywater, and so came back up the Hill, as day was ending once more. And he went on, and there was yellow light, and fire within; and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected. And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor on his lap.

He drew a deep breath. 'Well, I'm back,' he said.

These are the images I think of when I read Julian's vision of the Lord's house full of joy and mirth. It's how I envision entering heaven.

I turn off the footpath and go through the wooden gate. The stone path leads up to the cottage. The sun has just set. There are yellow lights in the windows. A fire within and a meal prepared. I hear laugher and song on the air. The door opens and light spills out.

And I am expected. 

I was revisiting my 2024 reflections on the parables of Matthew 13. Specifically related to something I share in The Book of Love regarding the kingdom of God being a “narrow way” that only a “few” find.

What follows is a summary of those 2024 posts.

We tend to assume that Jesus’ parables are folksy stories meant to make spiritual truths more accessible. But Jesus explicitly suggests that the opposite is true. When asked why he spoke in parables, Jesus says:

“Because the secrets of the kingdom of heaven have been given for you to know, but it has not been given to them… That is why I speak to them in parables, because looking they do not see, and hearing they do not listen or understand.”

Parables, it seems, are not designed to make things obvious. In fact, parables can conceal as much as they reveal. Parables effect a sorting of their audience. Some see. Others do not. Some hear. Others do not. The parables are not simply a teaching device. The parables are tests of perception.

Matthew 13 gathers seven such parables in quick succession: the Sower, the Wheat and the Weeds, the Mustard Seed, the Leaven, the Hidden Treasure, the Pearl of Great Price, and the Net. Taken together, these parables present a vision of the Kingdom of God that is both surprising and convicting.

The first two parables, the Sower and the Wheat and the Weeds, are the only parables Jesus explicitly interprets. And both present a stark message about the Kingdom’s reception.

For example, in the Parable of the Sower most of the seed fails to produce. Only a portion of the soil bears fruit. In short, the Kingdom, as it is sown in the world, meets widespread resistance and failure. The Kingdom is not broadly or easily received.

The Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds adds another perspective. The Kingdom is morally mixed. The wheat and weeds grow together in the same field. Good and evil coexist within the same space, indistinguishable until the final judgment. Related to the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds is the Parable of the Net, where a great catch pulls in “every kind of fish,” both good and bad, to be sorted only at the end of the age.

Taken together, these parables describe a Kingdom that is sparsely received and pulls in both good and bad. The parables also suggest that this outcome is not accidental. An opposing power is a work. “The evil one” snatches the seed. An “enemy” sows weeds among the wheat. The Kingdom is advancing, but into a contested space.

The next two parables, the Mustard Seed and the Leaven, are often read as celebrations of growth. And they are. But when we focus only on their expansive effects we miss the lessons of their starting point.

Specifically, the mustard seed is tiny. And leaven is a small, hidden portion within a large mass of dough. Yes, there is growth, but there is also an initial smallness and insignificance.

In short, if the earlier parables in the cycle describe the Kingdom as sparsely received and morally mixed, the parables that follow help to explain why. Specifically, the Kingdom is easily overlooked. The Kingdom does not arrive with a spectacle. The Kingdom’s initial appearance is small, ordinary, and inconsequential. And because of this, the Kingdom is dismissed. Those who are looking for something obvious, impressive, or popular will miss the Kingdom of God. Once again, the Kingdom effects a perceptual sorting.

The final pair of parables in the cycle, the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl of Great Price, bring this theme of perceptual sorting into sharper focus. In both stories, the Kingdom is of incomparable value. The Kingdom is worth everything you have. The man sells all he has to buy the field. The merchant sells all he has to acquire the pearl. Their response is total. But it is important note the hiddenness of that value. The treasure is buried. The pearl’s value is not recognized by others. In each case, the Kingdom is perceived not by the many, but by the one. That is to say, the issue is not that the Kingdom lacks value. The issue is that this value is not obvious. The value of the Kingdom must be recognized before it is bought. Simply put, if the Kingdom’s worth were universally self-evident it would attract everyone. But in these parables, the Kingdom’s value remains hidden to most.

Having walked through each of the parables, one of the most striking features of the cycle is how Jesus’ audience functions as their interpretation. The crowds gathered around Jesus were themselves a mixed field, catch, and harvest. A few understood Jesus. Most did not.

Thus, this “real time” reception of the parables mirrors their content. The Kingdom is hidden and overlooked by the many. But discovered by the few who give everything to acquire it.

Which brings me back to my observation in The Book of Love.

As we know, the American church is a dumpster fire. And beholding this wreckage we grow disillusioned. And I sympathize with those who want to put some distance between themselves and a Christianity that has forsaken the gospel. Jesus did something similar when he looked upon the Judaism of his day and declared the temple desolate. I think it’s okay to follow his example.

But the way I’ve come to make sense of this situation is from the parables of Matthew 13. The Kingdom is hidden. The Kingdom is a secret. The way is narrow and only a few find it. Much of what gets called “Christian” bears little fruit. Much pulled in by that net is worthless, good only for the fire and trash heap. Nor is size, visibility, or cultural influence reliable indicators of the Kingdom’s arrival and presence.

But for those who hear and understand, the Kingdom is the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price. And perceiving they give everything to obtain it.

For those who have ears, let them hear.

There is a line I love from Psalm 56: "You have collected all my tears in your bottle." 

Whenever I think of this imagery—God as Collector of Tears—I'm put in mind of the psycho-spirituality of tears that I described in Unclean 

In Unclean I share the reflections of the Puritan leader Cotton Mather, who was urinating outside when a dog came up, lifted his leg, and urinated alongside him. Mather was offended by the similarity between him and the dog as they urinated together. Here is Mather:

I was once emptying the Cistern of Nature, and making Water at the Wall. At the same Time, there came a Dog, who did so too, before me. Thought I; “What mean and vile Things are the Children of Men, in this mortal State! How much do our natural Necessities abase us and place us in some regard, on the Level with the very Dogs!”... Accordingly, I resolved, that it should be my ordinary Practice, whenever I step to answer the one or other Necessity of Nature, to make it an Opportunity of shaping in my Mind some noble, divine Thought.

Mather here expresses offense at his animality, being bound to the metabolic functions of biological life. But why? Why is urination, a wholly natural and vital function, so offensive?

As I describe in Unclean, we have an uneasy existential relationship with our physicality and animality. Humans experience themselves as dual creatures, as possessing both a body and a soul. We are both physical and spiritual creatures. The spiritual aspects of life connect us to the heavenly and the divine. By contrast, our physical and animal nature connects us with the earthy and the animal. Feeling ambivalent about our animal nature, given its vulnerability to damage, decay, disease, and death, we seek to shove the body away. Psychologists call this "animal-reminder" disgust, revulsion, like Cotton Mather's disgust with urination, directed at the parts of bodily life that bring our animal nature into view. Consequently, it's not surprising that pretty much every bodily secretion is a reliable disgust trigger: urine, blood, sweat, pus, spit, vomit, phlegm, mucus or snot, and semen.

In short, disgust has an existential aspect. As Martha Nussbaum has observed, "Disgust pertains to our problematic relationship with our own animality...[Our] disgust reactions are typically mediated very powerfully by the awareness of death and decay...[H]uman beings cannot bear to live with the constant awareness of mortality and of their frail animal bodies."

But there is an interesting exception to how we generally experience bodily fluids and secretions: tears. And it's an exception that proves the point. For tears are the only bodily fluid that we deem to be quintessentially human and spiritual. Given that tears are associated with the deepest and most profound human experiences, tears are considered to be a kind of spiritual fluid. And because of this spiritual association, tears do not produce disgust. 

This is the psycho-spiritual background to images like those in Psalm 56: "You have collected all my tears in your bottle." Tears appear in this image precisely because, despite being a bodily fluid, they signify what is highest and most deeply human within us. To be sure, as I discuss in Unclean, there are problems associated with our gnostic flight from the body, in all its death denial and avoidance. But there is also something lovely in beholding tears as our most spiritual and soulful secretion.

There is a famous line from the Pensées of Blaise Pascal: "The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things." 

As Pascal goes on to elaborate, faith is primarily about love than intellect. God makes His appeal to the heart, rather than toward the mind. Thus, when we fall in love the heart "has its reasons" of which "reason does not know." 

As Pascal goes on to say: "It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. This, then, is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason."

Pascal also states the relation in the negative: "The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him." Indeed. As I describe in Hunting Magic Eels, this was my problem for many years, turning God into a Rubik's Cube that I had to solve. 

I bring all this up to underline Pascal's description of Jesus' and Paul's method of persuasion: "We do not prove that we ought to be loved by enumerating in order the causes of love; that would be ridiculous. Jesus Christ and Saint Paul employ the rule of love, not of intellect; for they would warm, not instruct."

For they would warm, not instruct. 

I think this is, in a nutshell, the path for evangelism in an increasingly post-Christian culture. We could describe this as "Augustinian evangelism," an appeal directed toward the restless modern heart. And the goal of this communication isn't rationalistic. The goal is to warm the heart, to make the appeal of God come alive with promise and possibility. A tenuous flicker fanned into a flame. 

There are lots of ways to do this. My last three books—Hunting Magic Eels, The Shape of Joy, and The Book of Love—are each, in their own way, my experiments with Pascal's strategy. 

They are attempts to warm.

I recently finished reading Max Hastings’ book about the Vietnam War, Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945–1975. Highly recommended as a single-volume summary of the war, militarily and politically, from both the American and Vietnamese perspectives.

Last week I described the relationship between neurosis and nationalism. That is to say, how nationalism and patriotism serve our needs for self-esteem. The perceived greatness of our nation reflects our own greatness as its citizens. And that felt sense of greatness meets our needs for significance and worth.

On the negative side, and this is where the Vietnam War comes in, the shame, failure, and defeat of a nation bring shame upon its citizens.

There are many tragedies associated with the Vietnam War. But here is one of the biggest. After the Tet Offensive in 1968, it was clear to the White House and Department of Defense that the war could not be won. And yet, the war continued for another seven years. During that time, another 21,000 US soldiers would lose their lives. Another 500,000 to 900,000 Vietnamese would lose theirs. Billions of dollars were also spent. All for a war we knew we could not win.

Which raises a question: Why did the war continue for another seven years?

One of the main reasons was neurotic. No administration—Johnson’s or Nixon’s—wanted to be the one that lost the war. Pressuring this concern was every midterm and general election. Every two-year interval, the country would be heading to the polls, and the optics of the war needed to look good prior to each election. And so the war rolled on. The ego of the nation was too fragile to take the loss, and the shame of defeat would rebound to the administration that failed. A neurotic pressure to “win,” or at least to avoid the appearance of losing, kept the killing going. Militarily, the US knew it could not win, but it fought on for neurotic reasons, to avoid shame and global embarrassment.

To be sure, this is not the whole story. There were serious concerns about supporting our allies in South Vietnam. But you will not understand the full tragedy of the seven years between Tet and the Fall of Saigon if you ignore the neurotic aspects of the conflict.

"But in God may be no wreth, as to my syte."

We're going to stay in Chapter 13 this week because, in the middle of Julian describing how the Fiend (the Devil) is overcome and how God scorns the Fiend, she shares one of her most famous insights:

"But in God may be no wreth, as to my syte."

Translation: "But in God may be no wrath, as to my sight."

Here in Chapter 13, Julian makes her first mention that, to her sight, there can be no wrath or anger in God. It's just one line here in Chapter 13, but she will return to this insight in Chapters 46-49, where her reflections explore and deepen what she first mentions here.

Julian is justly famous for this insight: that there is no wrath or anger in God. And as should be obvious, this is one of those statements in Julian that has made her beloved among liberal and progressive Christians, as well as among former evangelicals who have left, or deconstructed away from, penal substitutionary atonement and "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" sermons. It's one of the reasons I love Julian.

Because, let's face it, Julian's is a pretty bold claim, one that seems to fly in the face of the many New Testament references to "the wrath of God." But it's also a remarkable claim for Julian's time and place. Late fourteenth-century Christendom often emphasized severity in its depictions of God. So to see this light shining out of that cultural storm cloud is amazing. For her time, Julian's theological optimism was singular and peculiar, especially given that she lived through the Black Death, church schism, widespread violence, and political unrest. For example, Catherine of Siena was almost Julian's exact contemporary, and while Catherine also extolled the love and mercy of God, she also readily affirmed God's wrath.

Now, how does Julian justify such a bold and radical claim? Sadly, we're going to have to wait until Chapters 46-49. But until then, let's just sit with Julian's remarkable words:

"But in God may be no wrath."

One of the things we consistently fail to recognize about nationalism is how deeply it is tied to self-esteem. There is a neurotic aspect to nationalism.

This is why slogans like “make America great again” are so potent and intoxicating. “Make America great again” is fundamentally about reclaiming a lost or elusive dignity. For most of human history, our sense of worth was tied to thick, inherited identities—tribe, kin, land, ancestors. You knew who you were because you knew where you came from.

Modernity stripped us of those identities. Sources of meaning have become thin and self-constructed. Into that vacuum steps the modern nation-state. Identity shifts and becomes increasingly associated with a state, a flag, and a country.

The status of the nation, its heroic narrative, confers status on its citizens. And if you don’t have a lot going for you, you can cling to that. You can raise the flag. No one can demean or shame you, because you’re an American.

This psychological exchange is the neurotic appeal of nationalism. And for a lot of people, especially those who feel invisible, disrespected, or losing, the exchange works. You can wrap yourself in the flag and borrow significance.

By and large, Republicans understand this dynamic better than Democrats. Elevate the stature of the nation and you elevate the worth, value, and dignity of its citizens. Make America great and you make its people feel great. But given how this dynamic is fundamentally neurotic, it is prone to abuse, manipulation, and pathology. There is a primal, visceral pull here, a neurotic violin that can be played by a master violinist.

Our attempts to secure dignity through nationalism also explain why our political discourse has grown so hot and toxic. The nation is carrying psychological weight than it cannot bear. Specifically, if your self-worth has become fused to the greatness of the nation, then any critique of the nation is experienced as a personal attack. Political disagreement stops being about policy and becomes an existential threat. This is not to say that love of country is bad, only that patriotism cannot hold together a fragile sense of self.

Here’s where my argument from The Shape of Joy shows up. Nationalism is not a durable source of dignity. Nations rise and fall. Their prestige waxes and wanes. Their moral witness swings from heroism to atrocity. Their leaders are often corrupt and self-serving. So if you attach your significance to the “greatness” of a nation, your sense of self is going to be radically unstable. Sensing that instability, we opt for illusion and delusion, a myth of innocence and greatness. By refusing to admit weakness, failure, or evil in our national story, we stabilize our sense of worth. Dignity is secured by delusion. We become, to borrow from M. Scott Peck, “people of the lie.” 

Whenever you write a book during the rollout you start to hit upon better and better ways to describe some of its central and animating ideas. Conversation and questions hone the argument.

One of the questions I've been asked to address since the publication of The Book of Love is how progressive readers of Scripture tend to "pick and choose" their way around the more difficult passages in the Bible. This criticism comes from both conservative readers of Scripture and outside critics of Christianity.

Conservative critics of progressive readings like to point out how progressives ignore, or pick around, references to God's wrath and Jesus' death saving us from that wrath. Along with a progressive reluctance to talk about how much Jesus speaks of hell and that place of "outer darkness" where there will be "weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Skeptics of Christianity like to point out how progressives pick around what they deem to be the more regressive parts of the Bible, from gender roles to slavery to the genocidal texts of the Old Testament.

Given these criticisms, how to respond?

The approach I take in The Book of Love is to point to how the Bible criticizes and deconstructs itself. The questions and concerns we have about the Bible? The Bible is aware. The Bible always beats us to the punch.

The trouble here is how progressive readers of Scripture really do "pick and choose" their way around the Bible. This is a legitimate criticism. I think a "better way to read the Bible," the subtitle of my book, is to stop doing this and to let the story breathe.

Here's how I've started describing all this since the publication of The Book of Love.

Consider how we, early in our school years, first hear the stories of America. Think of how we are taught about the first Thanksgiving, the pilgrims and Indians coming together in harmony and peace. Or how we think of the Western pioneers. The stories tell a very simple and black and white story, a story where we are the Good Guys. But as the story develops, those early narratives become troubled. We learn about the slave trade. We learn about the Trail of Tears. We learn that the Southern states seceded and fought a civil war to defend the institution of slavery. We learn about Wounded Knee. We learn that women couldn't vote until 1920. We learn about Vietnam. The story grows morally grey. Worse, we come to see that our nation was the Bad Guy in many instances. As the story of America is allowed to breathe, things grow complicated and more complex.

The same goes for the Bible. We read the book of Joshua and think, "This is the whole story of God." No it isn't! That's like saying that the elementary story of the first Thanksgiving is the whole story of colonial and indigenous relations in North America. We're failing to let the story grow and breathe. For example, I show in The Book of Love how the story of Jonah has a lot to say about how God viewed the nations, and the enemies of Israel especially. The Bible itself criticizes the book of Joshua. The same way Job criticizes the Torah. And as I point out in The Book of Love, the criticisms the Bible makes of itself radically challenges the moral vision and capacities of Scripture's fiercest critics. When it comes to an audacious vision of love, you cannot get more extreme than the Bible. You just have to let the story breathe.

The American story provides another analogy of this. At the founding of the nation we confessed in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal." As we know, that moral ideal was not a reality at the founding. But the implications of the moral aspiration expressed at the founding was a profound irritant and catalyst for change, nudging the nation forward. Did "all men are created equal" mean enslaved Black men? Did "all men were created equal" mean women? As the story unfolded, an unrealized moral ideal leavened the moral consciousness of the nation and unleashed emancipatory capacities.

The same thing happens in the Bible. In the Torah God is described as "merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." As we see in the stories that follow, it's an unrealized ideal. But the confession does its slow work. It shows up in the book of Jonah as he looks upon an illicit and scandalous grace. God forgives the enemies of Israel because God is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The implications of Israel's confession work their way toward the inexorable, audacious outcome. Which culminates in the vision we behold in Jesus of Nazareth. As it says at the start of the book of Hebrews: "In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son...the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being."

You don't need to pick and choose your way around the Bible.

Just let the story breathe.

I recently read Gavin Ortlund’s book What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church.

If you are “very online,” you likely know that Protestantism tends to be a punching bag for Catholic and Orthodox apologists, many of whom are recent (and toxic) converts. Much of the theological discourse surrounding Protestantism has laid the blame for all sorts of modern ailments at the feet of the Reformation, from secularism to liberalism to relativism. I’ve participated in this discourse. For example, following the work of Charles Taylor, in Hunting Magic Eels I describe how Protestantism is implicated in our cultural turn toward disenchantment.

As Gavin describes in his book, his online work has slowly evolved into his becoming an online apologist for the Protestant tradition. You can follow his work at Truth Unites. I highly recommend Gavin’s channel for thoughtful and rich Protestant content and perspectives.

Gavin’s book What It Means to Be Protestant is an apology for Protestantism. And here was my biggest takeaway from his book.

What does it mean to be Protestant? Gavin puts a lot of weight on the Reformation call semper reformanda, which means “always reforming.” Crucial to this view is an embrace of human fallibility, that both church and tradition can wander off from the heart of the gospel. This is less about heresy than what Gavin calls gospel “accretions,” doctrinal barnacles that, over time, come to cling to the hull of faith. The two case studies Gavin provides are the assumption of Mary into heaven and the veneration of icons, the former aimed at Catholicism and the latter aimed at Orthodoxy.

Setting aside the debates around these two case studies, Gavin’s strongest point, in my view, is directed toward claims of magisterial “infallibility.” Infallible judgments cannot be fallible, by definition, which limits the ability of the church to recognize error and course-correct. Traditions committed to infallibility must hobble on, unchanging, through time, even after a wrong turn. Which is why Gavin’s use of “accretion” is apt. Errors adhere, and they can’t be shed.

Protestantism, by contrast, has the ability to recognize error and course-correct. True, Protestantism faces enormous challenges in light of its radical malleability. The fallibility of Protestantism is both a feature and a bug, its superpower and its kryptonite. Still, this capacity for correction within Protestantism, its call of semper reformanda, is the source of its great appeal for many as the hope of the church and witness to the gospel. 

Catholic and Orthodox apologists, of course, will disagree and have their own, very strong and very good, counter-arguments. Still, I find Gavin's observation that Protestantism is (1) able to admit error and (2) change in response to that error—a vision of a fallible church—something very much worth pondering. I've never really put it this way before, but one of the main reasons I've remained Protestant is that, when I look at church history, I see errors galore, both doctrinal and ethical. The church, as a human institution, is radically prone to error. And while it is true that a magisterial tradition can help prevent future error, it forecloses any consideration of past error. And that asymmetry, the inability to reform, creates congenital vulnerabilities and incapacities. 

As many people know, for the first thousand years of church history the dominant soteriological framework was Christus Victor. To be sure, forensic and substitutionary perspectives regarding atonement were always present, so the shift was one of emphasis. Still, what caused this shift?

Gustaf Aulén, in his seminal work, argued that Christus Victor depended upon a metaphysical imagination that modern Western theology increasingly rejected. That metaphysical worldview presupposed a world populated by real spiritual powers and a dramatic cosmic conflict in which the devil plays an active role in salvation history. Aulén describes how this was received in modern theology:

[Modern theologians] inclined to be critical of the forms in which the patristic teaching had usually expressed itself. They disliked intensely the ‘mythological’ language of the early church about Christ’s redemptive work, and the realistic, often undeniably grotesque imagery, in which the victory of Christ over the devil, or the deception of the devil, was depicted in lurid colours. Thus the whole dramatic view was branded as ‘mythological.’ The matter was settled. The patristic teaching was of inferior value, and could be summarily relegated to the nursery or the lumber-room of theology.

What is being described here is a loss of a metaphysical imagination. The Christus Victor vision is dismissed as “mythological” because the enchanted world it assumed was no longer tenable. And so, we pivoted to atonement after enchantment.

Atonement after enchantment would need to be less metaphysically freighted. Especially in response to the Protestant Reformation. Western theology gravitated toward accounts of salvation that could be framed without an enchanted cosmology. Salvation began to be described in the categories that remained viable: legal, forensic, and consequential frameworks. Penal substitutionary atonement became the most well-known and infamous expression of this broader shift away from the enchanted world of Christus Victor 

In short, the movement from Christus Victor to forensic visions of atonement was less a theological evolution than a symptom of a metaphysical loss. Forensic views of the atonement proclaimed a gospel for a disenchanted world. 

Atonement after enchantment.

"Herewith is the fend overcome."

In Chapter 13 of Julian's Revelations we reach her fifth showing, Satan overcome by the blood of Christ. 

Julian calls Satan "the Fiend," and due to the blood of Christ she hears God declare: "Herewith is the fend overcome." Herewith, the Fiend is overcome. 

And while the Fiend continues to show malice toward God and His works, God is unmoved and scornful toward Satan, a scorn we should imitate. As Julian says "Also I saw our Lord scorne his malice and nowten his onmigte, and He wil that we doe so." Translation: "Also, I saw our Lord scorn [the Fiend's] malice and set at nought his powerlessness. Which He wills that we also should do."

Witnessing the Lord's scorn and the Fiend's powerlessness, Julian begins to laugh, which causes those around her to laugh: "For this sigte I lauhyd migtily, and that made hem to lauhyn that were about me..." Translation: "For at this sight I laughed mightily, and made those around me laugh..." 

This is a joy prompted by seeing the Devil defeated: "we may lauhyn in comforting of ourselfe and joying in God, for the devil is overcome." Translation: "We may laugh to comfort ourselves and rejoice in God, for the devil is overcome."

Thus, the showing concludes with three emotions: Seriousness over Christ's passion, scorn for the Fiend, and laughter at the Fiend's defeat. As Julian writes:

"I se three things, game, scorne, and ameste; I se game that the fend is overcome. I se scome that God scomith him and he shal be scomyd. And I se ameste that he is overcome be the blissfull passion and deth of our Lord Jesus Criste; that was done in ful amest and with sad travelle." 

Translation:

"I saw three things: Joy, scorn, and seriousness. I saw joy that the Fiend is overcome. I saw scorn in that God scorns him and that he shall be scorned. And I saw seriousness in that he is overcome by the blissful passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was done in full earnestness and with sad travail."

What I'd like to draw attention to in this the fifth showing—the Fiend is overcome—is something which connects with the fourth showing: the Christus Victor themes. Recall in the prior chapter how Julian describes the blood of Christ descending into hell and bursting the bonds of the captives. This vision is a bit different from the traditional depiction of the Harrowing of Hell, Christ's bodily decent into hell. Julian, rather, sees the blood drip into hell, which breaks the chains of the captives. And here in Chapter 13 Julian describes how, through the passion, the Fiend is overcome. 

Simply put, we tend to view the blood and passion of Jesus, almost exclusively, through a penal and forensic framing. But that need not be the exclusive lens. The blood and the passion of Jesus can be viewed in terms of Christus Victor, as the defeat of enslaving spiritual powers.

For, as Julian says, it is through the dearworthy blood of Jesus that the Fiend is overcome.

I was visiting with one of our majors yesterday, and the conversation turned toward Christology and Jesus' agony in the garden. How are we to make sense of what is happening in that moment when Jesus prays to the Father, "Not my will, but yours"? If Jesus was fully God, was the will of the Son, as the Second Person of the Trinity, opposed to or in conflict with the will of the Father? According to creedal orthodoxy, such a conflict would be impossible.

And if this seems to be an esoteric conversation, it isn't. If the will of the Son and the Father are separated and in conflict, then the Father is inflicting something upon the unwilling Son. Given the problems with such a view, a properly Trinitarian perspective upon the crucifixion of Jesus is that there is no division between the Son and the Father. They are One.

Still, how do we resolve the narrative of Gethsemane, where we read of Jesus experiencing an agony of soul and a struggle of the will, with Trinitarian dogma? What is going on with Jesus' dual identity as both human and God?

The Trinitarian and Christological formulations that came to define "orthodoxy" were worked out across various church councils. Two of the most significant were Nicaea (325 AD) and Chalcedon (451 AD), where foundational Trinitarian and Christological dogmas were settled upon. What is interesting about these formulations is how the dogmatic consensus resisted simplification. At the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity sits a paradox: How can One be Three? And at the heart of Christology sits another paradox: How can Christ be both fully human and fully divine?

Christian dogma sets a fence around these twin mysteries and says to human reason, "You shall not pass!" Human reason, however, is not so easily deflected. Inquiring minds are going to press. And what the mind tends to press for is simplicity, to collapse the paradox and dispel the mystery. Consequently, heresy tends toward a brute literalism and crude simplicity. The mind finds these "answers" to be comforting. Thus, heresy, as the refusal of mystery, has a perennial attractiveness to black-and-white, concrete theological minds. Here's the way Rowan Williams has put it: the goal of the creeds was to make "it harder to talk about God." Heresy was, and has been, a way to make God available to the human mind. To make talking about God easier. But wherever we see this thirst for literalism shove aside mystery, theological reflection is soon to go off the rails.