…As I recall, did I first stare
into the heaven of those precious eyes
in which, o trap me, Love had set his snare;
then turned, and turning felt my senses reel
as my own were struck by what shines in that heaven
when we look closely at its turning wheel.
I saw a Point of light
Of such intensity that the eye it strikes
Must close or ever after lose its sight.
– Para XXVIII, 10-18
There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat,
from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony,
I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment
for the people of Israel.
– Exodus 25: 22 (ESV)
But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”
And the LORD said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock,
and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock,
and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.
Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back,
but my face shall not be seen.”
– Exodus 33:20-23 (ESV)
So, our pilgrim and Beatrice have arrived at the “Primum Mobile,” the largest sphere, and are coming ever closer to “The Face of God“:
– the Face which Moses could not bear to look upon directly;
– the Face which had to take upon itself a human form to address mankind’s deficiencies.
– That which had to undergo degradation, death and resurrection in order to make Himself fully accessible to we unworthy humans.
And we return to our first encounter with that light, during the First Canto:
“Just as we would never stare at the sun (here I’m remembering … the solar eclipse of 1972 … and our mothers’ warning never to stare directly at it), Dante does just that. Beatrice can look at it, no problem. Somehow that Dante reflexively imitates her action (a “reflection” of her action) and does not go blind (which) indicates that something has already changed in him: he is capable of seeing ‘it’ …” (See above: “The Still Point of the Turning World” by jeffvamos)
Up front and close, we are confronted with “The still point of the turning world. “
Once again, Dante first sees The Face first in a “glass darkly,” via reflection in his beloved’s eye.
The spark of light is so intense he still cannot truly bear it on his own.
But as Beatrice explains to him the angelic orders that orbit this light, he “begins” to understand what he beholds here.
He is ‘seeing’ “the “Holy of Holies,” surrounded by the nine orders of adoring angels.
And, how does our Pilgrim come to grips with this ultimate reality?
This reality which is so far beyond our human senses and feeble comprehension?
Only through the use of metaphors.
With the aid of his lady, he beholds the ethereal essence, but he can only describe it through metaphors, and through his own grasp of the abstract, using mathematics.
This all came to mind, as my wife Judy and I visited the Amish/ Mennonite country in Lancaster, PA, this past week. As I began to reflect on many different ways of understanding and worshipping God.
When we viewed the reconstruction of the Tabernacle of the Ark of the Covenant there, the image of the Temple Curtain being torn asunder on the day of the Crucifixion flashed before me.
Why was there a curtain at all ?
Why was it no longer needed after the resurrection?
Well, we are told God had had to shield mankind from His “terrible aspect” before Christ. He shielded us from Himself, the Shekeinah (The Spirit of the Lord), within the Tabernacle.
But God made flesh, and sacrificed, enabled us to known Him in a different way.
So, now We are back to paradoxical thought.
Back to the essential paradox for all Christians; to the Three-in-one – the Trinity.
Dante understood these paradoxes.
Or, rather, he understood that he could only understand through faith.
The best he could do in order to convey his understanding(s) was to use metaphors – the blinding light, spherical magnitude, the speeding orbits.
And, even there, he had to explain that everything in heaven (anywhere near God – oh, yes, even here) had to be stood on its head to BEGIN to comprehend.
Hence the reference to the chessboard problem [Near infinity; The number obtained is “2 to the power 63, plus one” (based on the 64 squares on the board)], to represent infinity for our weak minds.
Hence the angels orbiting God in reverse order and speed and size to what we would expect on earth. Hence the need for Beatrice to explain, still again, what Dante thinks he is “seeing.”
So Seraphim, and cherubim, and Thrones (in the first triad of spheres), right down to the “lowly” angels and archangels that sometimes rub shoulders with us, have their place.
But, it takes metaphors and mathematics just to begin to convey the almighty glory of Paradise wherein God meets us. There. Here? Hmmmm…
Paradiso Canto 24: Herr Doktor
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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