Reclaiming a Classic
In re-reading of the Divine Comedy as a theological treatise, Denys Turner adds another entry to his multi-work thesis, argues for expanding the landscape of medieval theology, and re-imagines the meaning of one of classic literature’s most iconic poems.
A Joint Review by Peter Blair and Sara Holston
Family Resemblances
When it comes to those Americans who have read any part of The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, it is likely that they were taught the first canto, the Inferno, only, and that they were taught to read it as, so to speak, secular literature. In his new book Dante, the Theologian, Denys Turner says this is all wrong, and he urges us to rethink theology as a result of rethinking Dante.
As the title indicates, Dante is, for Turner, a theologian. He is not a theologically informed poet, in the way modern readers might think about, say, Catholic novelists like Evelyn Waugh or Flannery O’Connor. Rather, he is precisely a theologian just as much as Augustine, Aquinas, Bonaventure, or any figure you might care to name. This admittance of Dante into the theological pantheon is of a piece with Turner’s exposition of Julian of Norwich in his previous book Julian of Norwich, Theologian. These acts of inclusion, Turner says, require us to change our definition of theology so that it becomes capacious enough to embrace Dante and Julian alongside other canonical figures.
For Turner, that is, there is not a single defining characteristic by which we can determine what is and isn’t theology. Theology, rather, is a field of human thought defined by family resemblances. In this vision, the poetic has just as much claim as the scholastic, the monastic, and the mystical to be considered a valid mode of theology, and the Divine Comedy to be just as much a theological source as the Summa Theologica. Turner, then, wants to throw open the doors to admit vastly more claimants into the theological family. Indeed, in a footnote he accuses himself of having previously and wrongly denied the title of theologian to a particular thinker (Jan van Ruusbroec) on account of exactly the sort of narrow definition of theology he is rejecting in Dante, the Theologian.
In addition to, or by way of, making this case, Turner spends much of the book offering a first-order interpretation of what Dante’s theological contributions are—especially, of course, to our understanding of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. The book contains helpful discussions throughout, on topics such as the difference between moral self-control and transformation by grace and the contrast between hellish self-knowledge and repentant self-knowledge. The splashiest claims, however, come in the section on Hell. Here Turner identifies himself as a universalist and argues that we can gain theologically by Dante’s understanding of Hell even if we don’t think Hell exists. In this, he explicitly disagrees with David Bentley Hart, who, Turner suggests, is wrong to hold that a universalist should reject (and hold as theologically useless) the Inferno.
Perhaps unexpectedly, given that Turner devoted a previous (excellent) book to Aquinas, Aquinas is a foil for Turner’s eschatological views throughout the book. He argues with him on Hell, and he suggests that Dante has a better understanding of the relationship between Hell and Purgatory than Aquinas does. Regardless of what readers make of his critiques of Aquinas, however, the temperance and respect with which he offers them make a refreshing change from more polemical approaches to the debate over universalism. Even while disagreeing with Aquinas, for example, Turner rejects some of the grounds on which others have criticized Aquinas as weak.
Finally, in this book Turner continues what you could consider his defining life’s work: upholding the legacy of the great 20th century Dominican Herbert McCabe, who was so clearly a decisive impact on Turner’s thought, by discussing certain core McCabeian themes like the relationship between divine and human freedom and the limits of what human speech can say about God. In some ways, this makes Turner’s latest effort seem as much a book about his own life-long preoccupations as about Dante himself. But if you, like me, agree that these themes are of fundamental theological and spiritual importance, a new book by Turner finding those same themes in another classic Christian figure is always worth reading. – Peter Blair
It is only in light of the apotheosis of Dante’s journey through the afterlife that each of the earlier stages serves its purpose, and only by completing those steps that Dante has the opportunity to reach the end.
Bold Claims
Reading Dante as “secular literature” generally positions the poem primarily as a work of art and focuses discussion of it on the conversations typical of engaging an artifact as such. For instance, the most recent description of Dartmouth College’s course on the Divine Comedy reads:
Is there an afterlife? What is it like? Who may describe the hereafter in this world and shape my behavior? These are the ever-present questions that Dante’s Comedy poses. The course’s central themes will be exile and paradise: Exile means both Dante’s own banishment and the universal pilgrimage of life; paradise is the unattainable homecoming of true happiness. Students will explore the poem, its sources, and reception, developing a rigorous yet personal response to Dante’s Comedy.
Note the emphasis on more political readings of the poem: the theme of exile and Dante’s own banishment, and on the relevance of the audience’s response: how does this change my thinking on who can shape my behavior? Focusing on the poem’s content, sources, and reception is to overlook its potential assertions about the world and the divine. Turner’s claim that the work isn’t just influenced by Christian teachings, but also has merit as a theological treatise in its own right, proposes not only a radical shift in our understanding of medieval theology, but also in how we approach the poem itself.
Most frameworks for approaching the Comedy break the poem up into its three parts—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso—and even at times into single scenes—who has Dante chosen to place in hell, and in which circle? Who demonstrates true wisdom in paradise? After all, the Comedy is easiest to grasp at the beginning and becomes increasingly esoteric through each of its parts. The Inferno features recognizable historical figures suffering torments designed to reflect their well-known vices. The Paradiso describes paradise as spread across the planetary bodies of the heavens, in an image Dante himself insists is symbolic. Studying the Inferno in isolation, a reader can draw profound conclusions about Dante’s political agenda, while it can be difficult to engage the Paradiso without a deep understanding of medieval theology and Christian mysticism.
Turner’s theological reading, by contrast, depends on considering the poem as a unified whole. By drawing connections across the three acts, always relating them back to his overall premise of Comedy-as-theology, Turner paints a picture of a self-reflexive kind of poem. Without the Paradiso, he says, the Purgatorio is merely an extension of hell—and hell itself a cruelty. It is only in light of the apotheosis of Dante’s journey through the afterlife that each of the earlier stages serves its purpose, and only by completing those steps that Dante has the opportunity to reach the end. To Turner, then, each component is indispensable—removing any of the Comedy’s major thirds, or any of its individual scenes, would be to lose an essential piece of the puzzle, without which the whole is rendered unrecognizable and its message compromised.
Strong as Turner’s case is, though, it remains a bold claim, and it’s tough to imagine Dante agreeing wholeheartedly with the argument. After all, it rests in significant part on Turner’s assertion that it is not only Dante-narrated, the character within the story, who undergoes a journey of self-discovery through the afterlife, but that by writing the Comedy, Dante-narrator, the man putting pen to paper, is undergoing his own transformation. The act of writing the Comedy takes Dante-narrator through the same redemptive journey that Dante-narrated undergoes in perfect parallel.
Turner’s assertion is certainly possible—to his point, the dearth of scholarship on Comedy-as-theology and Dante-as-theologian is such that there isn’t much to dispute the idea. But it seems a bit of a stretch to think that Dante wrote the Comedy primarily as a redemptive act. Perhaps this is merely the unfamiliarity of the idea of that Dante is a theologian and the Comedy his theological treatise, and that settling into that conception of the poet will enable us to consider how his own faith and spiritual opinions shaped his poem. But Turner is perhaps too extreme in his insistence that the writing of the Comedy constituted its own kind of harrowing journey akin to Dante-narrated’s trek through hell (although it is a sentiment towards which, as a writer, I find myself increasingly sympathetic); that only by writing the Comedy can Dante-narrator become worthy of paradise.
Regardless, Turner’s analysis adds a new dimension to the Comedy that enriches the overall conversation about a work we’ve been discussing for centuries. I’d love to see others pick up the thread—either to challenge Turner’s bolder arguments, or to build on the groundwork he’s laid. – Sara Holston
Peter Blair is the Program Director of the Augustine Collective and the Director of Veritas Institute at the Veritas Forum. Before joining Veritas, he worked at the American Interest and the Thomistic Institute. He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of Fare Forward, and currently is Editor-at-Large for FF. He tweets at @PeterAWBlair.
Sara Holston works on an interactive story game in San Francisco, CA, and is Managing Editor of Fare Forward.
Dante the Theologian was published by Cambridge University Press on December 15, 2022. You can purchase a copy from the publisher here.
