The Theodicy Question
Is God evil or good? That is a forbidden question in certain religious communities, but Julian goes there in the first section of her book. The question revolves around the existential problem of evil. Because evil exists, and because God "made everything that exists," there is a dilemma that Julian quickly isolates as a question above all other questions: The theodicy. How can a loving God create suffering animals in a world full of evil? The question points Julian to what St. Paul called the "mystery of the Gospel."
Love as the answer
Who wouldn't want love to be the answer? And yet, it takes boldness to say what Julian said. She reports having ecstatic moments of prophetic transcendence, where she was united with the love of God, and she reports no malice in the character of God. She says that God is so loving, the limitations of the metaphor "God is father," are too constricting. Julian says, "Not only is God a father, Jesus was a mother." This gender reversal of Jesus's character is another way of saying God is full of motherly love for all her children.
Mysticism
In Julian's systematic theology, gender roles are posed as paradoxical inverses, which is important to understanding her conclusion that God is Love, because good and evil are also paradoxical inverses. By meditating on the mysteries of her faith, Julian reports transcendence and bliss. She categorizes that mystic bliss as a religious epiphany, literal Revelations. She is the first woman to ever write a book in the English language, and she wrote about religious mysticism in response to human suffering.
