The pilgrim continues to retreat from the fierce animals but suddenly he is confronted by a shadowy figure While I was fleeing to a lower place When I saw him in that vast wilderness The shade replies revealing that he is the shade of Virgil the great roman poet He answered "Not a man, though once I was. I was born under Julius Caesar (though late in his reign) I was a poet and I sang of that just He asks the pilgrim why he is heading back to the wretched misery of the dark forest rather than climbing the mountain towards paradise "But you, why do you turn back to wretchedness? The pilgrim is overwhelmed with joy at the realisation that this is his hero, the Roman poet Virgil "Are you Virgil that source "You are the glory of all other poets you are my master and my 'author' After commenting on the eventual fate of the three beasts, Virgil reveals that he has been asked to be the pilgrim's guide, first through hell, the place people burn hopelessly, and then through purgatory where they burn hopefully! "Therefore for your sake I think it wise where you shall hear despairing cries And after, you shall see the ones who are content Finally he reveals that he cannot take the pilgrim into heaven (paradise) itself because he has not been counted fit by God. Another (Beatrice) will lead the pilgrim there "Should you desire to ascend to these, For the Emperor who lives on high Everywhere He reigns and there He rules. The pilgrim readily accepts the offer of guidance and help. And I answered: 'Poet, I entreat you. lead me to these realms you speak of Inferno Canto 1:61-87; 112-135 Just as Dante the pilgrim is about to re-enter the dark forest, despairing of ascending the mountain and finding the light of God, a strange, shady form appears in front of him. Amazingly, (since he had been dead for over a thousand years) it is Virgil, the famous Roman poet and Dante's literary hero. In Dante's day Virgil was perhaps the most famous Latin author and it is clear that Dante admired him greatly. He was most famously the author of an epic poem called the Aeneid, the story of the journey of the Trojan hero Aeneas after the destruction of Troy by the Greeks, to Italy where he founded the city of Rome. The book, written in Latin, is written in verse and deals with heroic and epic themes and includes a famous (and hugely influential) visit by the hero, Aeneas, to the underworld, where he sees various characters from mythology and from his own life and the punishments and rewards they experience. And yet although we shouldn't be surprised that Dante employs as his (and our guide) to the afterlife someone who had written so masterfully on such themes before, it is a surprising and 'edgy' choice. Part of the genius of Dante is that time and time again we are challenged morally and intellectually by the choices he makes. The readers of Dante's day would have been surprised that a pagan author would play such a crucial role in the story. Here, right at the beginning Virgil acknowledges his distance from the Christian vision. He says he does not belong in paradise so another must guide Dante the pilgrim through that part of his adventure. He was alive during the time of the false and lying gods (presumably implying his own part in their devotion). He confesses that he was a rebel against His law. So, a man who did not know Christ as saviour and Lord will guide the pilgrim away from the forest of dark ignorance and sin towards the light! Because the poem is so well known we barely bat an eyelid at this choice but at the time it was a remarkable one. Dante could have employed a Christian guide, the Apostle Paul (who had visited paradise while he was alive), a church father such as Augustine whose writings had helped to define church thinking on the afterlife, or even, perhaps, as in earlier tours of hell and heaven, an angel. But he didn't. He chose the pagan poet Virgil. But the reasons for that choice help us to understand his purpose in writing the Commedia and the manner in which he writes it.
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When I had rested my body there a while As the slope began to rise Whichever way I turned she was there It was that hour early in the morning first started the beautiful motions of those things that gaudy beast, wild in its spotted pelt. and he was coming straight towards me, it seemed And now a she wolf came who, in her leanness, This last beast brought my spirit down so low, Inferno Canto 1:28-60 Drawn to the lightStill in his dream-like state (despite the fact that he claims he has woken up!) Dante sees the light of the sun streaming from the summit of the mountain before him and decides he must head towards it. Physically of course, the light he sees is the light of the rising sun but (as we will see later) the light actually emanates from God. It is really God's light he sees and is attracted to. Quite reasonably, he starts climbing the hill. The light reminds Dante the pilgrim of the first day of creation, when for the very first time the sun and the stars shone. I mentioned in the last post that Dante is the poet of hope and here the reason for his hope is revealed. The God he seeks is the God of creation who brought all things into being out of the darkness of nothingness. As he sees the sunlight he thinks of God's love which first started the beautiful motions of those things (the sun and the stars). The line could alternatively be read as 'setting all those beautiful things in motion'. Either way, Dante equates God, love and beauty with the created order. Later, Dante the pilgrim will discover how God's love and the beauty of the cosmos are closely tied to one another. Dante's search for God involves a search for Love and Beauty too.
Half way through the journey of our life How can I express the horror of that wood To speak of that place is so bitter for me I can't say how I got myself into that place, But when I reached the foot of a slope, looking up, I saw its shoulders Then the fear that had endured And just like someone who, struggling for breath so my mind, still in flight, Inferno Canto 1:1-27 Dante's midlife crisisHalf way through the journey of our life, Dante the pilgrim discovers that he is lost in a dark forbidding forest. Since Dante the poet was born in 1265 and the allotted span of a human life is traditionally 'three score years and ten' (70), the journey through the three domains of the afterlife apparently begins in the year 1300. The pilgrim is 35, so at the mid point of his life. But this, Dante says, is the mid-point of our lives, the lives of the readers too, (despite the fact that, sadly, I am no longer 35!). The poem pulls us all into that terrible forest, for according the writer, we are all enduring a mid-life crisis of existential proportions. We, the readers, stand there too, lost and confused with the pilgrim. But not because we stand there as individual readers, but because this is the crisis of the life of the world in which we all live. According to some medieval speculation about the age of the earth, 1300 stood exactly as the mid-point of the history of the world. The Christian world was in crisis as the Papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor fought it out for political supremacy over europe. In February 1300 Pope Boniface VIII declared a year of Jubilee (the present Pope has just done the same!) and declared that a plenary indulgence (time off from Purgatory) would be given to everyone who visited the churches of St Peter and St Paul in Rome. This was in fact a huge money-grabbing operation, as tens of thousands flocked to Rome. This is where the story begins, in a year like this, a year which finds mankind at its own 'mid-life crisis'.
When people talk about being in the 'seventh heaven' they mean they are as happy as they can possibly be. But where did the notion that there are seven heavens come from? What does the seventh heaven contain that should make us so happy and what are the other six like? Sadly there is no one definitive source book we can turn to to explain this but there are some ancient writings from the Jewish-Christian tradition that reveal that during the first century A.D. (if not earlier) some people believed that there were multiple levels of heaven. In the pseudepigraphal writing known as Slavonic Enoch (or 2 Enoch), the writer describes the ascension of Enoch to the throne of God in heaven but in his version, (unlike that of the Book of the Watchers discussed in the previous post), Enoch ascends through seven heavens to find God. Each heaven has its own distinct identity, purpose and occupants. Like the apostle Paul, the writer locates paradise, i.e the garden of Eden, in the third heaven. Alongside paradise, on the same level, there is a place of terrible punishment reserved for the wicked, and staffed by specially prepared 'torture angels'. On other levels Enoch sees the workings of the cosmos, the legions of weeping angels (long before Dr Who was ever thought of) and the gates and galleries where the weather is stored. His may not have been the first account of multiple heavens but the author(s) of Slavonic Enoch provides a fascinating insight into how some Jews and Christians imagined heaven in the first centuries of the Common Era. "At last Enoch arrives in the seventh heaven and sees God. God, of course, is seated on his throne and attended by a vast number of angelic beings, the divine council or court. It seems that their chief job is to come forward in designated ranks and orders to bow before God. This is an image of God as supreme potentate, the imperial ruler, receiving obeisance from the subject kings and potentates. The heavenly beings here represent the 'powers and principalities' who govern the affairs of the cosmos. These are the forces that shape human destiny. What Enoch sees is that they bow before the authority of the Almighty. Enoch reports that they do so 'in joy and merriment'. There is laughter in heaven!"
The introduction to the 1960s American TV series Star Trek announced every week that captain Kirk and his crew were journeying to places "where no man had gone before". Rather disappointingly (to me as a young boy) the Enterprise usually found itself locked in battle with all too familiar aliens or visiting far-flung human outposts. But over 2000 years ago, an ancient Jewish writing known as The Book of the Watchers, described a remarkable 'otherworldly' journey by the legendary biblical hero Enoch, to a place where truly no man (or woman) had ever "gone before" - to heaven, the dwelling place of God. According to the Hebrew Bible, heaven, the home of God, is not normally accessible to human beings. But Enoch was an exception. An suggestive verse in the book of Genesis stated that Enoch, after three hundred and sixty five years of life, had been 'taken' by God. Assuming that Enoch, instead of dying, had been 'taken up' into heaven by God, the writer of The Book of the Watchers describes Enoch's ascension into heaven. In this, perhaps the earliest written account of a journey into heaven, heaven is described as a terrifying place of extremes, of lightening and hail stones, of fire and ice, in other words, a place totally inhospitable to human life and totally alien to human experience. This is God's home, not the home of human beings. "Strangely (we might think) that house in heaven inspired dread rather than joy. There is no "delight of life" there. This is not a warm and welcoming vision, and there is nothing here of the self indulgent, wish-fulfillment that defines so much of modern day speculation on heaven! Like all prophets before him who see or encounter the divine, Enoch falls on his face. It's strangeness and 'otherness' overwhelm him This is an acknowledgment that no human eyes should ever behold this place, the divine habitation. The home of God was never intended for human eyes."
What does God do? It might sound a strange question to ask, after all God is simply God. The good theological answer is probably just to say that God simply is (we can think of the Lord's reply "I am who I am" to Moses at the burning bush!). But throughout the Hebrew Bible there is another very clear answer - God rules, i.e. God is king, ruling over the cosmos, the creation. And because heaven is God's home, heaven is imagined in the Hebrew Bible as a divine, cosmic throne room. In accounts of visions of God, God is almost always shown seated on a throne, surrounded by angelic beings who represent the powers and forces that govern the cosmos. Heaven is the kingdom of God, the place where God's rule is absolute and unquestioned. In contrast to the earth where so often sin and rebellion defy the purpose of God, in heaven God's will is done. That's why Jesus taught his disciples to pray"thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven." In this post I discuss these visions of God in the Hebrew Bible and try to show that rather than being the eternal destination of the righteous, heaven was seen as a real, functioning work space where the real (i.e. hidden) business of the cosmos was being conducted. "The throne was a reminder that God ruled, that God was ultimately sovereign that the universe did not behave in a random way nor that the heavenly forces (the 'powers and principalities') were allowed to run free. The idea of the heavenly court elaborated that, with the added benefit that the thought of all angelic beings belonging to the divine court/council (even such dubious characters as the Satan and the lying Spirit), meant that they too fell under God's authority and control. In other words nothing bad could happen in the cosmos without the authorization of God. Now that might not bring much comfort to Job when he is devastated by his sufferings or to the friends and family of king Ahab when he dies in battle, but for the faithful community, who were usually on the wrong side of the power dynamics in ancient Israel, the thought that God was a king like, but much bigger and more powerful than the kings and rulers they knew, could be a powerful, even revolutionary idea."
The Hours of Catherine Cleves is one of the most beautiful illustrated medieval books ever produced. The illustrations of hell and purgatory are revealing, showing how these 'places' were imagined in the 15th century. The illustrations would have had a very serious purpose in warning the reader about the fate of the ungodly. But the real joy of these illustrations is seeing how much fun the illustrator had depicting the terrible tortures of hell and the wonderful, demonic monsters responsible for them. I have captured some of the detailed images from the picture of hell in the book and put them in the slideshow below for your enjoyment! These are images of the most amazing imagination. Almost every demon is different, and they all horrify in their different ways. I don't believe that a place like this exists but if there is a place of torment and punishment in the 'next life' I really do hope it's populated by characters such as these. It would make the afterlife so much more interesting!
Many christians say that they believe heaven is 'real'. By that they mean it really exists, somewhere, in an invisible, spiritual dimension. But even the most fervent believer in heaven probably doesn't think heaven is as real as the ancient Hebrews did. For them heaven existed up above their heads, on the other side of the sky. Heaven was the home of God and he lived up there where he could be close to his creation and watch over his creatures. Heaven was not far, far away in a place beyond space and time: it was very firmly located in space and time, just beyond the solid (if a bit see-through) blue 'firmament', its doors opened to let the weather through and it could be reached by ladders (well, if you were an angel). When the Hebrews said 'heaven is for real' they meant, (as Genesis tells us) that it is part of the creation, just as much a part of the creation as the earth on which we stand. Only if we understand this can we begin to understand what heaven is for and so begin to grasp how impossible it is for heaven to be 'our eternal home'. Heaven is God's home. Just like the earth, heaven was made, created. And one day, heaven will be destroyed a new heaven created. In the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament heaven is as real and physical as the earth beneath our feet. "This is the point. In the ancient world the spiritual and the physical were two sides of the same thing. The one could never be divorced from the other. God was as real as the ground on which people stood, and God's home was visible, 'up there' above the sky. God was near. Living life as a human being was to live under the watchful gaze of God. But in our age we have spiritualised religion, and therefore God, thereby negating the importance of God for daily life. Heaven belongs to a level of reality 'far, far away' and is somewhere we go when we die. Whether it's the 'popular' view of heaven as sitting on clouds holding harps or the view espoused by Colton Burpo and Don Piper of a far away land of make believe and wish fulfillment, we have pushed heaven as far away from our everyday lives as possible. And that's not good."
If you really want to know what a religious person actually believes look at the hymns and songs they sing. We learn more from our hymn books and prayer books than we do from sermons or theological books. Few Christians read theological books or listen critically and thoughtfully to sermons, but nearly all sing in church. And the words of those hymns and songs both shape and reflect their faith. And if you want to know what the wider church believes, the denominational bodies to which many churches belong, then look at the prayer books and liturgies those bodies authorise. As our theological understanding of God, humanity and creation develop (as they must) those developments make their way into the wording of our prayers of praise and supplication. Recently, traditionalists were shocked by the suggestion that the Church of England baptismal liturgy should no longer asked parents to renounce "the devil and all his works", no doubt because the idea of a real, actual devil is no longer theologically fashionable. ' Similarly our understanding of the afterlife is reflected in our funeral liturgies and prayers and I have known for some time that within the Christian tradition the biblical emphasis on resurrection and new creation has been downplayed in more recent funeral liturgies where an emphasis on personal immortality has become more important. But I until I read Jon Levenson's wonderful book Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel I had no idea that the same tendency was evident in Judaism too. Levenson argues powerfully and persuasively that the way the Gevurot Prayer, which proclaims a faith in the "God who raises the dead", has been treated in various revisions of the prayer books of the Reform tradition in Judaism reflects a growing embarassment in Judaism with the idea of bodily Resurection. That simple affirmation of faith in the power of God to overcome even death itself has been replaced by affirmations of the value and power of the human person and the hope of 'immortality' within the hearts and minds of those who love us. This, Levenson argues, is a denial of the original biblical faith of Rabbinic Judaism. Instead of the belief in the God "who keeps faith with those who sleep in the dust" worshippers using the Reformed prayer book Gates of Prayer say the following words "We pray . . . for love through which we may all blossom into persons who have gained power over our own lives." Belief in personal autonomy and human flourishing have replaced faith in the power of God to defeat death. In this post I outline the various changes in the wording of the Gevurot prayer and discuss, with the help of Jon Levenson, the reasons why this has happened. The answers hold great importance for the way we, as Christians, respond to our historic faith in The Resurrection. "Given the solid biblical precedent for seeing the individual as altogether and properly mortal, why have liturgical innovations in modern Judaism so emphasized the immortality of the soul? Why have they not followed those streams in biblical literature that see the self as unitary and unable to survive its physical demise (that is, without supernatural intervention)? One answer surely lies in the vastly greater concern with the individual in modern thought. The notion, self-evident in much biblical literature, that God’s promise to a person can be fully realized in his descendants after his own death rubs against the grain of this characteristically but not uniquely modern attitude. That God’s promise to me may not be fulfilled in my own lifetime but only in that of my descendants or other kinfolk (including my nation) seems unjust today in ways that, for the most part, it did not in biblical times. However much it may offend the materialist orientation of much modern thought, the doctrine of personal immortality at least allows for the relative detachment of the individual from the group in ways with which many moderns feel more comfortable—and more comforted." Jon Levenson Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel p 14 Hope is a wonderful thing. It sustains us through disaster, grief and disappointment. It inspires change and enables faith to survive through the most appalling circumstances. The three greatest virtues says the apostle Paul are faith, hope and love. And his hope was very firmly based on the resurrection of Jesus. Paul was confident that because his life was inextricably interconnected with Christ's he too would share in a resurrection like Christ's. But that hope was not new to Paul (or Jesus). It was grounded in the ancient Hebrew bible, in passages in Daniel, Ezekiel and Isaiah, where the prophets offered hope to an exiled and oppressed people familiar with death and destruction, that God would, in the end, conquer death and lead them and all the righteous who had died to new life. God came to be seen not only as the God who blessed the righteous in the present, in this life, but as the God who could (and would) revive even the dead, saving bodies as well as minds and hearts and communities. In this post I examine the hope expressed in the remarkable passage sometimes referred to as the Little Apocalypse of Isaiah, where the prophet offers a profound understanding of God's victory over death and where we read one of the most powerful affirmations of resurrection hope in the bible. The reason a belief in resurrection is so important (as distinct from a belief in the immortality of the soul) is that without it, death remains the powerful constant of human life. To emphasise our escape from our bodies into a disembodied state of bliss "in heaven" is to say that death has the final word on bodily life. We have escaped, but we haven't triumphed over death. Death finally got to us - it stopped our lungs from taking in air, our hearts beating and our brains functioning and our eyes seeing etc etc. But we somehow "got away" in some reduced form, to a place where none of those things (hearts, lungs, brains, eyes) matter anymore. If we believe, as Plato did, that the body is a source of trouble and pain, then we might well feel content that death takes away embodied life, as long as it leaves us with our "souls". But if, as the people who put together the Hebrew bible believed (who had no notion of a 'soul'), without the body there is no meaningful human life, then death's continuing power over human bodily existence very much matters. For them, for God to fulfill his great promise to give "life" to his people, meant that at some point, God would have to destroy death itself.
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Archives
April 2016
GalleryThis blog is as much about images as it is about text. Below is a slideshow of the pictures and images used in this blog. Click on any of the pictures to go to the post where that image is featured.
PostsLocating Paradise #1 In a Garden, Far, Far Away
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #5 'Stuck in the Middle With You'
The Resurrection According to Rahner
Today You Will Be With Me in Paradise
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #4 'And Who by Fire'
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #3: Held in the Balance
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #2: Once, Twice, Three Times a Sinner
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #1: The Broad and Narrow Gates
Daily Dante 7: Many Rivers to Cross
Daily Dante 6: 'You Gotta Serve Somebody'
In Hell Everyone Can Hear You Scream. The Vision of Tundale #3
Teeth, Spikes and Cleavers: At the Sharp end of Hell. The Vision of Tundale #2
'No Pain No Gain': The Vision of Tundale #1
'Hellzapoppin':
Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #2 'It's The End of the World as We Know It (and we feel fine)'. Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #1
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #2 Blinded by the Light
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #1: Glorious and Immortal
Daily Dante 5: What the gates said.
Daily Dante 4: When I find myself in times of trouble
Daily Dante 3: I'll take you there
Daily Dante 2: Fierce creatures
Daily Dante 1: If you go down to the woods today
In Seventh Heaven or 'What Enoch Did Next'
A World of Fire and Ice: Heaven according to Enoch
The Power and the Glory: Visions of God as king in the Hebrew bible
The Beautiful Bestiary of Catherine Cleves: Monsters and Demons in detail.
Heaven is for Real: Heaven as a physical space up above the sky
Resurrecting the Dead or Reviving the Flowers? The loss of resurrection faith in Judaism.
The Defeat of Death #1: The promise of resurrection in the Isaiah Apocalypse.
The Defeat of Death #2: Death as a hostile power and promise of God's victory in Isaiah
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps: The 'Last Judgement' according to Stefan Lochner
Hell in the Hospital: The 'Last Judgement' of Rogier van der Weyden in the Beaune altarpiece.
'Hell' in the New Testament #2: The gates of Hades shall not prevail
The Hours of Catherine Cleves: Imagining hell and purgatory in Catherine's prayer book
'On Earth as in Heaven': The kingdom of God as a revelation of heaven
'Hell' in the New Testament #1: Gehenna
Lost in Translation #1: How the King James version got it so wrong about hell
Heaven is not our home
Domes, Depths and Demons: The cosmology of the Hebrew world
A Bigger God
"See you in Sheol" - Sheol, the common destination of all
Heaven, Hell and Christian Hope
BooksBelow are some of the books which have helped me the most in the research and writing for this blog. Click on any image to find out more about that book at its page on Amazon uk.
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