Having surveyed the Barthian criticism of a Schleiermacherian approach to faith, let’s flip it around. What concerns would liberal theology, privileging human experience as it does, raise about the Barthian emphasis upon Scripture and Tradition?

To make this case, let me call to the stand Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Bonhoeffer’s story is intriguing. He encountered Barth early in his theological training, and Barth quickly became a decisive theological influence on him. This raised a few eyebrows among the liberal theologians who presided over the University of Berlin, where Bonhoeffer studied. Barth and Bonhoeffer were also allies in the Confessing Church movement, resisting the Nazification of the German national church.

But Bonhoeffer was to undergo a change. In Letters and Papers from Prison, written after his arrest for association with a group plotting the assassination of Hitler, a group that included his brother-in-law, Bonhoeffer voiced criticisms of Barth. These criticisms would come as a surprise to Barth when they were published after the war and Bonhoeffer’s death.

What were Bonhoeffer’s concerns about Barth?

As you likely know, in Letters and Papers from Prison Bonhoeffer was exploring with his dear friend Eberhard Bethge what he described as a “religionless Christianity” in “a world come of age.” What does Bonhoeffer mean by “a world come of age”? As he would explain to Bethge:

Man has learnt to deal with himself in all questions of importance without recourse to the "working hypothesis" called "God." In questions of science, art, and ethics this has become an understood thing at which one now hardly dares to tilt. But for the last hundred years or so it has also become increasingly true of religious questions; it is becoming evident that everything gets along without "God"--and, in fact, just as well as before. As in the scientific field, so in human affairs generally, "God" is being pushed more and more out of life, losing more and more ground...

This development would lead Bonhoeffer to reach the following conclusion: “We are moving toward a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore.”

Personally, I think Bonhoeffer was wrong about this. I think he would have been surprised, here in 2026, by how enduring the religious instinct has been in the West. Still, since World War II, religious belief and affiliation have experienced a sharp decline, to the point of collapse in parts of Europe. So Bonhoeffer was rightly worried about the plausibility of the gospel’s claims in a post-Christian context. And it is here where Bonhoeffer expresses concerns about Barth’s talk of the “Wholly Other” God.

Again, recall that Barth was worried about God becoming “captured” by human experience. To protect God from this capture, and thereby preserve the prophetic capacity of God’s Word, Barth defended a radical separation between God and human experience. Barth felt that policing this contrast was the only way to prevent idolatry, our chronic temptation to use God to justify ourselves personally, religiously, politically, and nationalistically. While this project is well-intended, Bonhoeffer began to worry that this radical distinction between God and the human would lead to God being experienced as alien and incomprehensible. A “Wholly Other” God, in relation to the human, would be, by definition, inhuman, unhuman, and antihuman.

The Barthian response here might be summarized like this: “Well, boo hoo for human experience. When God speaks, humans need to jump, no matter how alien that voice might sound.” To this, Bonhoeffer had the following to say in Letters and Papers from Prison:

Barth was the first theologian to begin the criticism of religion, and that remains his really great merit; but he put in its place a positivist doctrine of revelation which says, in effect, ‘Like it or lump it’: virgin birth, Trinity, or anything else; each is an equally significant and necessary part of the whole, which must simply be swallowed as a whole or not at all. That isn’t biblical. There are degrees of knowledge and degrees of significance; that means that a secret discipline must be restored whereby the mysteries of the Christian faith are protected against profanation. The positivism of revelation makes it too easy for itself, by setting up, as it does in the last analysis, a law of faith, and so mutilates what is — by Christ’s incarnation! — a gift for us. In the place of religion there now stands the church — that is in itself biblical — but the world is in some degree made to depend on itself and left to its own devices, and that’s the mistake.

By dismissing human experience, Bonhoeffer describes Barth’s theology as “positivistic.” That is to say, religious claims are presented to the human person as raw metaphysical propositions. As “wholly other” revelations, these propositions lack human resonance, appeal, or warmth. They are, rather, chilly, alien assertions, theological horse pills that one is forced to swallow.

Appealing to the incarnation, Bonhoeffer rejects theological positivism. God becomes human to make his appeal to humans in a human way. God embraces human experience as the very mode of his self-communication. Rather than being “Wholly Other” from the human, in Christ God’s Word is humanistic.

The point for the purposes of this series is this. While the world has not wholly “come of age” in a comprehensive and thoroughgoing renunciation of faith, we have entered a secular age. And in our post-Christian culture, the prediction of Karl Rahner has become increasingly relevant:

The devout Christian of the future will either be a “mystic”—someone who has “experienced something”—or will cease to be anything at all.

That is to say, where culture once carried and bolstered faith, experience must now step in and take its place. Otherwise, the metaphysical claims of faith risk becoming increasingly “positivistic,” implausible assertions aggressively posed to the world with a “like it or lump it” demand. As William James observed in his essay “The Will to Believe,” the mind needs to warm toward beliefs, sensing in claims some vitality and life. Lacking a cultural consensus to warm Christian doctrines, our “experiencing something” must provide the needed heat, warming positivistic propositions into plausibility.

This, then, is the Schleiermacherian criticism of Barthianism. When human experience is marginalized or ignored, Scripture and Tradition become positivistic. Evangelism becomes “like it or lump it.” Christianity speaks to the world in an alien, chilly, and inhuman voice.

Having set out the tensions in the last two posts, let me turn toward how each side—the Barthian and the Schleiermacherian—expresses concern and criticism toward the other.

In this post we'll reflect on the Barthian critique of Schleiermacherian liberal theology.

Recall from part one that Karl Barth launched his attack against liberal theology in 1919 with the publication of his commentary on Romans. This commentary was the “bomb on the playground of the [liberal] theologians.” But what caused Barth to throw this bomb?

The main precipitating event was World War I and how Barth's liberal theology professors quickly jumped on the nationalistic bandwagon in support of the war. Witnessing this apostasy, God being used to justify nationalism and war, Barth came to realize that liberal theology had been evacuated of any prophetic potential or capacity.

The point is easily made. When God becomes identified with and reduced to human experience, as happens in liberal theology, then there is nothing outside of human experience that can criticize or indict with any sacred, moral, or transcendent force. And this becomes a pressing and urgent concern when human experience takes a dark turn, like it did in World War I. Barth needed to proclaim a God who was “Wholly Other” from the world so that God could, in times of moral crisis and confusion, speak a prophetic word. Otherwise, the voice of God would collapse into the voice of men, those clamoring for nationalism, jingoism, and war.

Simply put, Barth threw his bomb against the bombs.

And then it happened again.

During the 1930s, as National Socialism began to assert itself in Germany, the German church fell in with Hitler, baptizing the Führer as an agent of God. Barth was provoked again into action, becoming the main author of the Barmen Declaration. Published in 1934, the Barmen Declaration became the guiding document of the Confessing Church movement, of which Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a notable leader. The goal of the Barmen Declaration was the same as Barth’s commentary on Romans: to get some prophetic distance between God and the world, in this case a world—and a church—bending the knee to Hitler. As the Barmen Declaration would declare, “Jesus Christus ist das eine Wort Gottes.”

Jesus Christ is the only Word of God.

Crucially, the Barmen Declaration sought to prevent the church from becoming a tool of state power and control, the religious wing of the Nazi party devoted to sacralizing and baptizing the state. And it might be helpful for American readers to remember that European states, like England and Germany, had national churches. The American “separation between church and state” was not operative. Consequently, there was a preexisting overlap between church and state in Germany that created the potential for slow, incremental bureaucratic creep as the Nazis worked to bring every national institution, the national church included, under party control. Like a python, the Nazis slowly squeezed the church into submission. The Barmen Declaration saw the squeeze and tried to help the church wiggle free before it was too late. Sadly, the Declaration failed.

Importantly for this series, this historical tale has continuing contemporary relevance.

On the political right we continue to see the church tempted toward nationalism, along with a fascination with authoritarian, charismatic leaders. Like the Nazis, there is a longing for a virile, powerful, masculine Christianity, the church as a nationalistic war cult. The cross becomes eclipsed by a Nietzschean will to power. By and large, these are the demons evangelical Christians must face.

On the political left, Christianity folds into liberal humanism. The moral imperative becomes tolerance. This robs Christianity of prophetic power. Christians must not judge. Sin and the judgment of God fade from the church. Faith comes to baptize and legitimize choice and autonomy as ends in themselves, without reference to any transcendent value or obligating good. The church becomes the handmaiden of the culture and fades into irrelevancy. By and large, these are the demons progressive and mainline Christians must face.

For both groups, right and left, God has collapsed into the human. On the right the collapse looks like nationalism. On the left the collapse looks like humanism. Either way, the church loses its prophetic capacity. Evangelicals find themselves unable to call out the nationalism in their midst. Progressives don't know how to talk about sin and Judgment Day. Both wind up in an echo chamber of ideological sameness, insular political cul-de-sacs, where God is put to use for partisan agendas.

This, then, is the Barthian criticism of Schleiermacherianism: the eclipse of prophetic capacity, the reduction of God to the human, and the inability to hear the Wholly Other who speaks from beyond all human categories, institutions, nations, politics, worldviews, cultures, religions, movements, ideologies, philosophies, and histories. The Word of God who speaks to us outside the categories of right and left, secular and religious, Democrat and Republican, national or foreign.

"I would that His peynes were my peynes."

In Chapter 3 Julian finally tells the story about the origin of her showings, some details of which I've already shared.

As Julian recounts, when she was "thirty yers old and halfe, God sent me a bodely sekeness [bodily sickness] in which I lay three dayes and three nights, and on the fourth night I tooke all my rites of Holy Church and wened not a levyd [believed I would not live] till day; and after this I langorid [languished] forth two dayes and two nights."

Julian's priest comes, sets before her a crucifix, and says: "I have browte [brought] thee the image of thy maker and Saviour. Louke thereupon and comfort thee therewith."

As Julian gazes at the cross her vision of the room dims, but the cross remains illuminated: "it was all derke [dark] about me in the chamber as it had be night, save in the image of the Cross wherein I beheld a comon light..." And then, the pain Julian had been experiencing goes away: "sodenly [suddenly] all my peyne [pain] was taken fro me, and I was as hele [well]." But this sudden healing comes as a disappointment for Julian: "the feleing [feeling] of this ease was no full ease to me, for methought I had lever a be [rather have been] deliveryd [delivered] of this world." And it's here where Julian remembers her prior prayer to be given the gift of three wounds:

Than came suddenly to my minde that I should desyre [desire] the second wounde of our Lords gracious gift, that my body might be fullfilled with minde [awareness, consciousness] and felyng [feeling] of His blissid passion, for I would that His peynes [pains] were my peynes, with compassion, and, afterward, longeing to God. But in this I desired never bodily sight nor sheweing of God, but compassion as a kinde soule might have with our Lord Jesus that for love would beene a dedely man [was willing to become a mortal person], and therefore I desired to suffer with Him.

As you likely know, this notion of participation in the sufferings of Christ was a prominent feature of medieval spirituality. And it promoted extreme practices of self-mortification, like self-flagellation. To this day, there is a serious concern, from both outside and inside the faith, that Christianity promotes and valorizes suffering. So we need to tread carefully here.

And yet, the spiritual genius of Christianity is that we're the only major world religion with a dead body. We worship a Crucified God. A Victimized God. And because of this there are unfathomable riches within Christianity about God's identification with our suffering and with the victimized. There is also a vision of the sacrificial nature of love, of the cost of self-giving and self-donation. 

Thus, there is the constant Biblical refrain that the Christian life is a sharing and participation in the sufferings of Christ:

Philippians 3:10: “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,”

Romans 8:17: “and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”

2 Corinthians 1:5: “For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too."

2 Corinthians 4:10–11" “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”

Colossians 1:24: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,”

1 Peter 4:13: “But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.”

1 Peter 2:21: “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.”

Or, as Julian said:

"I would that His peynes were my peynes."

I have a diverse reading audience, from academics to my mom. (Hi, Mom!) I, myself, am not a formally trained theologian. But I do delight in popularizing and making accessible the theology I have been able to read and understand. Consequently, my online writing can swing pretty drastically from the rudimentary to the academic. Today’s post is rudimentary and introductory.

But that doesn’t mean unimportant! In this post I’d like to introduce the Wesleyan Quadrilateral to those who haven’t heard of it. And while the Wesleyan Quadrilateral is well known to theologians and pastors, it is a helpful framework that should be more widely known outside theological and biblical studies circles.

The reason I want to introduce the Wesleyan Quadrilateral is because it can help describe and set up the tensions I was discussing in the last post.

The Wesleyan Quadrilateral was first described by Albert Outler in his study of John Wesley (1703–1791), the famous theologian and evangelist. Wesley endorsed prima scriptura (“Scripture first”) in reaching theological conclusions. This is a bit different from sola scriptura (“Scripture alone”). “Scripture first” argues that, while the Bible should be given pride of place, there are other considerations when formulating doctrine. If so, what are these other considerations, voices, and data that supplement our reading of the Bible? Outler argued that when you look at the work of Wesley, he drew his conclusions from four sources, what Outler called “the Wesleyan Quadrilateral”:

1. Scripture: the Bible.
2. Tradition: the historic creeds and teachings of the Church.
3. Reason: human rationality and logical reflection.
4. Experience: reflections upon the human condition and flourishing.

Let’s walk through these and bring the Wesleyan Quadrilateral into conversation with what I described in the last post.

First, the Bible. This should be obvious. Scripture sits at the heart of what theologians call “special revelation.” As Thomas Aquinas argued at the start of the Summa, there are things about God we would never know if it weren’t for God revealing himself to us.

Second, tradition. All that said, the Bible is hardly clear in places. The church had great battles in order to reach an authoritative consensus on matters of doctrine. Most Christian denominations look to the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds as definitive descriptions of orthodoxy. Beyond Trinitarian dogma, Christians also look to well-established and traditional teachings across a range of issues, from worship to morality.

Third, reason. As we reflect upon the life of faith, we naturally seek harmony and rational consistency. We draw reasonable, justifiable conclusions.

Lastly, human experience. This is a subspecies of what theologians call “general revelation.” General revelation concerns truths that are universally available to the reflective human mind, regardless of faith commitment. For example, as I describe in The Shape of Joy, positive psychology, as an empirical science, can investigate the causes and correlates of human flourishing. Consequently, we can examine how religious beliefs relate to human experience. We witness how some religious beliefs cause harm, abuse, damage, hate, extremism, and violence. We can also observe how some religious beliefs produce joy, peace, health, and love.

So, these are the four sources of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral: Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience. Scripture was the primary authority for Wesley, but his theological conclusions examined all four sources. And like Wesley, in the push and pull of these voices we are guided in our reflections and toward theological conclusions.

Okay, so how does the Wesleyan Quadrilateral relate to my reflections in the last post and my agenda for this series?

Let’s step away from Wesley and prima scriptura and let the sources stand on their own in a value-neutral framework. Once we do that, some obvious questions arise. For example, when Tradition and Reason come into conflict, which should be privileged? Or when Scripture and Experience come into conflict, which should be privileged?

This is a very crude reduction, but broadly speaking, those who would describe themselves as conservative, traditional, or orthodox privilege Scripture and Tradition over Experience. Not that there aren’t Quadrilateral tensions within this group, with Protestants privileging Scripture over Tradition in contrast to Catholics and the Orthodox. Regardless, all these groups tend to rank Experience lower in their theological considerations.

Progressive and liberal theologians, by contrast, tend to privilege, or give greater credence to, Experience in relation to Scripture and Tradition. For example, when progressives see a location of human virtue and flourishing that doesn’t jibe with plain-sense readings of the Bible or the traditional teachings of the church, they will adjust their hermeneutics so as to make their readings of Scripture congruent with human experience.

Mapping all this onto the “Barth” and “Schleiermacher” contrast from the last post: By “Barthian” I mean theological positions that privilege Scripture and Tradition over human Experience. That is to say, in these perspectives, if human experience contradicts Scripture and Tradition, then human experience is wrong and has to change. Conversely, “Schleiermacherian” theological positions privilege, or at least elevate, human Experience over Scripture and Tradition. That is to say, when we observe locations of human flourishing that contradict plain-sense readings of the Bible or traditional Christian teaching, these readings and teachings should change. Relatedly, when we see plain-sense readings or traditional Christian teachings causing harm or undermining human flourishing, these readings and teachings should also change.

Stepping back, then, one way to describe the topic of this series is to view it from within the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. 

Specifically, how are we to balance Scripture and Tradition over against human Experience?

Goodness, how obscure is that title?

Before you run away, just know that I'm about to explain it in a very accessible way.

To begin, this is a series about how I approach theology. To do that I want to explore how I attempt to reconcile two seemingly irreconcilable theological visions. And as you can guess, the "Barth" and "Schleiermacher" in my title represent these rival theologies. 

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) was a German theologian and philosopher often called the “father of modern liberal theology.” Seeking to defend Christianity in the face of Enlightenment criticism and rising secularism, Schleiermacher located the heart of religion not in doctrine or morality but in the “feeling of absolute dependence,” a deep, immediate awareness of God. Simply put, Schleiermacher grounded faith in human experience, a move that laid the foundation for modern liberal theology. When I was an undergraduate Bible major, I was warned about the liberalism of “German theology.” Schleiermacher was the godfather of this movement, which later boasted theologians like Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923), Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), and, in a later and more complicated form, Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976). While this is a very crude simplification, these liberal theologians unpacked Christian dogma in moral, historical, existential, symbolic, and experiential terms. The Christian faith and the Bible increasingly functioned as expressions of human religious consciousness and the human condition, rather than as descriptions of a supernatural, ontological reality.

Simply put, the leading edge of liberal theology is human experience. So, the reference to "Schleiermacher" in the series title is gesturing toward theological frameworks that privilege and emphasize human experience. 

In 1919, the Swiss theologian Karl Barth published his famous commentary on Romans. The Romans commentary was described as "a bomb the fell on the playground of the theologians." The theologians in question were those liberal, German, Schleiermacherian theologians. Barth’s Romans rejected the entire liberal theological trajectory. For Barth, God was Wholly Other from human existence, the Lord who confronts humanity in judgment and grace. Revelation, thus, does not grow out of history or emerge from within the human condition, but breaks in from beyond, as crisis and apocalypse. Barth took explicit aim at Schleiermacher’s "turn to the subject," wrenching theology free from its captivity to human experience and returning it to the sovereign, self-revealing act of God in Christ. 

Simply stated, for Barth revelation doesn’t emerge from within human experience, as a dawning awareness of a “Christ consciousness” or inner moral feeling. Rather, Christ confronts human experience from the outside, as crisis, judgment, and indictment. So, the reference to "Barth" in the series title is gesturing toward theological frameworks that privilege and emphasize special revelation—Scripture, dogma, and doctrine—over human experience. 

Hopefully, now, you can see the provocation of my title "When Barth and Schleiermacher Kiss." I'm proposing in this series an intimate reconciliation between two opposed and fiercely warring theological systems, Barth and Schleiermacher's own visions and all their contemporary theological offspring. For example, I toyed with entitling the series "When Hauerwas and Tillich Kiss." Hauerwas as a contemporary example of the Barthian stream, and Tillich an example of the Schleiermacherian stream. In March 1959, Time magazine placed Paul Tillich on its cover, calling him the “foremost Protestant thinker” in the United States. In September 2001, Time named Stanley Hauerwas “America’s Best Theologian.” As for the ongoing war between these two streams of Christian theology, Hauerwas has called Tillich, as a liberal theologian, "the most supremely apologetic/accomodationist theologian of our time" and "the great enemy of Christianity in this country." So, imagining Hauerwas and Tillich kissing would have been quite the provocation. But I wanted to go back to the origins of liberal theology—Schleiermacher—and its early, fiercest, and most influential critic—Karl Barth. 

A sketch of where we are going. 

I often feel that I am a theological platypus. I'm in-between a lot. Too Barthian for the progressives. Too Schleiermacherian for the conservatives. Too heterodox for the orthodox, and too orthodox for the heterodox. I am a huge fan of both Stanley Hauerwas and Paul Tillich. In fact, as I'll try to argue in this series, I think Hauerwas and Tillich need each other. Otherwise their theological visions, and this is also true for Barth and Schleiermacher, become twisted and distorted. 

Thus, the need for these visions—Barth/Schleiermacher and Hauerwas/Tillich—to kiss.

In my Psychology and Christianity class this week we were speaking about the soul. 

That discussion reminded me of a short series I shared in 2023 about what we are talking about when we talk about the soul. Our default assumption is that when we talk about the soul we are talking about a spectral substance or ghostly object that inhabits our body. But I would suggest that when we speak of the soul were are talking less about a substance than about the deepest aspects of what it means to be human.

To start, the soul is the arena of moral drama in our lives.

Every day and every moment we are in a moral drama, playing a high-stakes game. And what is won or lost in this game is our very soul. When we say “soul,” we name this fight, this struggle. William James once described the drama of human existence:

“If this life is not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight.”

Where in us does this moral drama take place? You could say it’s happening in the brain, but that seems inadequate as the stakes of this game are “for our very soul.” Something sacred and integral to my identity is in play and at risk. 

Relatedly, the soul is also the place where we experience what psychologists call moral damage. When we act in ways that violate our deeply held and most cherished values, or when we witness things that morally traumatize us, we feel that the soul is wounded, seared, or scarred. And the location of this damage isn’t biological. The brain not damaged by moral wounds, it is the soul that is hurt.

Beyond being the arena of moral drama, the soul is also the container of human value and worth.

Physically and materially, there isn’t much value in a human person. Reduced to our elemental components, the human body is made mostly of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. The cost of these chemicals, as chemicals, is around $160. 

Obviously, this purely chemical description is unable to capture what is priceless about human persons. So, where does this value adhere? What is the container, the receptacle, of human worth?

Biblically, Christians confess that every human person is created in the image of God. And while the Imago Dei can mean many things, it has always included the idea of human dignity and worth. Because we bear the divine image, our value is inviolable. 

When we say “soul,” therefore, we are naming what is priceless about the human person. The soul is irreducible to a purely material accounting and valuable beyond any economic reckoning.

Finally, to speak of the soul is to speak of the eschatological horizon of human life.

Now, I don’t want to get bogged down in the doctrinal details. We can debate if the soul is immortal or not, if we should prefer a Platonic or a more embodied vision. We can debate Judgment Day, heaven, and hell. But however we work out the details, when we say “soul” we are thinking eschatologically about human persons and the moral content of our lives.

To view yourself eschatologically is to believe that you have come into existence for a reason and that your life has an ultimate destiny. Having a soul means human life is teleological. Your existence is not due to chance, accident, or happenstance.

And if we have a destiny, if we are here for a reason, that means it matters what we do with our lives, morally speaking. Life has moral weight and consequence. Maybe you believe in heaven or hell, maybe you believe we leave behind a “moral echo” that ripples through time, maybe you believe in karma. Regardless, the consequences of our actions outlast our lives, for good or ill. When we say “soul,” we are pointing to this eschatological aspect of human life. Human life exists for a reason, a reason rooted in a moral drama that persists beyond the temporal bounds of biological existence. 

In summary, to possess a soul is to experience life as cosmically sacred, existentially valuable, morally charged, and purposively directed. 

To have a soul is to be human, with all the pathos this entails.

In Galatians, Paul describes how he received his gospel as “an apocalypse of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:12). That claim is related to a decisive moment in Paul's biography: the road to Damascus. If we want to understand Paul's gospel I think it helps to linger over this experience, pondering Paul's “before” and “after.”

Imaginatively, I've suggested that it helps to picture Paul's mental state and worldview the morning he set out to arrest members of a heretical messianic sect. Paul's world, at that moment, was clear and coherent. The law was holy, righteous, and good (Rom. 7:12). The problem was not the law, but the need for obedience. And what secured obedience was zeal. In this, Paul stood in the footsteps of Phinehas.

In the Old Testament story of Phinehas, (murderous) zeal for God’s honor was explicitly “credited as righteousness” (Num. 25:11–13; Ps. 106:30–31). Phinehas acts decisively in the face of covenantal compromise, and his zeal turns away God’s wrath. The story created a script. If the law is good, then what is required is passionate adherence to it. Zeal would make you righteous.

And that is exactly what Paul was doing on the road to Damascus. As he later described it, “as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless” (Phil. 3:6). Regarding later, especially Protestant, visions of the gospel, Paul was not struggling with guilt on the road to Damascus. Nor was Paul trying to “earn his salvation” in some anxious, introspective way. Paul was doing exactly what he believed God required. As I've shared before, the equation in Paul's head that morning was simple:

The Law + Zeal = Righteousness

And then came the apocalypse.

On the road, Paul encounters the risen Jesus: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” And in that confrontation everything falls apart. The zeal Paul believed would be credited as righteousness is exposed as participation in Israel's catastrophe.

For three days Paul sits in blindness. And it's here, in this darkness, where his gospel begins to take shape. What is revealed to Paul isn't just that Jesus is the Messiah, but that Israel, in her zeal for the law, had crucified her Messiah. And Paul, with that same zeal, was continuing this failure.

In short, the very thing that was supposed to produce righteousness had produced the worst possible outcome. Instead of righteousness, zeal had produced covenantal failure. 

This realization, I think, is the clearest path into Paul’s gospel. Because I think it raises the crucial question Paul pondered for three days as he sat in darkness: What went wrong?

Paul’s answer unfolds most fully in Romans 5–8. The first thing Paul insists upon, a point often missed, is that the problem wasn't the law. Again, Paul is clear on this issue: the law is holy, righteous, and good (Rom. 7:12). This part of Paul's worldview—his high view of the law—remained intact after this encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. The problem, as Paul came to see it, is what happens when the law encounters human flesh (sarx).

Sarx simply means “flesh,” as in meat. But for Paul, sarx is existentially freighted and names how human existence has been weakened by the powers of Sin and Death. As Paul says, “For the mind set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, indeed it cannot” (Rom. 8:7). This incapacity to submit to God's law–"indeed it cannot"–is the deep cause of Israel's catastrophe.

Stepping back, the issue here is not legalism or “works-based righteousness.” That is the common misconception, especially in Protestant circles. Our desire to obey God is right and good. For Paul, the problem is, rather, our moral incapacity. Sarx lacks the ability to carry out what the law demands and what we, ourselves, desire: “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Rom. 7:15). And when the law meets this incapacity, Sin seizes the opportunity: “For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death” (Rom. 7:11).

This is why the Phinehas formula failed. Zeal cannot overcome Sin. Worse, zeal, operating within sarx, becomes entangled in the very powers it is trying to resist. What Paul thought would be “credited as righteousness” became the means by which he opposed the Messiah.

This is what was revealed to Paul on the road to Damascus. Not simply that he was mistaken, but that the entire project of attaining righteousness through zeal had gone catastrophically wrong. More, if zeal had been enough, there would have been no need for Christ to die. As Paul says, “If righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing” (Gal. 2:21). Israel had zeal in abundance. Paul himself had zeal. But zeal proved powerless before the dominion of Sin and Death.

The Law + Sarx = Covenantal Failure

Which means our predicament runs deeper than effort. And if that is so, the solution must go deeper as well.

Which brings us to the heart of Paul’s gospel, its pneumatological core. What Christ accomplishes in his death and resurrection is not simply forgiveness. Christ defeats the powers that have weakened sarx. Christ breaks the dominion of Sin and Death and inaugurates a new reality. This new reality is given through the Spirit: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies” (Rom. 8:11).

Through the Spirit, the power of Death is overcome. Through the Spirit, the weakness of sarx is addressed. Through the Spirit, the situation that made obedience impossible is fundamentally altered. What the law could not do, weakened as it was by the flesh, God did: “God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:3–4).

The point is straightforward. The Spirit gives us the capacity to follow God’s commands. The Spirit does what zeal could not do. As Paul says, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2). Further, “if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8:13). Through the Spirit, we are no longer captive to the power that made obedience impossible. Through the Spirit, we bear the fruit of God’s kingdom: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22–23). This is what obedience looks like when it is pneumatologically empowered.

The Law + the Spirit = Fruitful Life

Pneumatology, therefore, is the very heart of Paul’s gospel. Pneumatology is the hinge. Without the Spirit, the catastrophe revealed on the road to Damascus remains unaddressed. The Spirit infuses life, empowers obedience, and sustains faith in ways that human effort, zeal, and law-keeping cannot. To understand Paul is to see that the Spirit is the gospel. 

As Paul puts it, the gospel is the power of God for salvation (Rom. 1:16).

"...the wound of very contrition, the wound of kinde compassion, and the wound of willfull longing to God."

In Chapter 2 Julian notes the year and date of the illness she suffered. She describes how, prior to that date, she had asked the Lord for "three gifts": "mende [mind] of His passion," "bodily seke­nesse [sickness] in youth," and "three wounds":

These Revelations were shewed to a simple creature that cowde no letter ["could no letter", that is to say, illiterate. Scholars debate if this is a confession of humility, that Julian could actually write Middle English, or if she was stating that she could not read or write Latin, the official language of the church] the yeere [year] of our Lord 1373, the eighth day of May, which creature desired afore three gifts of God. The first was mende ["mind" as in memory or consciousness] of His passion. The second was bodily seke­nesse [sickness] in youth at thirty yeeres of age. The third was to have of Gods gift three wounds. As in the first methought I had sume feleing in the passion of Christe, but yet I desired more be the grace of God. Methought I would have beene that time with Mary Magdalen and with other that were Crists lovers, and therefore I desired a bodily sight wherein I might have more knowledge of the bodily peynes [pains] of our Saviour, and of the compassion our Lady and of all His trew [true] lovers that seene that time [who saw at that time] His peyne [pains], for I would be one of them and suffer with Him. Other sight ner sheweing of God desired I never none till the soule was departid fro the body [No other sight or showing of God I desired until the soul departed from the body]. The cause of this petition was that after the sheweing I should have the more trew minde [true mind] in the passion of Christe.

As I described last week, Julian's spirituality is deeply connected to the Passion. She longs to stand with Mary Magdalene and the others at the foot of the cross, desiring a "bodily sight wherein I might have more knowledge of the bodily peynes of our Saviour, and of the compassion our Lady and of all His trew lovers that seene that time His peynes, for I would be one of them and suffer with Him." She desires to "have the more trew minde in the passion of Christe."

As Julian will recount, she did receive "bodily sight" of Christ's passion when her second request, sickness in youth, was granted. And in response to both the sickness and the showings of the Passion, Julian asks for "three wounds." Julian describes the wounds this way:

For the third, by the grace of God and teachyng [teaching] of Holy Church, I con­ceived a mighty desire to receive three wounds in my life; that is to sey [say], the wound of very [true] contrition, the wound of kinde [kind] compassion, and the wound of willfull longing to God.

To underline the point, the three wounds are directed toward Christ in his sufferings. That is, in viewing Christ's agony Julian wants to experience contrition for sin, compassion for Christ, and a deeper longing for God.

As I pointed out last week, all this is very far from progressive, spiritual-not-religious Christianity. It's even a jolt for more traditional Protestants. For example, I'll often wear a crucifix and my office is full of crucifixes. And the visible display of the body of Jesus interrupts many. That bloody vision is an interruption, a grisly intrusion. Because most Protestants, as you know, tend to display an empty cross. But Julian's showings are very much a corpus crucifix spirituality. 

Julian's path is a thrice-wounded spirituality. Deeper contrition for sin. Greater compassion for Christ. And a more profound longing for God.

In the last post I described four reasons hedonic well-being, on its own terms, does not cultivate our deeper flourishing. In this post I will share four more reasons the pursuit of the pleasurable life goes wrong.

Reason 5: Moral Blindness

Our pursuit of the pleasurable, pleasant, and comfortable life can blind us to the moral and ethical issues implicated in that pursuit. For example, we may enjoy cheap clothing, fast delivery, constant digital entertainment, and personal technologies while ignoring the exploitative labor conditions, extractive mining practices, and environmental harms that make those comforts possible. Relatedly, calls for a more just and equitable society often require us to give up comforts, conveniences, and cost savings upon which our present level of ease depends.

Reason 6: The Paradox of Choice

We assume that having more choices is better. Research has shown, however, that satisfaction declines as choices proliferate. This is called “the paradox of choice.” Some choice is good. We like to have options. But too many choices can overwhelm us. This is especially true given our neoliberal bias toward maximization. When we face too many attractive choices we can experience decision paralysis, fearing we might make the wrong or a suboptimal choice. Then, after the decision, we experience post-choice regret. We fear we made a bad choice, and constant social comparison makes us look with envy upon the choices of others.

Reason 7: The Failure to Integrate Suffering

Privileging the pursuit of the happy and comfortable life causes us to make choices that maximize pleasure and minimize pain. This creates a bias where we come to think that sadness, struggle, and suffering are pathological states that must be quickly escaped or avoided at all costs. But when we avoid suffering we fail to develop resilience and wisdom. Kate Bowler has also shared profound reflections about how our cultural addiction to “toxic positivity” is hurting us.

Consider, for example, how diagnoses of depression skyrocketed in the late 1980s when Prozac hit the market. Did rates of depression suddenly increase, or did the new pill allow us to escape sadness, leading to overdiagnosis and overprescription? Simply put, what costs are there to our deeper flourishing when sadness becomes chemically eliminated from the human experience?

Reason 8: Vulnerability to the Dopamine Economy

When we pursue pleasure as an end in itself we become vulnerable to an economy that hijacks the dopamine reward pathways in the brain. Instead of pursuing long-term, durable goods, we opt for quick fixes. Social media. Online porn. Fast and processed food. Video games. Online shopping. Drugs. Alcohol. Streaming services. Online gambling. We are surrounded by pleasures that satiate, stimulate, soothe, comfort, titillate, and satisfy. Instead of pursuing our deep flourishing we become captured by reinforcing cycles of craving, consumption, and addiction.

And so, going back to the last post, these are eight reasons hedonic well-being goes wrong, why the pursuit of the pleasant and pleasurable life is a dead end:

1. The hedonic treadmill
2. Affective forecasting errors
3. Pleasure as goal rather than consequence
4. Narcissistic drift
5. Moral blindness
6. The paradox of choice
7. Failure to integrate suffering
8. Vulnerability to the dopamine economy

And so, here's my advice: When you choose happiness, don't forget the good.

In the last post I described how hedonic well-being becomes captured and directed by neoliberal assumptions. When we tell people to "Choose Joy" or "Pursue Happiness," they tend to choose autonomy over community (individualism), attempt to hit an ever-moving target (maximization), and relentlessly compete against and compare themselves to others (competition). Not a great outcome!

But beyond these neoliberal temptations, there are deeper reasons why the pursuit of hedonic well-being as hedonic well-being undermines our flourishing. The pleasurable life (hedonic well-being) will not lead you toward the good life (eudaimonic well-being). In my lecture for my positive psychology class, I described eight reasons hedonic well-being goes wrong. In this post, I'll walk through the first four.

Reason 1: The Hedonic Treadmill and Hedonic Adaptation

As psychologists have documented, the positive emotions associated with pleasures and achievements are temporary and short-lived. After a flush of positive emotion, we soon return to our emotional baseline. We habituate to the "new normal." This creates what psychologists call the "hedonic treadmill." We run after pleasures and achievements, but since the emotional gains fade, we are motivated to chase another pleasure or achievement, to which we also quickly habituate. Rinse and repeat. We run and run but never make any lasting progress toward happiness.

Reason 2: Affective Forecasting Errors

We are bad at choosing what will make us happy. Psychologists call these "affective forecasting errors." We stand at the fork in the road of a life decision. We look down one path and make a prediction about how happy we will be if we travel that road. We make an "affective forecast." Then we look down the alternative path and make a happiness prediction for that choice. We compare those forecasts and pick the one we think, at the moment of choice, will make us happier.

Sadly, as I said, we are terrible at this task. Due to "miswanting," desiring the wrong things, we are poor at predicting joy. We travel down roads that do not lead to happiness.

Reason 3: Pleasure Should Be the Reinforcement, Not the Goal

Pleasure exists to reinforce the good and, therefore, should not be pursued as an end in itself. We should pursue more durable and lasting goods and allow positive emotions to flow in and reinforce those pursuits.

For example, I should not pursue happiness for its own sake. I should take my wife on a date. I should pursue that relational good. And then, while we are on that date, I will experience a flood of positive emotions, emotions that reinforce the relational good I am pursuing. In short, do not choose happiness! You should choose the good and let happiness reinforce that choice.

Reason 4: Narcissistic Drift

When we pursue happiness, we slowly drift into selfishness. Inexorably, I come to privilege my happiness, joy, contentment, and peace over other goods, demands, obligations, and duties. An example of this is "self-care creep," where people withdraw from pursuing moral goods, like social justice, because that pursuit is stressful and upsetting. And so, I step away from the fight.

To be sure, self-care is a pressing and urgent need among social justice activists. But as everyone knows, many people sit on the social justice sidelines because of narcissistic drift. This is what "white fragility" is, after all, the privileging of emotional comfort over moral investment. A more parochial example is sleeping in on Sunday mornings instead of going to church. It's pleasurable to sleep in on Sundays, but doing so sacrifices goods that that will accrue--socially, morally, and existentially--to my deeper and more long term flourishing.

In the next post, I'll share four more reason why hedonic well-being goes wrong.

On the surface, encouragements to “Choose Joy” and “Find Happiness” seem straightforward and obvious. And yet, as described in the last post, such advice is underdetermined. Are we pursuing a hedonic or a eudaimonic vision of joy and happiness? Leaving that question unasked and unspecified nudges people toward hedonic well-being and away from the eudaimonic life well lived. Choosing joy defaults to choosing pleasure, the pursuit of the pleasant and happy life. The satisfied life over the good life.

Added to this is the cultural context that defines and directs hedonic well-being. The pleasant and pleasurable life runs through some deep cultural grooves.

Broadly speaking, our pursuit of hedonic well-being is taking place within a neoliberal context. This neoliberal cultural milieu co-opts and directs our pursuit of hedonic well-being in ways that sabatoge our flourishing. That is to say, a generic pursuit of hedonic well-being may, on its own terms, undermine our eudaimonic well-being and fail us in actualizing a rich and fulfilling life. But a neoliberal vision of hedonic well-being has us pursuing aims that do not simply fail to actualize the good life but actively undermine it and harm us. The pursuit of hedonic well-being may cause us to drift and become lost. Chasing the neoliberal vision of hedonic well-being actually damages us. It is one thing to build your life on a shaky foundation, quite another to actively tear the house down.

But what do I mean by a “neoliberal vision of hedonic well-being”?

First, before the “neo” in neoliberalism there was liberalism itself, often called classical liberalism. At the heart of classical liberalism was a vision of freedom from. Two freedoms were especially critical. The first, which began with the Protestant Reformation, was freedom from religious authorities and their moral traditions. Within liberal societies, people became free to adopt or reject religious beliefs or moral codes as they saw fit. Beyond harming your neighbors, no one can tell you what is good versus bad or right versus wrong. The second freedom was freedom from the coercion of the state. According to classical liberalism, citizens are bearers of “natural rights,” and the state cannot violate those rights. Exhibit A here is the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence.

Given this, how does classical liberalism shape and direct hedonic well-being? As critics of liberalism have long pointed out, liberalism privileges the individual over religious authority, moral tradition, and communal obligation. Hedonic well-being reduces to “what’s good for me,” “what makes me happy,” and “what I want,” free of communal duties or moral constraints.

To be sure, freedom from coercion is a great good. But recall that eudaimonic well-being has a normative aspect, a life lived in relation to the good. Liberalism explicitly and aggressively sidelines the good as a communal duty, religious obligation, or moral rule. In the midst of that normative vacuum, the liberal individual is asked to select their own vision of the good. The self asks, “What is good for me?” And more often than not, the answer to this question is, “What is good for me is what I want.” The good suffers hedonic capture. Well-being becomes the pursuit of pleasure. Eudaimonic normativity is exchanged for hedonic happiness. The good life is exchanged for the pleasant life.

The advent of neoliberalism happened when democracy, rooted in classical liberalism, became fused with capitalism. Building upon the individualism of classical liberalism, neoliberalism brought the logic of free markets to bear upon cultural life. Two critical aspects of this neoliberal vision concern maximization and competition.

At the heart of capitalism is the notion of “utility maximization.” Free markets work when everyone pursues their own self-interest, attempting to maximize their “utility,” an economic abstraction that captures the ranking of our preferences, getting what you most want.

Maximization supercharges the pursuit of hedonic well-being. Pleasure and happiness become optimization problems This creates hedonic restlessness and craving, especially in a consumeristic culture where hedonic pleasures are a moving target. Bigger and better products and experiences are persistently set before you, undermining contentment and engendering dissatisfaction. As a maximization project, hedonic well-being is a receding horizon that we can never quite reach.

Worse, the maximization of our happiness is taking place in a competitive context. We call this the “meritocracy.” Happiness is something we must “win.” For example, parents want their children to be happy, so in order to achieve that they help their children compete in grades, sports, and the arts. From elite college admission, to travel sports teams, to who gets to be Sugar Plum Fairy in the annual Nutcracker performance, parents fight against other parents in a zero-sum battle. The game continues on from there, through college and into adulthood. Our pursuit of happiness is haunted by rivalry, envy, jealousy, and constant social comparison.

Stepping back, when we tell people to “Choose Joy” or “Find Happiness,” those imperatives are taking place within a neoliberal context. A context characterized by:

1. Radical individualism: Happiness is what I want over against communal duties and moral obligations.

2. Maximization: Chronic dissatisfaction and craving within a consumeristic culture.

3. Competition: Happiness is something I must win in competition against others.

As described above, when our pursuit of happiness is captured by neoliberalism, our deeper flourishing is compromised. Tragically, neoliberalism is the air we breathe. Or rather, neoliberalism is a poisonous gas we cannot see or smell. We tell people to “Choose Joy.” They deeply inhale.

And then they die.

For the second time I was able to teach a positive psychology class for our graduate program. Like every class you get to teach for a second time you make adjustments and improvements in response to your first go round.

For this second class I added a lecture on hedonic well-being. Across four posts I'll share the contents of that lecture.

A common date for the beginnings of positive psychology is Martin Seligman's 1998 APA Presidential Address where he called for "a new science and profession of positive psychology." As Seligman described: 

[We psychologists] have scant knowledge of what makes life worth living. For although psychology has come to understand quite a bit about how people survive and endure under conditions of adversity, we know very little about how normal people flourish under more benign conditions.

This is because since World War II, psychology has become a science largely about healing. It concentrates on repairing damage within a disease model of human functioning. Such almost exclusive attention to pathology neglects the flourishing individual and the thriving community. True, our emphasis on assessing and healing damage has been important and had its important victories...But these victories have come at a considerable cost. When we became solely a healing profession, we forgot our larger mission: that of making the lives of all people better.

Psychology, however, was a late arrival to this conversation. Every great religious, philosophical, spiritual, and wisdom tradition has meditated upon what makes life worth living. And there were precursors within psychology itself, especially from the humanistic tradition. Abraham Maslow, for example, talked about self-actualization and peak experiences. The work of Carl Rogers was also influential. But what Seligman called for was uniquely empirical in nature, a science of flourishing. Rogers and Maslow were theorists. And the great religious and wisdom traditions were metaphysical and philosophical. The data collection Seligman called for was the novelty. 

The scientists, however, immediately confronted a problem of operational definitions. What do we mean, precisely and empirically, by the "positive" in positive psychology? The wisdom traditions posed a contrast here between hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. 

On the one had was hedonic well-being. "Hedonic" comes from the Greek word ἡδονή (hēdonē), meaning pleasure, delight, or sweetness. Hedonic well-being is the pleasurable life, the pleasant life, the happy life. 

Eudaimonic well-being, by contrast, as described by Aristotle, comes from the from the Greek εὐδαιμονία (eudaimonia), eu (εὖ) meaning “good" or "well” and daimōn (δαίμων) meaning “spirit.” Eudaimonia means the "good life" and is often translated as "flourishing" or "living well." 

In contrast to hedonic well-being, eudiamonic well-being has normative overtones. Eudaimonic well-being describes artfulness, excellence, fittingness, and a general orientation toward the good. To achieve eudaimonic well-being one "ought" or "must" live a certain way. If life is like playing a violin, one could do that poorly or excellently. 

Hedonic well-being, by contrast, is descriptive rather than normative in nature. Hedonic well-being tracks experiences of pleasure, positive affect, and satisfaction as they are felt, without requiring a judgment about whether those pleasures are worthy, well-ordered, or conducive to a good life. One can coherently speak of high hedonic well-being in a life we might still judge as shallow, disordered, or even vicious. 

This hedonic versus eudaimonic contrast affects the issue of measurement in positive psychology, the way we operationalize "positive." Does positive mean pleasurable or does positive mean good? 

For the most part, positive psychology has focused upon hedonic well-being, the pleasurable life. For example, by far the most common measure of "positive psychology" in the research literature has been Diener et al.'s, (1985) Subjective Well-Being Scale. Rated on a 1-7 likert scale, the items are:

1. In most ways my life is close to my ideal.
2. The conditions of my life are excellent.
3. I am satisfied with my life.
4. So far I have gotten the important things I want in life.
5. If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.

Notice how the measure assesses "satisfaction" unrelated to any normative good. This is a measure of hedonic well-being rather than eudaimonic well-being. For example, Elon Musk, I expect, would rate himself highly on this scale, as extremely satisfied with his life. As the richest man in the world, he's totally winning! But would we say that Elon Musk is the paradigm of the life well lived? Is Elon Musk living a good life? Is his life the life we should be aspiring toward? From a hedonic perspective, some might say so. But from a eudaimonic, normative perspective, other might demur. Good is different from pleasure and satisfaction

You get the point. When we talk about "the good life" are we talking about hedonic well-being? I don't think so, and in the posts to come I'll share why.

"His deareworthy passion"

I've shared here how last summer Jana and I were able to visit Julian of Norwich's church, St. Julian's Church in Norwich. During that visit, I picked up a copy of Revelations of Divine Love in Middle English, with the hope that I'd read it through. But a year has passed, and I haven't done it. And so, I thought I'd publicly commit myself to the task, using Fridays to work through the eighty-six chapters of Revelations of Divine Love, highlighting a line or passage from each chapter in the Middle English along with an accompanying translation into modern English.

And to be clear, there is no real reason to share Julian's Middle English other than whimsy on my part.

To start, a little background about the text we call Revelations of Divine Love.

We don't know much about Julian's life prior to her becoming an anchoress. Anchoritism was a distinctive practice of medieval Christianity, where the anchorite, often a woman, would have a cell built that was attached to an exterior wall of a church. The anchoress lived enclosed in her cell for the rest of her days. A window made in the church wall, called a "squint" or "hagioscope," allowed the anchoress to see the altar and participate in the Mass from her cell. Another window in the cell opened to the outside. At this window, the anchoress could receive visitors. It was common for people to seek out an anchoress for prayer and spiritual counsel. We know Julian engaged in this practice because we have a firsthand account from Margery Kempe, who made a pilgrimage to Norwich to visit with "Dame Julian."

What eventually became Revelations of Divine Love comes from two different texts, the Short Text and the Long Text. Julian fell ill in 1373 and experienced a series of sixteen visions she called "showings." We believe she wrote down a brief summary of these showings—the Short Text—shortly after her illness and prior to her enclosure. After her enclosure, Julian returned to her showings and expanded upon them, reflecting on their deeper meanings. This produced what is called the Long Text, which we know as Revelations of Divine Love, consisting of eighty-six chapters and originally written in Middle English.

In Chapter One Julian takes a quick walk through her sixteen showings, the outline of all that is to follow. Here are the opening sentences of Revelations of Divine Love which describe the first two visions:

This is a Revelation of love that Jesus Christ, our endless blisse, made in sixteen Sheweings or Revelations particular. Off the which, the first is of His pretious coroning with thornys; and therewith was comprehended and specifyed the Trinite with the incarnation, and unite betwix God and man soule, with many faire sheweings of endless wisedome and teacheing of love, in which all the sheweings that follow be grounded and onyd. The second is the discolloureing of His faire face in tokenyng of His deareworthy passion.

Translation from Fr. John-Julian: 

This is a revelation of love that Jesus Christ, our endless joy, made in sixteen showings or revelations, in detail, of which

The first is concerning his precious crowning with thorns; and therewith was included and described in detail the Trinity with the Incarnation and the unity between God and man's soul, with many beautiful showings of endless wisdom and teachings of love in which all the showings that follow are based and united.

The second showing is the discoloring of His fair face in symbolizing His dearworthy passion.

As you can see from the first two showings—the crowning of thorns and the discolored face of Jesus—Julian’s revelations focus upon what she calls Christ’s “dearworthy passion.” “Dearworthy” is a Middle English word describing something of “dear worth,” as in “precious” or “valued.” As Julian will reveal in Chapters 2 and 3, as she lay dying due to her illness her priest gave her a crucifix to gaze at. As she did so, the “showings” came to her. Thus, much of Revelations of Divine Love is taken up with meditating upon the blood and agony of Jesus and what his passion reveals about God’s love and the human predicament.

I bring all this up at the start because this very medieval aspect of Julian’s spirituality, her focus upon Christ’s “dearworthy passion,” sits in tension with many “spiritual but not religious” appropriations of her revelations. To be sure, there is an optimism in Julian that stands in stark contrast with much within medieval Christianity. But at the same time, Julian's focus upon Christ’s death, agony, and blood contrasts with progressive Christian takes on Julian. For many progressive Christians, the passion of Christ is an obscene scandal.

For Julian, in all its bloody agony, the passion is dearworthy.

Having just finished a series reflecting on how the vision of high-handed sin in Numbers 15 might affect how we think about the relationship between punishment and atonement in the narrative of Scripture, another thought occurred to me after I brought those reflections to a close.

Specifically, Jesus’ authority to forgive sins.

In my soon-to-be-released book, The Book of Love, I share a story from college. I was in my Gospel of Luke class, and we encountered one of those stories where Jesus forgives a man’s sins. The arrogation of authority alarms the Jewish leaders. Who does Jesus think he is?

As we discussed the story in class, I raised my hand to ask a question: “I thought blood was necessary to forgive sins. But Jesus was forgiving people by fiat. He just declared it so, and it was so. What gives?”

My comment about blood being necessary to forgive sins comes, as you know, from Hebrews 9:22: “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” So if that’s true, what’s going on with Jesus forgiving sins just by saying a word? Is blood necessary or not?

What I’m wondering here is whether the category of high-handed sin in Numbers 15 helps clarify some of what is happening in Jesus’ ministry. Specifically, think about Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners. Think about Jesus going to the house of Zacchaeus. Think about Jesus’ mission to seek and save those in Israel who were lost. Who were these lost people? Many of them would have been high-handed sinners, according to Numbers 15, those who had been “cut off” from the community.

As I described in the recent series, such sinners would have been cut off from the temple cult, deprived of any sacrificial remedy for their guilt. The provocation of Jesus’ ministry, therefore, was his going to these high-handed sinners in order to restore them to community. But as we reflected on in the last series, this restoration could not be accomplished through the Levitical system or the temple cult. Restoration, akin here to a resurrection from the dead, could only be accomplished by a direct act of God.

And that is precisely what Jesus does. Jesus assumes the authority to restore the high-handed sinner, an authority the Jewish leaders rightly note only God possesses. And relevant to my question in my college class, this forgiveness does not involve blood, because it is a restoration happening “outside the camp,” beyond the imagination and purview of the sacrificial system.

I have not comprehensively stress-tested this idea across Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but I am floating it as a hypothesis that might clarify, more precisely, what was so controversial and provocative about Jesus’ actions and ministry. In his restoration of high-handed sinners, he was doing something only God could do.