Chapter 27 is a significant chapter in Julian's Revelations, so much so that we'll take this week and next to reflect upon it.
In Chapter 27 we reach Julian's thirteenth showing, which is, perhaps, her most significant showing.
In this showing, which continues all the way through Chapter 40, it is revealed to Julian that God's ultimate purpose is not defeated by sin, suffering, or evil. Sin is bound up with the painful conditions of our present existence, but it will not have the final word. God's love will ultimately bring all things to their intended fulfillment. As Julian will famously put it, "all shall be well."
The showing begins with Julian asking a hard and perplexing question. If God is so loving and gracious, why was sin allowed to enter the world? Here's how Julian asks the question:
often I wondrid whi by the gret forseyng wysdam of God the begynyng of synne was not lettid. For than, thowte me, al shuld a be wele.
Translation:
I often wondered why, by the great foreseeing wisdom of God, the beginning of sin was not prevented. For then, it seemed to me, all should have been well.
Indeed. This question will haunt Julian throughout this showing, and theologians continue to debate how successfully Julian answers it. Part of that controversy begins right here, at the start of Chapter 27, with the answer Jesus shares with Julian:
But Jesus, that in this vision enformid me of all that me nedyth, answerid by this word, and seyd: Synne is behovabil, but al shal be wel, and al shal be wel, and al manner of thyng shat be wele.
Translation:
But Jesus, who in this vision informed me of everything that I needed, answered with this word and said: "Sin is behovabil, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."
The famous "all shall be well" line will be repeated later in Chapter 27, and we'll turn to that next week. What I want to draw attention to in this post is the most controversial word in Julian's Revelations, the word I left untranslated above: behovabil.
What does it mean to say that "sin is behovabil"?
The word "behovabil" has a range of meanings: necessary, required, fitting, suitable, or appropriate. So I expect you can see the controversy here. The notion that sin might be "necessary" or even "fitting" is a difficult claim. Some try to get around the shock by translating the line as "sin is inevitable." Perhaps so, but in claiming that "sin is behovabil," Julian is suggesting that sin is more than just inevitable. She's suggesting that there is something "fitting" and "appropriate" about sin. Even "proper." But what could that possibly mean?
The scholar Denys Turner has argued that Julian's "behovabil" sits somewhere between the medieval notions of necessity and contingency, and is akin to the scholastic understanding of the Latin word conveniens, which means "fitting," "suitable," or "meet."
It will help us here to remember all the showings we've worked through in this series. Recall how much Julian has dwelt, sometimes morbidly and gruesomely so, upon the blood and bodily sufferings of Jesus. And why does Julian focus so much upon this? Because the depths of Christ's suffering reveal the magnitude and depths of Christ's love.
This has always been one way of looking at the cross: the greater the suffering, the greater the love displayed. Which helps explain why some push depictions of the cross to extremes. Think, here, of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, or preachers who devote sermon time to detailed descriptions of the torture of crucifixion and its effects upon the body. And, again, there is a logic here: The greater I can describe or display the pain, the greater I will communicate the enormity of the love of God.
As Julian reflects upon this paradox—how the sufferings of Christ for our sin make the love of God visible—she comes to see something "fitting" about sin, something behovabil. Within the drama of salvation, sin plays its "fitting," "appropriate," "happy," and behovabil role in bringing the love of God into view and into our lives.
Put differently, our sin becomes the place where we meet God. And for that meeting, we are happy. The Parable of the Prodigal Son comes to mind here. In shame, the son returns to his father, and it is in that moment where the son encounters a love he could not have previously imagined. Just like the older brother, who in his "sinlessness" cannot imagine that love. Of course, the younger son would never say he was "glad" he had failed his father. But in another sense, he would readily agree that he was "happy" things turned out exactly as they did. The story could not have unfolded in a more "fitting" way. The son's sin was behovabil.
This is where Turner ends up in his treatment of Julian: the best way to understand "behovabil" is in a narrative context. Sin plays a dramatic part in the story of our lives, a story in which God comes to our rescue. As Turner observes, "The position concerning sin seems to be, for Julian, the following: there is what we have to say about it, namely first that it is 'behovely', that it is part of the plot, necessary if the true story of the divine love of creation is to be told..."
