God's Kinde Love ― Julian of Norwich's Vernacular Theology of Grace

God’s Kinde Love book is the first first full-scale study of Julian of Norwich’s doctrine of grace. The thesis of the book is that Julian of Norwich developed a sophisticated, multifaceted doctrine of grace that reflected a profound knowledge of the theological tradition; at the same time, Julian resisted the dominant theological tradition and its established socio-political alignments, and she offered instead a new theological paradigm: that of God’s kinde love. Through a close reading of the Long Text, and in particular through an analysis of Julian’s use of the word grace, Lamm identifies three distinctive, interrelated facets of Julian’s doctrine of grace. Julian’s theological brilliance and artistry comes through as she develops these three facets by means of kinetic imagery that Julian develops thematically. These three facets of her doctrine of grace are so intricately bound up with the most important theological discussions that Julian had added in the Long Text that those additions cannot be fully understood apart from her theology of grace. To date, scholars have not noted the exponential increase in Julian’s use of the term grace in the later editions of her book, Showings. The reason for this increase was evidently twenty years of prayerful reflection on the meaning of her original revelations in light of scripture; a secondary revelation she received that “Love” was the meaning; and, Lamm suggests, the socio-political context of a post-Revolt England. This is where the vernacular, and in particular the range of associations of the Middle English kinde enter into the discussion.

Julia A. Lamm is a Professor of Theology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where she has taught since 1989. She received her B.A. in History and Philosophy from the College of St. Catherine, and her M.A. in Religious Studies and Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Chicago. She is a recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (Germany), and is founding Director of the Costan Lecture in Early Christianity at Georgetown. Lamm is an historical and systematic theologian with specializations in Friedrich Schleiermacher; Christian mysticism; the doctrines of God and of grace; Christology; and the relation between theology and philosophy. She is the author of The Living God: Schleiermacher's Theological Appropriation of Spinoza (1996) and numerous scholarly articles; editor of The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism (2012); translator and editor of Schleiermacher: Christmas Dialogue, the Second Speech, and Other Selections for the Classics of Western Spirituality (2014). She is finishing another monograph, Schleiermacher’s Plato.