ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses approaches to joy that correspond, respectively, to a human being's status as creature, redeemed sinner, and promised sharer in eternal life. Karl Barth correcting his early protest against the idea that persons can authentically love God, Barth in the Church Dogmatics not only acknowledges this gracious possibility, but also explicitly rejects any ethico-religious "Puritanism" that collapses love into obedience or service to our neighbour. Human subject is a redeemed sinner. It relies on themes present in Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love. Joy is the reception of and response to the arresting presence of one's fulfillment in the sanctuary of divine comfort, protection, safe harbour. Joyfulness is an effect of our love of God and hence also of trust, hope, and gratitude. It demands a humble sense of our need and brokenness and creaturely possibility as that sense is itself expressed and nourished in practices that refer us in all of our relations to God.
