The Theme in the Work
Paradise speaks of God in a way the other two canticles did not need: through light, and through the impossibility of saying it. The first verse of the canticle states the thesis, that the glory of him who moves all things penetrates the universe and shines more in one part and less in another, and the inequality of light lies in the one who receives it, not in the one who gives it.
The opening of the poem already states the thesis (canto I).La gloria di colui che tutto move / per l’universo penetra, e risplende / in una parte più e meno altrove.The glory of him who moves all things penetrates the universe and shines more in one part and less in another, and it is this inequality of light, not an absence of it, that the ascent through the nine heavens measures and explains canto by canto.
This thesis unfolds across the nine heavens. In canto X, the Trinity opens the canto: the first and ineffable Worth, looking at the Son with the Love that the two breathe forever, made all that moves in mind and space with such order that one cannot see it without tasting it. In XIII, the wheel of the wise sings, and what it sings is said by negation, not Bacchus nor Paean, but three persons in divine nature, and in one person both the divine and the human.
Lì si cantò non Bacco, non Peana, / ma tre persone in divina natura, / e in una persona essa e l’umana, there was sung not Bacchus, not Paean, but three persons in divine nature, and in one person the divine and the human.
In XXIV, Dante's creed affirms one God, alone and eternal, who moves the whole heaven without being moved, with love and with desire.
E io rispondo: Io credo in uno Dio / solo ed etterno, che tutto ’l ciel move, / non moto, con amore e con disio, and I answer: I believe in one God, alone and eternal, who moves the whole heaven, unmoved, with love and with desire.
In XXVIII, God appears as a point of light, without size and without form, and Beatrice sums up the relation of the cosmos to him in one sentence: heaven and all nature depend on him.
un punto vidi che raggiava lume / acuto sì, che ’l viso ch’elli affoca / chiuder conviensi per lo forte acume, I saw a point that radiated light so sharp that the eye it inflames must close because of its strong acuity.
In XXIX, Beatrice says why God created: not to gain an increase of good, but so that his splendor could say I subsist. The angels are mirrors in which the eternal worth is divided, remaining one in itself as before.
Vedi l’eccelso omai e la larghezza / de l’etterno valor, poscia che tanti / speculi fatti s’ha in che si spezza, / uno manendo in sé come davanti», now see the sublime and the largeness of the eternal worth, since it made for itself so many mirrors in which it is broken, remaining one in itself as before.
In XXX, the Empyrean is pure light, intellectual, full of love. In XXXIII, the poet enters the light and sees the universe gathered into a volume by love, and then three circles of a single measure. What he can say is always less than what he saw, and the final figure is not a doctrine, it is a movement. Between the first verse and the last the poem changes its question: it stops asking what God is and begins asking what can be seen when one sees. The reader follows the pilgrim from thesis to vision without ever having, at any point, a closed definition.
Who Embodies It
Beatrice is the teacher who explains the order of the universe, which resembles God. Saint Peter is the examiner of the God who is believed. Saint Bernard and the Virgin Mary are the mediation through which one reaches the light. Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure are the doctors who say it in two voices.
Where It Appears
- Canto I: The poet opens the canticle with the glory that moves all things and declares that memory does not keep pace with the intellect when it draws near desire.
- Canto X: Dante describes the Trinity, the first Worth that, looking at the Son with Love, made all things with order.
- Canto XIII: Thomas explains that what endures and what perishes is the splendor of a single idea that God generates by loving.
- Canto XIV: Dante offers a holocaust to God with his whole heart, and the sacrifice is accepted by two ruddy rays.
- Canto XXIV: Dante professes to Peter one God, alone and eternal, who moves the heaven without being moved, and the Trinity in one essence.
- Canto XXVII: The whole Paradise sings glory to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and Dante is drunk with hearing and seeing.
- Canto XXVIII: Dante sees God as a point of sharp light surrounded by nine circles of fire, and Beatrice says that heaven depends on it.
- Canto XXIX: Beatrice says that God created without gaining any good, so that his splendor might say I subsist.
- Canto XXX: Dante enters the Empyrean, defined by Beatrice as pure intellectual light full of love, and joy that surpasses all sweetness.
- Canto XXXIII: Dante sees in the depth of the light the universe gathered into a volume by love, and then three circles of one measure.
Where the Readings Diverge
The Eagle answers the doubt about the man of the Indus without explaining God's justice, and the reader is left with the question.
The text supports two readings of how Dante speaks of God. In the first, the discourse on God is made by negation, by image, and by limit: the poet says what God is not, shows what he is not with comparisons, and gives up describing him. In the second, the poem is a theology: the Trinity, creation, the order of the choirs and the final vision form a system, and poetry is the way of teaching it. Both hold, and the end of the poem does not choose: what is seen in the depth of the light is a simple light, and what is said is of it.