Saint Peter gives Dante pass an exam

Today’s Poem of the Week went out to only one third of our subscribers. Ah, technology! Here it is again, for everyone!

I am still thinking of our Word of the Week, reason. Alexander Pope imagined that the American Indian, thinking of heaven, would picture it as a happy hunting ground, which he’d delight in, he and his dog. And then we’ve got people who imagine it as a baseball stadium — for ballplayers, that is, and the old joke is that Team Heaven has Lou Gehrig, Stan Musial, Christy Mathewson, Honus Wagner, Roberto Clemente, and even a repentant Bambino, so how could they possibly lose? “Easy,” says Satan. “I’ve got all the umpires.”

So today when I introduced my students at Thales College to Dante’s Paradiso, I asked them to note that the medieval imagination of that great poet shows Heaven as not like anything to be found on earth, and in fact much of Paradise is taken up with answering questions about good and evil, free will, the goodness of the material world, what it means to exist, what it means to be a created being, what is the nature of the human person, how the mind, by grace, can be raised to the contemplation of God himself, and indeed how God can be three Persons, and in the second, both God and Man incarnate. All these are philosophical and theological questions of a high order — which means that we’re in the Middle Ages for sure, with that extremely high view of reason.

“But we have science!” someone might cry out. Yes, sure, and so did they; though they hadn’t yet accepted the notion that domination of the material world was the most important use for the human mind. The point is that they thought that the range of reason was very broad indeed. It didn’t apply only to what you could measure or calculate. It applied to every feature of the universe, of human existence, and even, though necessarily in a limited way, to God himself; it is a divine power. We’re the ones who too often say that reason doesn’t apply to judging that Mozart was greater than Stephen Foster (though I love Foster), or that you can’t say that one sort of action (say, breaking a sacred vow) is objectively wrong, or that one society (the Amish, for instance) is more humane than another (a Soviet bureaucracy). We shouldn’t be so diffident — or we shouldn’t let physicists and chemists and such, and mathematicians (and you all must know by now that I delight in all things mathematical), fool us into thinking that their disciplines are the only ones that deliver the truth.

Anyway, the passage I’m giving you today ought to strike the modern reader with some surprise. Dante is in the sphere of the stars, and Saint Peter addresses him to question him about faith. Do you expect that it will all be a matter of saying, “I believe,” and that’s that? The examination Peter gives him is relentlessly rational. Peter plays what the university people of the time came to call the devil’s advocate; what Thomas Aquinas does in his Summa Theologica. You put the strongest position for what is not true, and then you answer it. I’ll stop here and let the passage speak for itself. The translation is my own, of course — would it be reasonable for me to give another?

Henry of Ghent, giving a philosophical lecture to students at the University of Bologna — and look at the couple who are chatting, and one who is snoozing!

A bachelor arms his wits and will not speak
   until the master gives the proposition,
   not to decide it but to show forth proof;
So while she spoke I mustered every reason,
   ready in arms for such a questioner
   and such a declaration.  "Speak, make clear,
Good Christian man, that that is what you are:
   tell, what is faith?"  At that I raised my brow
   unto the light that breathed this question forth,
Then glanced at Beatrice, who let me know
   with a prompt look that I should free the waters
   and let the well within me overflow.
"Grace given me to declare what I believe
   unto the high centurion," I began,
   "make my words well express what I conceive.
Father, as it was written by the true pen
   of your beloved brother Paul, who joined
   your work in setting Rome on the good line,
Faith is the substance of things hoped for and
   the argument of things not come to light.
   This is its essence, as I understand."
At that I heard, "Your thoughts are just and right,
   if you can tell me why he posits it
   as substance first, then as an argument."
And I responded, "The profundities
   of Heaven I have been generously shown
   are so deeply concealed from human eyes,
Their essence is a matter of faith alone,
   whereon our high hope builds its testament,
   so 'substance' is a proper term, for one;
And from the tenets of this faith we draw
   conclusions -- with no other sight to see.
   Thus it is justly called an 'argument.'"
"If men could understand so perfectly
   the truth that doctrine wins them down on earth,
   their wit would have no place for sophistry."
So did that love-enkindled fire breathe forth,
   then added, "You have thus far run the course
   to try this coin, its metal and the weight,
But tell me if you have it in your purse."
   "I do -- with such a luster and so sound,
   I have no maybes that the coin rings true."
"This precious jewel," came from the profound
   splendor that shone before me, "on whose gain
   is founded every other virtue -- whence
Did you receive it?"  "From the generous rain,"
   I answered, "of the Holy Spirit, shed
   on the old parchment and the new; its train
Of reasoning has so convinced my mind,
   conclusions clear and sharp as any sword,
   all other proofs seem blunted at the end."
"The ancient and the new," at that I heard,
   "those premises that led you to this faith --
   why do you take them for God's holy word?"
"The works that followed have disclosed the truth,"
   said I, "for Nature never forged the steel
   or banged the anvil to accomplish those."
"What makes you sure they really happened?  Tell.
   They alone testify," he answered me.
   "You call to witness what you seek to prove."
"Had the world turned to Christianity
   without a single miracle, this alone
   would outweigh all the rest a hundredfold,
For you were poor and hungry, entering on
   the field to sow the holy seed," said I,
   "which once gave wine and now is turned to thorn."

[Heaven resounds with joy, and Saint Peter asks Dante to tell him WHAT he believes.  The canto ends thus.]

      "I believe in one God,
   sole and eternal, who was never moved
   but moves all Heaven with love and with desire;
Physics and metaphysics have not proved,
   alone, such faith for me: it also comes
   given me by the truth that rained from Heaven
Through Moses, through the prophets, through the Psalms,
   the evangelists, and you whose fostering words
   the Holy Ghost inspired; and I believe
In three eternal Persons, and in these
   one essence, so completely one and three,
   they suffer in conjunction 'are' and 'is.'
Of this deep truth of the divinity
   I touch on now, my mind has borne the seal
   the gospel teaching has impressed on me.
This is the spark, this is the principle
   that spills out into such a living flame
   it glitters like a star within my soul."
When a lord listens to what pleases him,
   soon as his servant finishes he'll fling
   his arms around him for the happy news --
So did he bless me now, so did he sing
   three times encircling me with happy light,
   that apostolic lamp at whose command
I'd spoken what had brought him such delight!

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