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Document Details : Title: Het brandpunt van waar en wanneer Subtitle: Dante over God Author(s): LOGISTER, Wiel Journal: Tijdschrift voor Theologie Volume: 48 Issue: 3 Date: 2008 Pages: 237-261 DOI: 10.2143/TVT.48.3.3203498 Abstract : This article is built on the insight that the dynamic and structure of the Divine Comedy only become evident in the section on Paradise. It is there that Dante speaks of God. The article first uses the nature of the Empyrean (tenth sphere) and the Primum Mobile (ninth sphere) to sketch the poet’s philosophical and theological horizon. The Empyrean does not speak of God as an independent reality far outside the world, but as a presence revealed as ‘being for’. The Primum Mobile contains a sketch of a primal model for the way this presence can fulfil time and space. God may not be thought of as opposite time and space but as present in time and space, as a light distributed over time and space. This light’s nature and power – and thus that of God – are explained in the Sun’s sphere, that holds a central position in the first eight spheres. The cantos on the sun team with trinitarian expressions, each of which puts forward the mysterious dynamic of ‘being for’ in its own manner. The dancing and moving choirs of theologians that appear under the direction of Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura reflect fundamental aspects of this. It is striking that these choirs are composed of thinkers that augment and refine one another. Dante reflects the nature of the light in the figures of Francis, Dominic and Solomon in still another way. They show that ‘being for’ requires a spirituality of poverty, meekness and prayer. At its end, the article argues that rather than just repeating theological viewpoints, Dante wrestled creatively with their meaning and strength. For him God was not a lucid and perspicuous notion. The Florentine poet was not a fundamentalist dogmatician. And yet..., is he not distant from our own times, from our own unknowing, from a poet like T.S. Eliot? The author believes that Dante is not a medieval character alienated from real life, but is more a seeker, like us, than first impressions suggest. |
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