The Transcendent and Spiritual has to be the overall picture and foundation, to create a balanced, True and harmonious Cosmology, is Dante’s claim in Canto IV of Paradiso.
After Beatrice’s long speech on the Pilgrim’s two doubts, he responds with a very high praise of her words and Divine Wisdom. The speech has lasted for exactly 33 tercets, very likely a symbolic number for what in some ways is a Holy Speech of Revelation, prompted by the tercet likening Beatrice to the Prophet Daniel in the Biblical Stories. And the Pilgrim uses a very lofty language here:
«O amanza del primo amante, o diva»,
diss’io appresso, «il cui parlar m’inonda
e scalda sì, che più e più m’avviva,
Meaning: “O Lover of the First Love, O Goddess, said I thereafter, that of what you speak overflows me and warms me thus, that it more and more me revivifies”. So Dante is communicating several things here at once, first by elevating Beatrice into Divine Speech, and thus indicating that what we have just heard and read, in some ways is the speech of G-d itself, channeled through her. It is direct Divine Wisdom that has been uncovered, and it warms and overflows the Pilgrim with new spiritual life, more and more.
Dante then goes on to making a much deeper claim; that our intellect will never be at rest without the illumination of Divine Wisdom, which gives us the Truth that nothing outside of it can provide in the same fulfilling way. This echoes from St. Augustine’s “My heart will not rest until it rests in thee”, but it also makes an argument that in the long term we need to build our cosmological foundation in the Transcendent, to have both the necessary illumation, and the necessary stability, for a complete cosmology and apprehension of Being. And he further states that we have the capacity and are able to reach this foundation of Divine Truth, and if we choose not to, every desire will be “frustrated” in perpetuity (ciascun disio sarebbe frustra).
He further states that once we start building a new foundation in the Mystery and the “Beyond”, there will be little “buds” of doubts, growing at the root of the Truth. And these buds are what will bring us and push us up higher, as part of the larger ascent. The doubts will bring us up to the highest top eventually, after bringing us from “peak to peak”, or “al sommo pinge noi di collo in collo”.
So with this groundbreaking idea of where to build your foundation and overall cosmology, not in the scientific or materialistic world view, but indeed in the Transcendent and the Divine Mystery, the Pilgrim then has more questions he would like to ask. And now knowing that they are exactly the keys and the path to higher understanding.
The Pilgrim asks about the possibility for mitigating a broken vow with other means, and the response from Beatrice is intensely beautiful and her eyes are so full of burning sparks of Divine Love, that the Pilgrim’s eyes are almost blinded and he almost faints. Which in some ways could be read as his inner Spiritual Life now have become much richer and more glowing of Divine Wisdom, after Beatrice’s holy speech of 33 tercets, and his new understanding of where to put his “heavy” foot in the understanding of Being.
So in short, the Pilgrim is slowly finding the “foothold” in the Divine Realm, acknowledges that Beatrice’s speech is far beyond his own capabilities, and understands that questions are the path to further ascent and Divine Illimunation.
At the same time, he also realizes that these energies are tremendously powerful, and is reminded to be patient, as he now almost fainted and lost his eyesight from the new insights, into the wisdom and beauty of the Heavens.
As we keep moving into the Sphere of the Sun in Canto XI of Paradiso, it’s becoming more clear both how central the Theosis is for Dante’s Cosmology as a Telos, but also how this is the key historical change after the crucifixion – the event that opened up the possibility of transforming your soul and gradually unify with the Heavens, in the Earthly Life.
One of the gradual realizations in the journey through Dante’s Comedy is how he is putting the unity with the Divine, the Deification, or the Theosis, at the very center of human life and his poetic narrative through the spiritual realms. And this also means that even as a Catholic work, Christ is in one way not at the center of it, but functions more as an example, and the revolutionary event that opened up this possibility for individuals and humanity. In Dante’s view, the crucifixion is the event that broke the “lock” since the Fall in the Garden of Eden, and opened up the Heavens for us again.
This view becomes clear in for example St. Thomas speech in Canto XI, when he talks about the Providence that governs the world with such wisdom, that every aspect of the things created are decided before they reach their own natural purpose or telos. Every aspect of the creation is thought through and the purpose and fulfillment is already seen before it is taking place.
And from there Thomas goes straight to the following argument:
però che andasse ver’ lo suo diletto
la sposa di colui ch’ad alte grida
disposò lei col sangue benedetto,
Meaning: “therefore it moved towards its delight, the spouse of him who with loud screams, married her with his blessed blood”, which means the Church or community of followers, united with Ch-st on the cross, with the passion. But it also means that the unity of the soul and G-d opened up through this event, as a re-established bridge or the new connection between Heaven and Earth. From this moment on, you as a person can move inwards in contemplation and spiritually discover, gradually align with, and ultimately unite with the Divine because of this event. Which points to several much higher levels of Telos for humanity, the earth, the solar system and perhaps even the cosmos in a larger sense. From this point on in history, on our swirling little planet around the sun, there are creatures with a spiritual awareness and participation in the spiritual realm, who are also aiming for an experience of deification and unity, with G-d. And again in Dante’s view, this is the sole event in human history, that dramatically changes the trajectory of the human endeavor, and puts us on a path to a much higher form of purpose or Telos.
Seen from this perspective, we can also see the earlier words of Emperor Justinian in the sphere of Mercury even clearer; The role of the Roman Empire to create the conditions for this event to happen, and the possibility and necessity for human civilization and humanity at large, to now aim for this theosis and alignment with the Transcendent Truth and Good, which is now opened.
In other words; when Thomas starts his explanation of one of the Pilgrim’s doubts or questions, he outlines the overall picture as 1) The Divine Providence moves the world and shapes it, and 2) how Providence arranged for the event of the Crucifixion, to move humanity forward and enabling the deep spiritual transformation for humans through the possibility of Theosis. And this movement is what the Divine Comedy is all about, in both its narrative and its core message or purpose, to guide us from isolation in the dark forest, through one hundred cantos of learning and discovery, and into the final unity with the Divine, the eternal spirit, the infinite realm of Being, from which we arise, and towards which the soul is longing back – in the framework of both St. Aquinas and Dante’s cosmology.
So from this point on in the Paradiso, at the level of the Sun, this idea has taken the center stage as where we are headed, and we are given the practical and spiritual wisdom needed to pursue this goal. The beginning presentation of St. Francis reflects this as well – his renunciation of material wealth and pursuit of a simpler life in contemplation and aimed towards something higher, becomes one of countless examples of the practical path towards this unity, in this case through simplicity and devotion, and love.
As a final point one can also ponder how different this overall framing of Catholicism is, compared to more contemporary strains of Christianity. Dante is proposing and emphasizing not a moral framework with dogmas and a hope for something in the afterlife, but a glowing and living change in your own life right now, with the path for deep spiritual transformation that will renew and enrich your soul, your being, your experience of life and your relationships, as a gift and a blessing here in the Earthly. And also as a joyful and illuminating way of gradually uniting with the Transcendent and discover the real Truth and Beauty in your own life, increasingly merging your soul with the Highest Heavens.
When the Pilgrim talks with Carlo Martello in the Sphere of Venus, they quickly move from purpose vs. randomness in the Universe, to the shaping forces that must originate in G-d. And Dante connects this to something as simple as why offspring are often different from their parents. The idea of Telos is working on all scales.
What starts as a simple question from the Pilgrim about why children sometimes are so different from their parents, or more specifically why virtuous people can have so viceful children, quickly ends up as a solid argument for G-d, from the basic question of whether the Cosmos is Randomly developed or not.
After the assumption that such a total randomness would create “ruin, not skillful craft“ in the Cosmos we are observing, Carlo Martello takes an abrupt step back and starts talking about human beings and citizenship, in terms of belonging to a community and thriving as person when living according to your nature, and thus playing a generative and contributing part of the community. On a smaller scale this is partly referring to Aristotle’s philosophy and thoughts that happiness comes from living “according to nature”, but it also combines the ideas of a personal “telos” or meaning/intention/purpose to the purpose on a larger scale, in this case to that of the community. For the community or society to function according to its purpose, the citizens have to be aligned with their own telos as well. And this scales upwards, meaning that for humanity to function according to its telos and purpose, there needs to be happy thriving societies that are properly aligned with both telos and the transcendent truths.
But where things further connects is the following: that for a community to function, there needs to be a variety of personality types and natures, to create a varied and thriving whole. And if children were “carbon copies” of their parents in every respect, this variety would be distorted as a lawyer would have maybe 3-4 lawyers, a king would have maybe 4-5 princes, and a baker would produce several baker children. So this is used as an argument that by necessity – offspring need to be varied to secure this variety in the community and society overall, and interestingly this is a form of purpose/telos argument for a biological reality which is very easy to observe, just looking at how different siblings can be or are from each other, in nearly every family one looks at. So to sum up this part: the purpose of communities is dependent on this variety, which then shapes reality. One might say it shapes it through evolutionary survival of those communities that do have this variety, over those communities where children were too alike their parents, not just by physical appearance, but also in terms of nature and personality.
When this is established, one can connect the dots at a much bigger scale; that this fact of differences between people and their offspring is an effect of a bigger telos for communities, societies, humanity – and also then for the cosmos as a whole, at a tiny microscopic scale granted, but indeed connected. And the implications of this perspective is once again breath-taking, as Dante thus connects your personal role and purpose and telos, to that of the fate the entire living Universe – to fulfill its richness and overall Telos. Meaning that how you live and how you choose to exercise your free Will, is indeed important and connected to the long term course of the Cosmos, through its potential ripple effects through time and space.
But in addition to this, and there is more, one might look at the interplay between purpose and biological evolution, which is a complicated field even today, to determine which way the forces are working. But if we step back to the premise – that no purpose and pure randomness is falsified through merely observing the incredible sophistication and astronomical improbability of the Universe, and even more now after the last 100 years of new science, this dynamic is already established. If the Cosmos is not random, it is influenced or guided by immaterial forces. Which then “proves” that there is a purpose or telos shaping the creation and evolution of the Cosmos. And then we are down to the exact mechanism through which this is happening.
Again here, Dante has given us at least a suggestion, through Beatrice’s speech about matter itself. Matter is not “dead matter” randomly created, but a combination of “potential matter” and the “virtues” or “guiding immaterial principles”, which when unified – creates the emergence of physical matter. In other words, Dante has already explained the mechanism and interplay between the immaterial forces, or “intelligences” as was the term often used in Medieval and Ancient vocabulary, which determines or influences the emergence of the material world. So what this means, is that if there is a purpose, the material world is shaped by forces (or “intelligences”), that do really exist. This follows from strict logic. And if we know that they exist, Dante would simply say, they need an immaterial, eternal and infinite source, which is then G-d. And all of this follows a clear line of logic, if the Cosmos cannot be Randomly developed.
So to sum up all of this; A non-random Universe requires shaping forces of the material world, and these forces must “come from” somewhere, or have a “source” somewhere, which is how we come to G-d, as Dante sees it.
And as a quite almost humoristic twist, Dante lands this whole question from the simple wonder he had, of why Carlo Martello’s brother Roberto was so viceful, when his grandfather Carlo I was such a wise and virtuous ruler. Which again points to another idea – that the biggest questions of all, are reflected and shines through on the smallest and even mundane scales as well. One can discover the deepest Truths of being and of the Cosmos, in simple everyday scenes or dynamics, that can open up these insights or even revelations, on the journey up to the Heavens.
In the opening of Canto XIII Dante starts with a "fresh page", and asks us to imagine what he is about to say.
He then describes the 15 brightest stars beautifully shining around him in all directions in the constellations, in part as a reminder of the spiritual light that could be found in every part and every direction of your life.
Then he describes the Chariot (in the literal meaning the big dipper) that circles the North Star and is always visible for us, in the sense that it never goes below the horizon.
This could also be read as the Chariot of the Church, or Theology, and thus also the Sun itself in Paradiso with its two "wheels" of the mind and the heart; of the reason/intellect with the Dominicans, and with the spiritual/love/mysticism with the Franciscans. The unity of these two dimensions and realms as a chariot, is what will bring us closer to G-d and the Divine Light, shining immovably above us as the final aim of the Journey.
And again Dante's verse connects us to our often solitary moments of looking up at the sky at night - and then makes it an inviting image of Divine Illumination, and a symbol of the ascent up towards the highest Heaven, and towards G-d.
A Glorious Day for America yesterday - on January 2nd, 2024.
Truth and Justice defeated deceit and fraud yesterday, after a Harvard President was revealed having plagiarized over 50 passages of her work over 30 years, including her Doctoral Thesis (bizarrely enough even in the acknowledgements!).
