Julian of Norwich's Grateful God

The sixth “showing” that Julian of Norwich recounts in her Revelation of Love includes a vision of the saints receiving thanks from God. Julian echoes and refers back to this scene at several other points in her text, but she never acknowledges its oddity within the broadly Augustinian‐Platonist stream of theology within which she works. How can it make sense for the God who is Being, Goodness, and Truth—the creator and cause of all that is—to give thanks to a creature? I argue that Julian's image of a grateful God accords with (1) her account of God's aim in creation, including the defeat of sin and evil, and (2) her understanding of the place of giving and receiving in humans’ likeness to God.