Paradiso Themes

Unlike language in the first two cantiche, Paradiso focuses more on the inadequacy of language in expressing God and his blessed. Most of what Dante encounters cannot be adequately described in wor...

In Dante's Christian universe, every motion—from the petty choices of humans to the cosmic revolutions of the stars—is motivated by love. Thus love for God gives the entire universe its proper...

Christian theology claims that the universe is very strictly ordered because it reflects the mind of God, its creator. Every action and movement—from the smallest of human acts to the enormous or...

In Heaven, one must simply come to terms with the fact that mortals cannot understand everything they see. For Dante, this means trusting to faith. The empirical logic, based on the senses, by whic...

The difference between the free will of the blessed and that of other men is that the blessed have aligned their free will with God's, which is Fate. Thus, they are content wherever God places them...

In Dante's vision of Heaven, souls do not resemble material bodies, as they do in Hell or Purgatory, but are depicted as rays of light. These lights grow ever brighter the higher up one ascends, be...

Perspective is the most important element to possess in the act of learning. It allows one to see things as they truly are, and to perceive their big-picture significance. In a Christian context, t...

The biggest connection one can draw between Divine Justice and the human legal system is that the relationship between the people and the governing body is much the same. The citizens and the state...

According to Dante, time is a bad thing for mortals. Paradiso claims that since God created the universe and time itself, and nothing can be more perfect than what He creates, then the passing of t...

The act of creation in Paradiso is seen as a work of art. Artistic pieces—like the Cross, Eagle, Rose, music of the spheres, and the universe itself—are meticulously crafted and ordered, each p...