Jordan Paul
In the Paradiso, Dante is trying to get the reader to understand that Heaven is so much bigger than just getting a few happy kicks for all eternity. It’s very difficult to give an account of Heaven. If you understand Hell as anti-community chaos, then you can understand that Heaven is the opposite of that. But because we have never experienced Heaven, I think it is impossible to give an account of Heaven that is not in some sense also an account of Hell.
— Denys Turner
Friends,
In a recent interview with Commonweal (which really is worth reading in full), former Yale and Cambridge theology professor Denys Turner offers his insights into Dante’s Divine Comedy. In the interview, he contrasts Dante’s depictions of Hell and Purgatory vs. Heaven.
Following the quote at the top, he goes on to say that Dante can write about Purgatory so well because that’s where we are. Words fail Dante in Hell because it lacks anything— meaning, truth, etc.—that would allow him to write poetry.
Words fail Dante in Heaven because Heaven is ultimately “unsayable” and so much more than, as the interviewer puts it “a place where they will see God face to face and as a place where they will be reunited with family and friends—though not necessarily in that order.”
In the Letter to the Hebrews, St. Paul discusses the meaning of faith and gives examples of faithful acts and people from the Old Testament. In the portion appointed for today, he writes about Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. In the middle of that portion, he writes: “Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.” The city, of course, is Heaven.
There are not a lot of direct depictions of Heaven in scripture. There’s something to the idea that any description ultimately fails. As far as depictions go, I think the best we have is from St. Thomas Aquinas’ description of the beatific vision: “The most perfect union with God is the most perfect human happiness and the goal of the whole of the human life, a gift that must be given to us by God.”
As we remember those of great faith that came before us, we should rejoice that they have attained that happiness and look forward to the day we do, too.
In Christ,
—Jordan
