Author Archives: leighstuckey

March 28, 2012

Paradiso Canto 30: The (Penultimate) Crescendo

By leighstuckey

From U. Texas "Dante World", The White Rose

“My sight lost not itself in the breadth and in the height, but took in all the extend and quality of that joy. There, near and far neither add not take away, for where God governs without intermediary, the law of nature in no way prevails.” (XXX, 120-123).

We meet in the Empyrean Dante’s trinity: the impenetrable light of the intellect, the love of the will and the joy of fulfilled desire. So too the “soldiery of Paradise”—the otherwise un-imaginable glorified bodies of believers (you remember, no doubt, the poet’s request in XXII, “assure me if I am capable of receiving so great a grace, that I may behold you in your uncovered shape”). Dante’s request now fulfilled, Heaven is borne open, and the resurrection of the body and life everlasting unfold like a morning rose before his eyes. Neither time nor space obscures his vision. The particular is subsumed by the eternal. Neither gravity nor the laws of physics govern this body. God’s love flows horizontally like a river and vertically like a beam of light. Indeed, it is only the unmediated, direct will of God, whose grace extends to such great depths that joy is experienced as a physical reality—joy takes on breadth, height, width and quality, that governs this place.

“Thou has created us for thyself, and our heart cannot be quieted till it find repose in thee”, writes Augustine. Wide-eyed Dante stumbles across that point in space-time where souls are quieted in eternal peaceful awe, “A light there above which makes the Creator  visible to ever creature that has his peace only in beholding him.” God is beheld and the elect are fulfilled.

Dante sees only a few seats remaining, such a wicked age is his (and ours), but God’s amphitheater, it seems to me, will always be adding more seats and growing the circumfrunece of the bloom, for God’s is an outward-working, ever-growing, ever-inviting love, a kind of love that overflows with the finest vintage a man can imagine.

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March 20, 2012

Paradiso Canto 24: Herr Doktor

By leighstuckey

Over at Slate, Robert Baird suggests that one of the reasons The Inferno captivates our imagination is its portrayal of ironic justice. “Dante’s hell flatters us”, he rightly notes. Standing at a safe distance from the place, we become the judgers of the judged, relieved to know that we will never be that far gone.

The problem with Paradiso, Baird argues, is that it turns the judgment back on us: “Previously we judged hell; now heaven judges us.”

There is no better Canto than XXIV to illustrate Baid’s argument. Here the poet encounters a literal test of faith. St. Peter stands as the honored Herr Professor Doktor testing the Poet Candidate for entry into the realm. He has only to answer one simple question: what is faith? 

Of course Peter is the examiner of faith! He to whom the Lord gave the keys now bestows the key to the Poet. And the Poet begins rightly with the Scripture, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11). Ah, but we’re not quite done yet. Herr Doktor must know why substance precedes evidence—is not the substance of our knowledge determined first by evidence? We do not believe and then see! We see and then believe.

Dante, surely after a long thoughtful breath, continues: the stuff of the Divine is deep below our sensual perception. The stuff of faith is “so hidden to eyes below that there their existence is in belief alone”. Faith is hope materialized.

And so it is that Dante suggests that the stuff of God cannot be reasoned upward, but only revealed. Syllogisms lose their ground in matters of theology (though, as we will see a new syllogism, one based in Scripture, grows freely). Knowledge as related to God is rather simple—We cannot think ourselves or, for that matter, see ourselves to the Divine.

Peter is pleased, but he’s not done. If not by natural knowledge, whence has faith come? Why, of course, it comes through the Spirit’s work in the Word. It has come in the new syllogism, the Old and New Testaments. The intellect, that which sees, becomes subordinate, then, to faith revealed in Scripture. And how can we know that Scripture is divine? Why, because it tells us so.

I’m proud of Peter here, and I stand in his tradition. Circular logic won’t get us anywhere. Herr Doktor won’t be won with the Scripture’s own self-affirmation.

So Dante points to the spread of Christianity, a miracle, he thinks, far greater than the miracles recounted in the Word. It’s here that I most profoundly disagree with Dante. The spread of Christianity is 99 parts Empire. At best that leaves one part miracle. And that’s not a thing of Pride.

But does Empire lessen Christianity’s value?

Perhaps not. Perhaps the miracle is not the spread of the faith but the power of the message, even if it has been co-opted throughout history for decidedly ungodly ends. Perhaps the miracle is the faithful activity of the self-revealing God who works in, around and under the Empire. Perhaps the miracle is, as Christian Moevs notes, that Truth validates itself. Perhaps the miracle is that our ontological grounding is not what can be seen, but what the Revelator reveals.

For Dante and for us there is left but one question: “declare what you believe.”

We might rattle off the Apostles Creed or some other piece of Christendom. It’s not a bad strategy, but you might not always have Dante’s assurance. I certainly don’t.

Or we might remember that the inquisitor is he who thrice denied our Lord yet still bears the Keys.

Dante thought of God like a clock. Not like the clocks and clockmakers of our Deistic Founding Fathers, but rather as a harmonious unit compelled in its functioning toward one end. In life we are pushed toward God. Our faith and belief certainly matter, but they cannot be the end. The end is the three Eternal Persons who call the cosmos to its motion—who are not, as Dante and Aristotle may believe, unmoved movers, but rather condescend to move among us, to die for us, and to defeat death for us.

Revelation comes not by sight or sense but through the “spark which then dilates to a living flame and like a star in heaven shines within me”.  Faith is not about creed. It is about hope. And as much as Lent is a season of penitence, it must also be one of hope—a season of Springtime Awakenings to new life, to the light which shines on the Revealed if only we have the joy to see it. We may not always have faith. Peter didn’t. But all is not lost. The Lord is far more faithful than we.

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March 13, 2012

Paradiso Canto 18: Save the Cheerleader, Save the World

By leighstuckey

First: apologies for the delay (again). Jeff, I do appreciate your forgiveness—but you certainly needn’t follow my tardiness this time around!

Second: Many thanks to Bob Sinner, whose post on the sixteenth canto I found particularly interesting, thanks in no small part to his initial reflections on being a soldier.

Finally: “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” (an amended quotation from NBC’s hit(ish) series, “Heroes”.)

I am happiest with the cantos that transition from one sphere to the next, and find it serendipitous that the eagle who took flight in the sixth canto (my first post), joins us again for our first look at Jupiter. (Serendipitous, too, that our lectionary reading on Sunday, the so called “cleansing” of the Temple, is referenced by the poet toward the Canto’s end.)

I imagine cheerleaders. Cheerleaders—with their cardboard letters, spelling out whatever message will best reach the crowd. Cheerleaders—giddy, well-trained Cheerleaders.

B-E A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E. Sorry, wrong cheer.

This time: “Diligite iustitiam qui iudicatis terram.” Simply, beautifully: “Love justice, you who judge the earth.” Can we expand the near-perfect epithet?

Dante does, for the “M”— meant to evoke the Latin monarcha—monarchy—transforms its shape to become something altogether new. The emme grows and morphs until the stigma of the lilly becomes the head of the eagle. The eagle! The sign of the great Roman Empire, introduced to readers by Justinian in the sixth canto. We followed her across the Empire and now we find her here, among the great lovers of justice.

The fire from Mars has passed (Dante compares it to woman’s blush as it recedes), and Dante finds himself, by Jove!, on Jupiter. The “temperate” planet is, rightly, inhabited by the Just. Speech is preceded by the beauty of a light show—our cheerleaders take their place for the great spelling bee. It is a quiet Canto, but perhaps more beautiful for it.

Indeed, the muted canto allows for its climactic passage, a condemnation of Papist greed, to stand over and define the entire scene: “O soldiery of Heaven whom I look upon, pray for those who have gone astray on earth, following the ill example. Of old it was the wont to make war with swords, but now it is made by taking away, now here now there, the bread which the tender Father bars from none.”

Dante pleas for Justice on Earth. Jupiter, intercede for us! For we here in America have certainly taken away the bread which God wills for all.

Justice should come to us as an instinct—the same instinct that guides the bird in making a nest, or the souls in the formation of an eagle—but it instead manifests in us as an exploit. We given to do justice often forsake that noble call for the call of wealth, power, anger, passion…We are not temperate. We are hot. Some of us cold. Either way, the result is the same.

Love justice, you who judge the earth.
Love justice, you who monopolize her resources.
Love justice, you who confusion inaction with innocence.
Love justice, love justice.

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March 6, 2012

Paradiso Canto 12: Wisdom in the World

By leighstuckey

First: an apology. I’m late in my blogging today. I know you’ve all been eagerly anticipating my entry! Well, pilgrim, be careful what you wish for.

Jake speaks well of Canto XI and his reflections are equally relevant for XII (mine will be neither as beautiful nor as instructive, I’m afraid!). Here too the dazzling radiance of the Sun ponders the the two wheels of the divine chariot: charity embodied by St. Francis and wisdom embodied by St. Dominic.

The second ring is mirrored and encircled by the first (as is the canto itself, which is a parallel reflection of Cantos X and XI). The scene is drips with light and vibrancy: dancers, poets and singers embody and enact the joy of the sun and the harmony of charity and wisdom. A voice rises above the rest:

“Christ’s army, which cost so dear to rearm, was moving behind the standard, slow, mistrustful and scanty, when the Emperor who reigns eternally took thought for His soldiery that was in peril, of His Grace only, not that it was worthy, and, as has been said, succored His bride with two champions by whose deeds, by whose words, the scattered people were rallied.”

Thomas spoke. Here we will deal with the man of words—the man whose mind was so alive that even in the womb he inspired his mother to prophesy, to dream a dream that defined the contours of the future. From Singleton: “His mother is said to have dreamed before he was born that she gave birth to a dog, with a torch in its mouth that set the world on fire.”

A Digression: The Strange Dream

How odd! Legend suggests that the dog, a rather puzzling complement for a modern reader, was black and white, colors later associated with The Order. And the torch bespeaks both light and fire. Light that would, with zeal and passion, expose the darkened corners of the church, and fire whose tongues would spread true faith across Europe. As for the image of the dog: Dominicani suggests Domini canes, “dogs of the Lord.”

A Commentary: The Baptismal Wedding

Records Dante, “When the espousals were completed at the sacred font between him and the faith, where they dowered each other with mutual salvation, the lady who gave assent for him saw in a dream the marvelous fruit destined to issue from him and from his heirs, and, that he might in very construing be what he was […] Dominic he was named, and I speak of him as the husbandman whom Christ chose to help Him in His garden.”

Dominic’s baptism is spoken of as a wedding—he is espoused to Christ’s church. And to the church which offers him faith, he offers his Name: Dominic, which is identical with the thing, a Keeper of God’s vineyard. (Recall here that Francis is similarly espoused to Poverty, his earthly love). He became a “messenger” and a “familiar” of Christ, a spokesman for Christ and a reflection of Christ in His bodily absence. With wisdom and intellect Dominic tended the garden of the Church, and his parents became what their names signified: Happy was his father, and his mother Graced by the Lord.

“I am come for this”, Dominic seems to say, echoing Jesus’ fateful words. The naming of things corresponds to their essential being. Dominic tends the garden. To what, I wonder, do Presbyterians like me, do Christians, perhaps you, fine reader, to what do our names correspond? Is the Presbyterian an Elder in our society? A sober, Spirit-filled leader? Is the Christian Christ to the world? Have we come for anything?

I think we have. If only we can find it, dear reader. If only we can tend it. If only we, too, can take on the mantle of our baptism and wed ourselves to work of wisdom in this world. If only, if only.

Etc.: The Good Dominicans and the Self-Critiquing Franciscian

From here Bonaventura, our Canto’s voice, goes on to sing the praises of the great Dominic and, as Thomas did before him, to criticize the men of his own order (the Franciscans). He ends with the naming of the souls of the second ring of the Sun—Augustine and Chrysostom among Anselm and Donatus, and a host of other scholars and academics forgotten among most modern readers.

With a grace that could be easily overlooked, Bonaventura finally notes the presence of Joachim, “who was endowed with the prophetic spirit.” Himself a scholar, Joachim once postulated that there would come an earthly age of The Spirit wherein the Christian would live in perfect freedom without the constraints of civil or ecclesiastical discipline. The age of the Spirit corresponded to and transcended the age of the Father (the Old Testament) and the Son (the New Testament and time of the Church), thereby offering a Trinitarian view of History. Joachim’s “prophecy” was rejected by the Church yet popular among many Franciscans. Bonaventura was, in life, a great critic of Joachim’s. Notes Singleton:

“Joachim occupies, in this second circle of sapienti, a position corresponding to that of Siger (X, 136) in the first: each is the last named, each is to the immediate left of the spokesman. Both were not only controversial figures, but Thomas Aquinas, the spokesman of the first circle, engaged in an attack on Siger’s ideas, and Bonaventura attacked the Spirituals of the Joachimite order. The poet’s parallelism expresses a spirit of lofty conciliation and heavenly charity.”

On this Super Tuesday may we look forward to the Second Sphere of the Sun where our critics and those we criticize will live in harmony of knowledge and service, and will create a perfect circle of light, revelation and knowledge!

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February 28, 2012

Paradiso Canto 6: Roman History (or, Gird Up Your Loins, this is a Doozie)

By leighstuckey

Veiled Light: The Politics of Rome and the Root of Jesse

 Following the flight from the Moon, Dante and Beatrice arrive in the second sphere, Mercury. In the fifth Canto, Dante likens his arrival on Mercury to a fish-pool. As a new fish attracts the attention of the school so too the new arrivals (Dante and Beatrice) draw the attention of all souls present, “so did I see full more than a thousand splendors draw toward us”. Dante is, unsurprisingly, immediately inquisitive. Mercury, often entirely obscured by the sun is somewhat of an enigma, after all.

Enigmatic too is this canto, which exposes the parallel history of the Roman Empire and the rise of the House of David. Gird up your loins, folks, we’ve got some history to get through.

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

Arriving at Mercury, Dante exclaims, “but I know not who you are, nor why, O worthy spirit, you have your rank in the sphere that is veiled to mortals by another’s rays” (5.130-135).

I Know Not Who You Are

In the sixth canto, we will follow the eagle, a symbol of God’s power and the primary symbol of the Roman Empire, from its founding  by Aeneas through the reign of the Caesars and to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The speaker begins by taking Dante back to the foundation of Christendom, “After Constantine turned back the Eagle counter to the course of the heavens”. You will, of course, remember that, before his deathbed conversion (337ad), the Emperor Constantine transferred the seat of the Roman Empire from the West (Rome, the seat of the papacy) to the East (Byzantium, renamed Constantinople in 330). Before his conversion, Constantine moves the eagle away from the seat of the church, reversing exactly Aeneas’s empire-expanding course from Troy to Italy.

The speaker then introduces himself, thus answering Dante’s first question, “I was Caesar, and am Justinian, who by will of the Primal Love which I feel, removed from among the laws what was superfluous and vain.” One should here note the shifts in tense. Justinian’s official title is unimportant in the heavenly realm. He “was Caesar.” Now, he is Justinian, justice, who still today feels the Primal Love which once inspired his earthly jurisprudence.*

Justinian, looking toward Beatrice’s expanded Christology in Canto VII, further defines himself by his orthodoxy. Before he codified the law, he held the heterodox view that Christ had only one nature—that is, that Christ was fully divine and not fully human (pace the prophets of our day who prefer that Jesus be viewed as only man and not divine!). There is some pride in Justinian’s affirmation that the Bishop Agapetus, “who was the supreme pastor, directed me to the true faith by his words.”

Throughout Canto VI, Justinian plays with themes of light and dark, ignorance and knowledge, truth and untruth. Mercury is a planet of extraordinary light that is nevertheless darkened by the sun. Justinian was a man of darkened ignorance whose view of Christ was transformed by the light of the orthodox two-nature doctrine. There is a duality at play here—a duality only heightened by references to the Aristotelian law of contradictories. The realization of contradictories will become important in Canto VII’s axiomatic discussion of Christ’s two natures. (and the paradoxes held within)

But again, I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

Nor Why Your Rank is Veiled

Having introduced himself, Justinian spends the bulk of the Canto tracing Roman history from the time before Christ through the passion and the succession of Titus, under whom the Temple was destroyed. The roles of the many players are too complicated to mention here. And indeed, Dante traces the history of the Republic in broad strokes. We follow the rise of Aeneas and the first expansion of the kingdom through Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon and victory over Pompey (in this brief statement alone are three years of civil war!). We continue to follow the eagle to the extreme borders of Spain and the Alps, even to Pompey’s death in Egypt. We hear briefly of the betrayers Brutus and Cassius (who “bark” in hell), and of the death of Cleopatra, who turned against the empire by supporting her sons against the rightful heir. Dante’s brief history is meant to serve as preamble to Canto VII, which will expose the great mystery of Christ, a mystery far greater than Rome itself.

Nearing the end of Canto VI, Justinian notes “With him it coursed as far as the Red Sea Shore; with him it set the world in such peace that Janus’s temple was locked.”  The “Him” is Caesar Augustus, Julius Caesar’s rightful heir and the initiator of the pax Romana. 

This is where it gets interesting.

Get to it, Stuckey, this is Getting a Bit Lengthy

The Roman God Janus is the Italian deity of doorways and protector of the state in war-time. The doors of his temple were to remain open in times of war (the god was said then to be with the armies), and had been locked only twice during the history of the Republic.  Under the rule of Augustus, the doors were closed for a third time. This time, though, the Republic would play host to the most important drama in its long history: the birth, adolescence, ministry and death of Christ. All history prior pales when next to this supreme historical moment when the seat of Caesar meets the root of Jesse.

As with the Roman history, here Dante skips over much of Jesus’ history, noting in the end that his death was avenged by another Caesar, Titus, who enacted “vengeance for the vengeance of the ancient sin.” Titus is considered by Dante the avenger of the Passion, for under his reign the Jewish Temple was destroyed (70ad). Orosius’s Roman Histories records the sentiment thusly, “Titus, who had been appointed by the decree of God to avenge the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ…closed the Temple of Janus…it was indeed right that the same honor should be paid to the avenging of the Lord’s Passion as had been bestowed upon His Nativity.”

Dante’s Canto, then, exposes the Divine foresight in appointing the Caesars such that a peace would befall Rome during the time of Jesus’ birth and ministry, and a vengeance would be enacted upon the Jews, who were (wrongly, I hasten to add) blamed for Jesus’ death.

Damnit, Leigh, You Still Haven’t Told Us Why they’re On Mercury

As I’ve noted, the Canto traces the history of the Roman empire to the birth of Christ. It seems to me that Justinian’s primary purpose in telling his story is establishing the means by which the pax was reached, thus setting the scene for The Extraordinary History. His secondary purpose, however, must be to answer Dante’s second question: how on earth did you get here?

After the (extraordinarily confusing) cautionary warning that is the history of the duel between the Guelphs, supporters of the Church, and the Ghibellines, supporters of the Empire, Justinian notes, “This little star is adorned with good spirits who have been active in order than honor and fame might come to them.” Mercury, the obscured planet, is occupied by those whose earthly good was motivated by earthly ambition.

Those around whom human history turned are obscured in their heavenly place. Truly, they have received their reward. In eternity the light of their sphere is obscured ever so slightly for, “when desires, thus deviating [from the True Light], tend thitherward, the rays of true love must needs mount upwards less living [or, with less life].”

Yet their joy is no less, for their voices add to the harmony of the spheres, rending the choir of the heavenly realm richer by its presence.

If You Don’t Get to the Point, Stuckey, I’m Giving YOU up for Lent

God is the God of history, of the crossing of the Rubicon and of our own rubicons. God is the God who, amidst the violences of the Empire, prepares the way for the Coming of Christ and who, amidst the chaos of the 21st century, prepares for the Coming-Again of Christ. God is the God of those who presently draw attention to themselves and those who, like Romeo the Pilgrim, prepare the kingdom without reward.

History is God’s.

*Under the leadership of his general, Belisarius, Justinian’s empire expanded into the Vandal territory in Africa and the Goth territory in Italy. He is best known, though, for transforming Roman law.

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