Letters to a Diminished Church by Dorothy Sayers

Anyone who is in the field of Classical Education will know that Dorothy Sayers', "Lost Tools of Learning" is a required text. Since I already owned Letters to a Diminished Church I figured I should read that as well. She is witty and sharp and I can see why C.S. Lewis loved her.

The book is a series of essays making "Passionate arguments for the relevance of the Christian doctrine." while she touches on everything from "What Do We Believe?"  to "Why Work?" her real passion is for literature and the Christian esthetic.

The Greatest Drama Ever Staged
— is the official creed of Christendom

"The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man—and the dogma is the drama." (p.1) Sayers laments that somehow we have managed to make the greatest drama dull. "So that is the outline of the official story—the tale of the time when God was the underdog and got beaten, when he submitted to the conditions he had laid down and became a man like the men he had made, and the men he had made broke him and killed him. This is the dogma we find so dull—this terrifying drama of which God is the victim and hero." (p. 4)

What Do We Believe?

Now, there does exist an official statement of Christian belief, and if we examine it with a genuine determination to discover what the words mean, we shall find it is a very strange one. And whether, as Christians declare, man was made in the image of God or, as the cynic said, man has made God in the image of man, the conclusion is the same-namely, that this strange creed purports to tell us the essential facts, not only about God, but also about the true nature of man. (p. 10)

• I believe in god the Father Almighty, Maker of all things.
• And in the only-begotten Son of God, by whom all things were made. He was incarnate; crucified, dead and buried; and rose again.
• I believe in the Holy Ghost, the lord and life-giver.
• And I believe in one Church and baptism, in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.

The Dogma is the Drama

We have done a poor job of communicating our dogma and so the world has an incorrect view of what we believe is true. The unbeliever might say God is "always ready to pounce on anybody who trips up over a difficulty." (p. 17) Or that Jesus is needed to calm God down when he's angry and "if we try to live like him, God the Father will let us off being damned hereafter and only have us tortured in this life instead." (p. 18) Christian virtues are, "Respectability, childishness; mental timidity; dullness; sentimentality; censoriousness; and a depression of spirits." (p. 19)

The response deserves an extended quote:

Let us, in heaven's name, drag out the divine drama from under the dreadful accumulation of slipshod thinking and trashy sentiment heaped upon it, and set it on an open stage to startle the world into some sort of vigorous reaction. If the pious are the first to be shocked, so much worse for the pious— others will pass into the kingdom of heaven before them. If all men are offended because of Christ, let them be offended; but where is the sense of their being offended at something that is not Christ and is nothing like him? We do him singularly little honor by watering down his personality till it could not offend a fly. Surely it is not the business of the Church to adapt Christ to men, but to adapt men to Christ.

It is the dogma that is the drama—not beautiful phrases, nor comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death—but the terrifying assertion that the same God who made the world, lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death. Show that to the heathen, and they may not believe it; but at least they may realize that here is something that a man might be glad to believe. 

The Image of God

What does it mean to be created "in the image of God"? Sayers answers, "The characteristic common to God and man is apparently that: the desire and ability to make things." (p. 25) Specifically we can create almost ex nihilo using language. 

"The creation is not a product of the matter and is not simply a rearrangement of the matter. The amount of matter in the universe is limited, and its possible rearrangements, though the sum of them would amount to astronomical figures, is also limited. But no such limitation of numbers applies to the creation of works of art. The poet is not obliged, as it were, to destroy the material of a Hamlet in order to create a Falstaff, as a carpenter must destroy a tree form to create a table form. The components of the material world are fixed; those of the world of imagination increase by a continuous and irreversible process, without any destruction or rearrangement of what went before. This represents the nearest approach we experience to creation out of nothing, and we conceive of the act of absolute creation as being an act analogous to that of the creative artist. Thus Berdyaev is able to say: 'God created the world by imagination.'" (p. 31)

Creative Mind

Creative minds have the ability to tell the truth through creative means. 

"A work of fiction, for example, possesses poetic truth, provided that the author has rightly seen which things can so be related as to combine into a convincing unity—provided, as Hard says, the work is an act of consistent imagination. If the imagination is consistent, the work will produce effects as if it were actually true." (p. 39)

Creed or Chaos?

Sayers begins the essay with, "It is hopeless to offer Christianity as a vaguely idealistic aspiration of a simple and consoling kind; it is, on the contrary, a hard, tough, exacting and complex doctrine, steeped in a drastic and uncompromising realism." (p. 49)

"Today, if we could really be persuaded that we are miserable sinners—that the trouble is not outside us but inside us, and that therefore, by the grace of God, we can do something to put it right—we should receive that message as the most hopeful and heartening thing that can be imagined...But once we have established the true doctrine of man's nature, the true nature of judgment becomes startlingly clear and rational. It is the inevitable consequence of man's attempt to regulate life and society on a system that runs counter to the facts of his own nature." (p. 65)

Strong Meat

"The story of Passiontide and Easter us the story of the winnowing of that freedom and of that victory over the evils of time.  The burden of the guilt is accepted (“He was made Sin”), the last agony of alienation from God is passed through (Eloi, lama sabachthani); the temporal body is broken and remade; and time and eternity are reconciled in a single person. There is no retreat here to the paradise of primal ignorance; the new kingdom of God is built upon the foundations of spiritual experience. Time is not denied; it is fulfilled. 'I am the food of the full-grown.'"

The Other Six Deadly Sins

Our culture has decided that sex encompasses all sin. Therefore to speak of sin is to speak of sex. And while there is sexual immorality and ought to be called out as such, we whitewash away the other sins far too easily.

Anger: "But we do not always recognize this ugly form of possession when it cloaks itself under a zeal for efficiency or a lofty resolution to expose scandals—particularly if it expresses itself only in print or in platform verbiage. It is very well known to the more unscrupulous part of the press that nothing pays so well in the newspaper world as the manufacture of schisms and the exploitation of wrath. Turn over the pages of the more popular papers if you want to see haw avarice thrives on hatred and the passion of violence." (p. 85)

 Gluttony: "The gluttonous consumption of manufactured goods had become, before the war, the prime civic virtue. And why? Because the machines can produce cheaply only if they produce in vast quantities; because unless the machines can produce cheaply nobody can afford to keep them running; and because, unless they are kept running, millions of citizens will be thrown out of employment, and the community will starve." (p. 88)

Covetousness: "It was left for the present age to endow covetousness with glamor on a big scale and to give it a title that it could carry like a flag. It occurred to somebody to call it enterprise. From the moment of that happy inspiration, covetousness has gone forward and never looked back. It has become a swaggering, swash-buckling, piratical sin, going about with its head cocked over its eye, and with pistols tucked into the tops of its jack boots. Its war cries are “Business Efficiency!” “Free Competition!” “Get Out or Get Under!” and “There's Always Room at the Top!" It no longer works and saves; it launches out into new enterprises; it gambles and speculates; it thinks in a big way; it takes risks. It can no longer be troubled to deal in real wealth and so remain attached to work and the soil." (p. 93)

Envy: "Envy is the great leveler. If it cannot level things up, it will level them down; and the words constantly in its mouth are “my rights” and “my wrongs.” At its best, envy is a climber and a snob; at its worst, it is a destroyer; rather than have anybody happier than itself, it will see us all miserable together.
"...The difficulty about dealing with envy is precisely that it is the sin of the have-nots, and that, on that account, it can always find support among those who are just and generous minded. Its demands for a place in the sun are highly plausible, and those who detect any egotism in the demand can readily be silenced by accusing them of oppression, inertia, and a readiness to grind the face of the poor." (p. 99, 100)

Acedia or Sloth: "In the world it calls itself tolerance; but in hell it is called despair. It is the accomplice of the other sins and their worst punishment. It is the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive only because there is nothing it would die for. We have known it far too well for many years. The only thing perhaps that we have not known about it is that it is a mortal sin."

Pride: "[T]he head and origin of all sin is the basic sin of superbia or pride. In one way there is so much to say about pride that one might speak of it for a week and not have done. Yet in another way, all there is to be said about it can be said in a single sentence. It is the sin of trying to be as God. It is the sin that proclaims that man can produce out of his own wits, and his own impulses, and his own imagination the standards by which he lives: that man is fitted to be his own judge. It is pride that turns man's virtues into deadly sins by causing each self-sufficient virtue to issue in its own opposite, and as a grotesque and horrible travesty of itself. The name under which pride walks the world at this moment is the perfectibility of man, or the doctrine of progress; and its specialty is the making of blueprints for utopia and establishing the kingdom of man on earth.
"For the devilish strategy of pride is that it attacks us, not on our weak points, but on our strong. It is preeminently the sin of the noble mind—that corruptio optimi that works more evil in the world than all the deliberate vices. Because we do not recognize pride when we see it, we stand aghast to see the havoc wrought by the triumphs of human idealism. We meant so well, we thought we were succeeding—and look what has come of our efforts!" (p. 105)

Christian Morality

Sayers says the church has worked very hard since Christ's ascension to remove the foul stench of the charge that he was "a gluttonous man and a winebibber" by being wholly against those sort of things.

Now, if we look at the Gospels with the firm intention to discover the emphasis of Christ's morality, we shall find that it did not lie at all along the lines laid down by the opinion of highly placed and influential people. Disreputable people who knew they were disreputable were gently told to go and sin no more; the really unparliamentary language was reserved for those thrifty, respectable, and sabbatarian citizens who enjoyed Caesar's approval and their own. And the one and only thing that ever seems to have roused the meek and mild Son of God to a display of outright physical violence was precisely the assumption that “business was business.” (p. 112)

The Triumph of Easter

In answer to the age-old question regarding the existence of evil in world made by a supposed all-loving, all-knowing, and all-benevolent God, Sayers answers, 

... we must look at Christ. In Him, we shall discover a Mind that loved his creation so completely that He became part of it, suffered with and for it, and made it a sharer in His own glory and a fellow worker with Himself in the working out of His own design for it...We find God continually at work turning evil into good...He takes our sins and errors and turns them into victories, as He made the crime of the Crucifixion to be the salvation of the world. "O felix cupla!" exclaimed St. Augustine, contemplating the accomplished work. (p. 121)

Why Work

In this beautiful essay, Sayers advocates for what she says is nothing less than revolutionary. Work for the sake of the work, not for the utility of it or the benefits to society, but as a God-honoring activity.

What I urged then was a thoroughgoing revolution in our whole attitude to work. I asked that it should be looked upon—not as a necessary drudgery to be undergone for the purpose of making money, but as a way of life in which the nature of man should find its proper exercise and delight and so fulfill itself to the glory of God. That it should, in fact, be thought of as a creative activity undertaken for the love of the work itself; and that man, made in God's image, should make things, as God makes them, for the sake of doing well a thing that is ell worth doing. (p. 125)

Toward a Christian Esthetic

Sayers contemplates the "Christian Esthetic" and finds there isn't one, saying, "...oddly enough, we have no Christian esthetic—no Christian philosophy of the arts." (p. 147) She begins with the analysis of art by both Plato and Aristotle and finds them wanting because of their lack of Truth to inform them. But we, being made in the image of a creating God, can follow in His footsteps.

“The true work of art, then, is something new; it is not primarily the copy or representation of anything. It may involve representation, but that is not what makes it a work of art. It is not manufactured to specification, as an engineer works to a plan—though it may involve compliance with the accepted rules for dramatic presentation and may also contain verbal ‘effects’ that can be mechanically accounted for. We know very well, when we compare it with so-called works of art that are turned out to pattern, that in this connection neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. Something has been created.” (p. 159)

In fact, true art reveals Truth.

“This recognition of the truth that we get in the artist's work comes to us as a revelation of new truth. I want to be clear about that. I am not referring to the sort of patronizing recognition we give to a writer by nodding our heads and observing: ‘Yes, yes, very good, very true—that's just what I'm always saying.’ I mean the recognition of truth that tells us something about ourselves that we had not been always saying, something that puts a new knowledge of ourselves within our grasp. It is new, startling, and perhaps shattering, and yet it comes to us with a sense of familiarity. We did not know it before, but the moment the poet has shown it to us, we know that, somehow or other, we had always really known it.” (p. 164) 

The Faust Legend and the Idea of a the Devil

Sayers reflects on the difficulty we have in portraying the Devil in art and literature. The problem is that we have bought a lie that good and evil are in some sort of conflict. She calls that a heresy.

“The orthodox Christian conception is more subtle and less optimistic; it is also much less involved in the time process. For it, the light and the light only is primary; creation and time and darkness are secondary and begin together. When you come to consider the matter, it is strictly meaningless to say that darkness could precede light in a time process. Where there is no light, there is no meaning for the word darkness, for darkness is merely a name for that which is without light. Light, by merely existing, creates darkness, or at any rate the possibility of darkness. In this sense, it is possible to understand that profound saying, “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7). But it is at this point that it becomes possible for the evil and the darkness and the chaos to boast: “We are that which was before the light was, and the light is a usurpation upon our rights.” It is an illusion; evil and darkness and chaos are pure negation, and there is no such state as “before the light” because it is the primary light that creates the whole time process. It is an illusion; and that is the primary illusion inside which the devil lives and in which he deceives himself and others...That is the Devil's claim, the exact statement of the pride by which he fell from heaven. It sounds extremely fine; and when it is set forth in attractive language, it is sometimes difficult to remember that the Devil is a liar and the father of lies. In Paradise Lost, we find Satan making the same claim; he “feels himself impaired” because of the authority of the Son of God. He believes, or affects to believe, that he himself is anterior to the Son, and ought not, therefore, to be subject to him. In the subsequent argument with Abdiel, he shows himself a poor logician, but we may, if we like, suppose that by this time he really believes in his own claim, or has argued himself into the illusion of belief—for the corruption of the will saps the intellect, and the Devil is ultimately a fool as well as a villain. He is, let us believe by all means, the victim of his own illusion. But Milton is not; Milton knows, and says, that the Son is anterior to Satan, and is, in fact, the very power by whom Satan was created. In the orthodox Christian position, therefore, the light is primary, the darkness secondary and derivative; and this is important for the whole theology of evil.” (p. 173)

I particularly love her conclusion:

"Evil is the soul's choice of not-God. The corollary is that damnation, or hell, is the permanent choice of the not-God. God does not (in the monstrous old-fashioned phrase 'send' anybody to hell; hell is the state of the soul in which its choice becomes obdurate and fixed; the punishment (so to call it) of that soul is to remain eternally in the state it has chosen." (p. 176) 

Problem Picture

 Sayers final essay reflects on the "problem" as she sees it, although that term gives her pause. 

“It has become abundantly clear of late years that something has gone seriously wrong with our conception of humanity and of humanity's proper attitude to the universe. We have begun to suspect that the purely analytical approach to phenomena is leading us only further and further into the abyss of disintegration and randomness, and that it is becoming urgently necessary to construct a synthesis of life. It is dimly apprehended that the creative artist does, somehow or other, specialize in construction, and also that the Christian religion does, in some way that is not altogether clear to us, claim to bring us into a right relation with a God whose attribute is creativeness.” (p. 241)

She goes on to state:

“But if we do—if we conclude that creative mind is in fact the very grain of the spiritual universe—we cannot arbitrarily stop our investigations with the man who happens to work in stone, or paint, or music, or letters. We shall have to ask ourselves whether the same pattern is not also exhibited in the spiritual structure of every man and woman. And, if it is, whether, by confining the average man and woman to uncreative activities and an uncreative outlook, we are not doing violence to the very structure of our being. If so, it is a serious matter, since we have seen already the unhappy results of handling any material in a way that runs counter to the natural law of its structure.” (p. 245)  

Finally, she beautifully concludes:

 “As for the common man, the artist is nearer to him than the man of any other calling, since his vocation is precisely to express the highest common factor of humanity—that image of the creator that distinguishes the man from the beast. If the common man is to enjoy the divinity of his humanity, he can come to it only in virtue and right of his making.” (p. 275)

Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

Like any lover of history, I feel a good historical fiction is like dessert. Killer Angels by Michael Shaara is just such a book. He describes the thoughts and feelings of those on both sides of Gettysburg in such an intimate way, you really do get to know the actors. I believe this is such a valuable way to learn history.

While the author admits to fictionalizing events, he uses the basic factual outline to guide his story. Telling the story in excruciating detail as he proceeds day by day really brings the horror of the battle home.

I would say that Shaara makes the argument that war is hell, yet because of our human nature, unavoidable. In particular regards to the Civil War, there seems to be a confusion among the soldiers about what the war is actually about, although the union officials make it clear that the war IS about slavery. The people seem to be going through motions inexorably cast upon them. Everyone feels trapped and forced to respond. Robert E. Lee is treated with great deference and understanding. He is a very sympathetic participant forced to pay for the sins of those he happens to live with. He is unfailingly loyal to his people, if not the cause of slavery. As such, he is a deeply sympathetic character, and yet, through the voice and words of General Longstreet, we get a sense that the author is saying that it is all unnecessary. And at the same time unavoidable.

This tragic novel ends, as is fitting, with more tragedy. There is no happy ending to the Civil War.

Paradise by Dante

I'm on a perpetual quest to give myself a Classical Education. Obviously one of the required texts is The Divine Comedy. I have already read Inferno and Purgatory, so it was time for Paradise by Dante. I especially love that it was translated by the great thinker, Anthony Esolen.

Esolen begins with a must-read introductory essay which explores Dante's purpose for the whole Comedy: Who gets into Heaven. Dante has again and again surprised the reader with the inhabitants of Hell and who is working through Purgatory. He will surprise us again with the residents of Paradise. In order for this book to be a fitting companion of the others, it must address the issues of justice raised by Inferno and mercy raised in Purgatory to a beautiful conclusion. Therefore Dante uses as his examples stories in which mercy and justice work together. In the end, Dante believes that all God does, He does out of perfect love. To ask why does God love us so much is the wrong question. Love just loves.

When confronted with the age-old question of who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell, Esolen, using Dante's reasoning, responds,"God in his dangerous love has created something infinitely more lovely: a world peopled by beings free to love or to hate. A man's free choice to walk smugly by the beggar on the bridge may have no consequence to speak of, or eternal consequences. It is a world into which, to save a race gone awry, the Author himself has entered in a particular way at a particular place, to atone for men's sins and to reveal particular things about the world and its Father, ultimately to return to that world and restore its lost innocence. God did not create a philosophy. He created, as Dante saw, a comedy." (p. xxxvii) God will not be duty-bound to save anyone. He will love with a wild untamable love and we are to love Him back, as best we know how. Only then are we fit for Paradise and eternal bliss.

By the time we get to Paradise, Dante's guide Virgil has returned to Limbo. He is not allowed to see Heaven. Dante's true love Beatrice joins him and will guide him the rest of the way. She has been praying for him this entire time and is the reason he is on this journey to begin with. She wants to get answers to his questions and to help him finally find his hope in God. In his real life, Dante has been banished from the city of his birth, Florence, and the injustice of it all has been an enormous issue for him.

Here is a summary, given by Esolen, at the beginning of each canto, followed in some cases by commentary and quotations from the text:

CANTO ONE 

Dante and Beatrice are at the threshold of Heaven. She explains to him that it is the nature of the human soul to rise. 

CANTO TWO 

Rising to the first sphere, the moon, Dante asks Beatrice about the markings, and learns that they are due to the diversity of gifts with which God has endowed all creatures. 

CANTO THREE 

Dante and Beatrice enter the first circle of Heaven, the circle of the moon. Here, among the souls of those who neglected their vows, Dante encounters Piccarda, who explains to him the diversity of blessedness among the saints. 

Dante describes the nature of Paradise:

"For it is of the essence of this bliss 

to hold one's dwelling in the divine Will,  

who makes our single wills the same, and His,

So that, although we swell from sill to sill

throughout this kingdom, that is as we please,

as it delights the King in whose desire

We find our own. In His will is our peace:" (p. 29)

CANTO FOUR 

Beatrice explains to Dante the true location of the blessed, and then, distinquishing absolute from conditional will, asserts the sanctity and inviolability of holy vows. 

Dante wrestles with who deserves to be in which level of Paradise, when the breaking of their vows was forced:

"You argue, 'If my good intent endures,

how can another's violence diminish 

the measure of my merited reward?'" (p. 35)

Beatrice replies that there is our will and our will, that is although we may be seemingly forced to sin, God knows the heart and can determine what our actual will was.

As Dante begins to understand what he is being told, he rejoices,

"I see our intellects cannot be filled

unless the one Truth floods them with its light,

beyond which nothing true can find a place.

Like a beast in its den, we rest in it

when we have reached it, as we can indeed—

if not, our longings would be all in vain." (p. 41)

CANTO FIVE 

Beatrice explains to Dante the irrevocability of sacred vows. They enter the second sphere and meet spirits, represented by Mercury, who paid too much attention to worldly honor when on earth. 

Beatrice continues to explain why sacrificing your will to God through holy vows is the most precious gift you can give and cannot be easily or carelessly revoked.

"You'll see, then, from this line of argument,

the high value of vows if they're so made

that God consents as soon as you consent.

For when both God and man have sealed the pact

they slay this treasure in a sacrifice,

and do so, as I say, by a free act."

She then urges Dante to,

"Open your mind to what I now make plain,

hold it within, for there's no knowledge when

you understand a thing you don't retain." (p. 47)

True words to inform a teacher's heart!

CANTO SIX 

Justinian describes the history of the eagle of Rome, its most glorious victory the avengement of the death of Christ. After decrying the corruption of both Guelphs and Ghibellines, he points out the soul of the honorable courtier Romeo. 

In the commentary, Esolen says, "The eagle was the symbol of Roman rule... Dante believed that monarchy was ordained by God as the most natural and fitting form of government for mankind, and the most analogous to God's own rule and the most consonant with human freedom." (p. 412)

CANTO SEVEN
Beatrice explains the necessity of Christ's atoning sacrifice and the justice of God's vengeance against the Jews who put Christ to death. 

CANTO EIGHT 

Dante and Beatrice rise to the third sphere, Venus, where they meet souls who were too ardent in their attachment to fleshly love. Here Dante speaks with Charles Martel of Anjou, who discusses the cause of degeneracy among noble families and the evils wrought by confusion of vocations. 

CANTO NINE 

Still in the third sphere, Dante speaks with Cunizza da Romano, who proph esies woe for her homeland, and with the bishop and troubadour Folquet; he shows to Dante the brightest soul in the sphere of Venus, that of Rahab. 

CANTO TEN 

Dante and Beatrice have risen to the fourth circle, the sun, the dwelling of the wise. Dante is addressed by Thomas Aquinas, who names for him the eleven other spirits in the heavenly garland. 

CANTO ELEVEN 

Thomas Aquinas recounts for Dante the life of Francis of Assisi, and concludes by decrying the corruption of the Dominicans of the present day. 

CANTO TWELVE 

Out of a second garland of spirits another soul speaks: it is the soul of Bonaventure, who describes the life of Dominic and concludes by decrying the corruption of the Franciscans of the present day. 

CANTO THIRTEEN 

Thomas Aquinas explains what Scripture means and what he meant in describing Solomon as the wisest man who ever lived. He concludes by condemning the rashness of human judgment. 

CANTO FOURTEEN 

King Solomon answers Dante's last question to the wise, a question about the resurrection of the body. Then Dante and Beatrice ascend to Mars, the fifth sphere, the place for the warriors for Christ. 

Dante is bothered because the saints in Paradise are simply lights. He wonders about their bodies and why they don't have them. He finally realizes that they currently enjoy the beauty and harmony of the "bodies" they have but that they will be reunited with their physical bodies at the end of time and will experience even more beauty and harmony. Overwhelmed with the joy and love as the saints dance and sing around him, Dante exclaims,

"As dancers dancing in a merry reel,

will raise their voices in a rush of glee,

all of their gestures lighter in the heel,

So, to that most devout and ready plea,

the holy circlings showed me a new joy

in their revolving and their wondrous song.

Whoever on earth laments that we must die

to live above in Heaven, does not see

the sweet refreshment of the eternal rain." (p. 145)

CANTO FIFTEEN 

Dante speaks with his ancestor Cacciaguida, who describes the courtly virtues of the Florentines of old. 

CANTO SIXTEEN 

Cacciaguida discourses on the rise and fall of noble Florentine families. 

CANTO SEVENTEEN 

Cacciaguida foretells Dante's exile from Florence, revealing the patronage he will enjoy from Cangrande della Scala. When Dante suggests that his poetry may give scandal to many on earth, Cacciaguida recommends absolute honesty, for the poet's mission depends upon it. 

Esolen adds in the commentary, "Whether Dante rejoiced in his exile is not clear, but it is certain that no single event in his life has gained for him such glory. Indeed, were it not for the unjust banishment from his . native land, and the seizing of his goods by a political enemy, and the foolish pride of those men banished with him—were it not, in short, for the hard look a human evil that Dante was forced to take—we might not have the Comedy. But He who can bring good out of evil can bring good out of Florence." (p. 447)

CANTO EIGHTEEN 

Cacciaguida names for Dante the flames of other warriors of God. Then Dante and Beatrice ascend to Jupiter, the sixth sphere, where Dante sees stars form the constellation of the Eagle of justice. 

CANTO NINETEEN 

The Eagle addresses Dante's unspoken question on the fate of the virtuous pagans, insisting upon the inscrutability of divine providence and decrying the wickedness of rulers in Christendom in Dante's day. 

As Esolen is claiming, an integral purpose of the Comedy is to explore who will be rewarded or punished, how, and why. At this point in Paradise, the eagle tells Dante,

"Never unto this reign

climbs any man without belief in Christ,

before nor since they nailed Him to the wood.

But here, behold: many now cry,'Christ, Christ!'

who'll be less near to Him on Judgment Day

than will the one who never know of Christ." (p. 207)

In the commentary, Esolen goes on an extensive explanation well worth repeating at length here,

"It is the great doubt of a good and unsentimentally honest Christian man, and it is the last great doubt that Dante's character will express. If faith is necessary for salvation, what happens to those virtuous men and women who did not know about Christ? If they had no opportunity to hear the word of God preached, how can they be punished for their lack of faith? 

It appears to me that there are three ways to answer this question, and that Dante tentatively, and with great humility, approaches the third. The first way is that of Calvin, recalling that Augustine had called the virtues of the great republican Romans “splendid vices,” or as Milton put it, “close ambition varnished o'er with zeal” (Paradise Lost 2.485). This is to grant only a specious virtue to the pagan (and Augustine himself was more generous than that; cf. City of God 5.11-14), to attribute selfish or at best quite impure motives to all those without the faith...Strictly speaking, we need not worry about the virtuous pagans, since there are no virtuous pagans, or if there are virtuous pagans, their virtue is merely human and not in itself pleasing to God: “All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Is. 64:6). But that is to universalize and absolutize what Isaiah says, taking it out of context; and it is an assertion flatly contradicted by the evidence of our senses and by the plain meaning of the word “virtue.” Dante clearly did not accept it, as the presence in Limbo of the virtuous pagans shows. 

The second way is that of modern man, who, if he is not busy denying the very possibility of salvation, is busy comfortably assuring himself that everyone (or at least everyone not below his own modest level of virtue) will be saved. Everyone will be saved, by that kind and loving God he keeps in an old chest of drawers along with a watch fob and a couple of silver dollars...As long as we love one another (and by “love” we mean not the theological virtue nor even a good hearty pagan eros but the ability to get along passably well with the more likable of our fellows…), we will be saved. Therefore all the virtuous pagans will be saved, including the virtuous pagans who are ourselves. 

The third possibility is that indeed some of the virtuous pagans may be saved, not by their own merits but by faith; while Calvin argued that the virtuous pagans only appeared virtuous, a holder of this third possibility would leave open the hope that some of the truly virtuous pagans only appeared pagan. When Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one cometh to the Father but by me” (John 14:6), he may well be interpreted as saying, “All those who come to the Father do so by my work, my merits, my virtue infused into their hearts.” What form this faith might take was left unclear by the Church Fathers. Augustine, for instance, said that the Hebrews who kept the faith believed in Christ to come, along with all those other individuals, perhaps far away, to whom this faith was mysteriously revealed (City of God 3.1). Aquinas attempted to specify what faith was sufficient for so mysterious a baptism. The testimony of reason assures a man that God exists and is a providential God; the testimony of the senses and of his conscience assures him that he is a sinner, unworthy of approaching a God most holy; by reason he therefore concludes that he needs a mediator, an intercessor, to approach God on his behalf (cf. Summa theol. 2.2.2.7). Elsewhere Aquinas states that at the dawn of the age of discretion, every human being faces a fundamental decision for good or for evil—for good, that is, enabled by the grace of God. If the person at that moment throws himself upon the mercy of God, he receives baptism, what is called the “baptism of desire," and on the day of doom will be judged accordingly. If, however, he does not do so, he rejects the assistance of faith and will inevitably fall into mortal sin... Who is saved and who is not rests hidden in the secrets of divine providence, but that there might be Christians whom Christians do not recognize as such is suggested by Christ himself: “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also must I bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd” (John 10:16). 

...The reader should note that Dante approaches the third way but rejects, in part, Aquinas's analysis. For Dante has clearly maintained that there are many who are both unbaptized and virtuous, at least according to the four natural virtues of fortitude, prudence, temperance, and justice. Aquinas's analysis would clearly depopulate Dante's Limbo of all but, perhaps, the unbaptized infants. On the other hand, Dante does save three pagans... 

I used to believe that all three cases were exceptional—like punctures of grace [erupting] into an otherwise universal rejection of the unbaptized. Yet grace itself is exceptional, in that it is an unmerited and absolutely free gift of God. There is no predicting the acts of providence, and thus no predicting the gift of grace… [J]ust as an awareness of providence should prevent us from judging God's sentences too hastily, so too it should prevent us from forgetting that we cannot know God's pardons, either. And finally we might remember the words of the eagle's Book of Wisdom: “For God made not death, neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of the living. (Wis. 1:13)” (p. 452-454)

CANTO TWENTY 

The Eagle names the most exalted spirits in its sphere. These include, as amazing instances of the unknowability of God's plan, the pagans Trajan and Ripheus. 

Describing God's love in the most beautiful language, Dante proclaims,

"The kingdom of Heaven suffers violence

     from living hope and burning charity

that overcome the will of the divine,

Not as a man will overcome a man—

     the divine wins because it would be won,

and won, it wins with its benignity." (p. 219)

"O predestination, how remote

your root is from those sights that cannot see

the fullness of the primal cause! And you

Mortals, withhold your judgment; even we

who see the face of God do not yet know

the number chosen from eternity—" (p. 221)

CANTO TWENTY-ONE 

Dante and Beatrice rise to Saturn, the seventh sphere, the sphere of the contemplatives, who scale a ladder to and from the heaven of heavens. Peter Damian descends to greet Dante and speak of the degeneracy of the monastic orders. 

CANTO TWENTY-TWO 

Still in the sphere of Saturn, Dante speaks with Saint Benedict, who decries the corruption of the Benedictines. Then Dante and Beatrice ascend to the eighth sphere, that of the fixed stars. 

CANTO TWENTY-THREE 

Dante witnesses the triumph of Christ and the blessing of the souls in Heaven, irradiated by His light. After the coronation of Mary, Christ and the Blessed Mother return to the Empyrean. 

Canto TWENTY-FOUR  Saint Peter examines Dante on faith. 

CANTO TWENTY-FIVE 

Saint James examines Dante on hope. After the appearance of Saint John, Dante is struck blind. 

CANTO TWENTY-SIX 

Saint John examines Dante on love. When Dante answers appropriately, he finds himself before the spirit of Adam, who answers four of Dante's questions regarding his life in Eden. 

CANTO TWENTY-SEVEN 

Saint Peter denounces the corruption of the papacy and the Church. After he instructs Dante to tell what he has heard, the poet and Beatrice rise to the ninth sphere, the Primum Mobile. 

Dante begins this chapter with such a beautiful description of the joy he feels in Paradise,

"'To Father and to Son and Holy Ghost,'

sang all the heavens, 'glory!'—filling me

with drunken joy; it seemed what I beheld

Was laughter of the universe the glee

of laugher whose inebriating swell

enters by what you hear and what you see.

O joy! O Happiness ineffable!

O riches safe, no worry of desire!

O life of love and peace, perfect and full!" (p. 287)

CANTO TWENTY-EIGHT
Dante is granted a distant vision of the cosmos:a single brilliant point of light surrounded by the nine heavenly spheres, whence comes the song of the angelic hosts, whose hierarchies Beatrice enumerates. 

CANTO TWENTY-NINE 

Beatrice reveals to Dante various truths about the angels: their creation, their powers, their number, and the fall of the rebels. She rebukes errant philosophers on earth who pretend to know more than they do about heavenly things. 

In the commentary, Esolen states, "God saw that it was good. Dante answers the question “Why did God create?" by referring us back to the first chapter of Genesis. In polytheistic systems the world is always created to fulfill the motive of some god or other, or as an after effect of some conflict in the immortal regions. Genesis gives no motive, implying that there was none, none that we would call a motive anyway, since God is not moved, not troubled, as there is nothing prior to God. If we wished, we could say, instead of “God created,” “God loved,” and leave it at that—for perfect love is its own motive." (p. 478)

This beautifully comes through in the words of Beatrice as she explains to Dante the reason that God created anything at all, including the angels,

"Not (for it cannot be) that He should gain

good for Himself, but that resplendence of

His light should utter, 'I exist,' beyond

All time in His eternity, beyond

confining space, according to His will

into new loves burst the Eternal Love.

Before he did not lie adrowse and still—

neither 'before' nor 'after' can precede

the hovering of God above these waters." (p. 309)

I believe that it is here that we err so often in our theology when we speak of God doing something "before" or "after." It is all an eternal "now" for Him.

CANTO THIRTY 

Dante and Beatrice rise to the Empyrean, the tenth circle. Here all Heaven is revealed as a river of light, and as a celestial rose. 

CANTO THIRTY-ONE 

Beatrice takes her place again in the celestial rose, and Dante is now led by the mystic Bernard of Clairvaux. 

CANTO THIRTY-TWO Bernard names for Dante the various souls in tiers along the petals of the rose. He ends by urging Dante to pray with him for the intercession of Mary, that Dante may be able to see the highest Good. 

CANTO THIRTY-THREE

Saint Bernard entreats the intercession of the Virgin Mary that Dante may behold the beatific vision. The great journey and the poem ends with the vision of the three great mysteries: the Creation, the Trinity, and the Incarnation of Christ. 

In the final canto, we finally reach God, Himself. Esolen beautifully summarizes, "I am the Bread of Life. God creates what is not God. That is a mystery of love. This creator God is Himself a Trinity of Persons. That is a mystery of love. The Second Person united Himself with human flesh to redeem mankind. That is a mystery of love. He rose from the dead and sits at the right hand of the Father, both God and man. That is a mystery of love. The final Christian mystery, implicit in the whole of Paradise, is that this Christ is with us still, abiding within the faithful, making them like unto Himself, giving them His very flesh in the Eucharist, as once he gave it on the Cross. This is the love that moves the sun and the other stars." (p. 488)

Like Inferno and Purgatory, Paradise has "levels." Here they are:

The Spheres of Heaven
     First Sphere (The Moon: The Inconstant)
     Second Sphere (Mercury: The Ambitious)
     Third Sphere (Venus: The Lovers)
     Fourth Sphere (The Sun: The Wise)
     Fifth Sphere (Mars: The Warriors of the Faith)
     Sixth Sphere (Jupiter: The Just Rulers)
     Seventh Sphere (Saturn: The Contemplatives)
     Eighth Sphere (The Fixed Stars: Faith, Hope, and Love)
     Ninth Sphere (The Primum Mobile: The Angels)
The Empyrean (a region beyond physical existence which is the abode of God)