Methodological Agreement: Both see the religious quest as involving religious experience and rational reflection.
Points of Theological Agreement:
(i) God is immeasurably worthy of honor and reverence and love.
(ii) God's purpose in making humans is overwhelmingly generous--that we should live in mutually loving intimacy forever.
(iii) Humans now suffer under an exile which includes: (a) blindness to the de facto presence and mercy of God; (b) confusing motivational disorders; (c) physical pain and suffering; (d) death.
(iv) The central revelation of God's mercy is found in the Incarnation and the passion of Christ.
(v) That through the passion of Christ the hold of evil over the souls of the elect is decisively broken.
(vi) That the souls of the elect will be restored to loving intimacy with God after death.
Common Imagery:
(i) God is both Father and Mother: a father who disciplines, a merciful nurturing mother.
(ii) Christ is the bridegroom/lover of the soul.
(iii) God is king of the universe.
Differences:
(i) With Julian, the mother-imagery leads and dominates; while Anselm begins with the Father/judge image and arrives at the merciful Mother image only after some dialectical struggle.
Julian writes from the posture of confidence in God's immeasurable, eternal love for us; while Anselm "lives between hope and fear."
(ii) Metaphysically, Anselm stresses the ontological gap between God (supreme nature) and creatures ("almost nothing"), whereas Julian stresses the metaphysical indwelling of creatures in Mother Jesus.
(iii) Although both see the fall as mysterious, Julian's parable of the Lord and the Servant represents it as something that happened in the servant's childlike eagerness to obey and serve his Lord, whereas Anselm represents Adam as a human in the prime of maturity perversely sinning.
(iv) Anselm develops the concept of divine justice, whereas Julian scarcely mentions it.
(v) Both appeal to the image of countless worlds, but Anselm does it to underscore the seriousness of sin (it would be better that infinitely many worlds be destroyed than that the sin of one small look contrary to divine will be committed); whereas Julian uses it to magnify Christ's readiness to suffer for us (Christ would have been glad to die repeatedly without end for us if He could have; c.22).
(vi) Anselm speaks of the unlimited honor we owe God as a being greater that which cannot be conceived, and the unlimited gratitude we owe for the redemptive work of Christ; Julian repeatedly refers to Our Lord's courtesy to created persons, and of His gratitude to us for our suffering.
(vii) For Anselm, divine justice must require satisfaction for sin and cannot simply pass over offenses against itself; according to Julian, God anticipates sin but never blames us for it.
(viii) Anselm sees himself as worthy of God's anger, deserving of his present suffering, deserving and at risk of worse suffering to come in hell. Julian is puzzled by the Church's doctrine of reprobation, accepts it without understanding on authority, but is inclined to think that God is grateful to us for enduring it, and that it will be overcome with glorious happiness after death. No matter how much she looks, she can see no anger in God.