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.
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.
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:
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)
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