Seven hundred years ago, a 35-year-old poet embarked on a journey into the interior that took him through hell and purgatory to heaven. His account of that journey became a spiritual guide for a culture in transition, its vocabulary and imagery providing a new architecture for the soul, as art should do.The poem begins:
In the middle of our life's wayI found myself in a dark woodWhere the right way was lost.
appeals to me because it speaks as much to my need to disbelieve as to my need to believe. My need to disbelieve is … for me, part of what it means to be a person of faith. Disbelief helps set up protocols against idolatry. … The uncertainty invoked by The Divine Comedy … is not the divinizing of ambiguity (summed up by the inane comment "Everything is relative") but the placing of humility at the center of all our attempts to capture meanings in language.
Walter Truett Anderson describes this way of thinking as "postmodern-ironist": truth is socially constructed or "made," rather than "found," as in world-views that find truth through heritage, scientific inquiry, or attuning to nature and inner self.A "made" truth is like the canopy that was made to cover Truman in the movie, The Truman Show, a world that Truman discovers is fake through piecing together a "mosaic" of a different world. "The most astonishing thing of all about man's fictions," writes Ernest Becker in The Fragile Fiction, "is not that they have, from prehistoric times, hung like a flimsy canopy over his social world, but that he should have come to discover them at all."Being ironic, however, does not mean submitting to cynicism. The two are different, as pointed out by Gen-X author Douglas Coupland in a recent interview. "I'm ironic. I admit that. I'm Joe Ironic. But people confuse irony with cynicism, which is like battery acid. It just wrecks everything."An ironic, but uncynical view of our attempts to grasp the mystery of God may prove to be the starting point for a journey toward a new intellectual posture.Dante's poem is, like the postmodern transition, a journey from the hell of stuckness to the heaven of homecoming, which he likens to a white rose. Dante uses metaphor and allegory much as Jesus did to describe the Kingdom of God.I am beginning to see that expressing the eternal story in a postmodern world demands creativity as well as faith. Or, in the words of Alan Jones, "We need a way of dancing around those truths that cannot be spoken. That's why Dante wrote a poem."
Andrew Jones is the Project Director for The Boaz Project.
Related Elsewhere
Visit Books & Culture online at BooksandCulture.com or subscribe here.Those interested in Dante will likely also enjoy Robert Hollander's essay " Dante: A Party of One" in the April 1999 issue of First Things.A quick overview of Dante's life and works is available at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Digital Dante, Renaissance Dante in Print, and Britannica.com are much better, but be prepared to be sucked in for a while.Books & Culture Corner appears Mondays at ChristianityToday.com. Earlier Books & Culture Corners include:Who in Hell? | Theologian John Sanders considers the eternal fate of non-Christians. By John Wilson (Apr. 10, 2000) My Cab Ride With Gloria | Meeting a legend, tearfully. By Frederica Mathewes-Green (Apr. 3, 2000) I Read the News Today | Finding the most important story in headlines' sum. By John Wilson (Mar. 27, 2000) Peace Be With You | Looking beyond naivete and cynicism about peacemaking at Wheaton's Christianity and Violence conference (Mar. 20, 2000) Putting the Poor on the National Agenda | Ron Sider's timely proposals. By Amy L. Sherman (Mar. 13, 2000) "To Know the Universe" | Well, sort of. By John Wilson (Mar. 2, 2000) Guelzo's Lincoln Book a Winner | Established by Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman to honor the best historical work each year on Lincoln and the Civil War era, the prize is now in its tenth year. By Allen C. Guelzo (Feb. 21, 2000) Nancy Drew and the Wine-Dark Sea | The importance of good literature—and how to get young people to read it. By Sarah Cowie (Feb. 14, 2000) Spring in Purgatory: Dante, Botticelli, C. S. Lewis, and a Lost Masterpiece | The most popular illustration of Dante's "Divine Comedy" has remained effectively "lost" for 500 years—although millions have seen it and admired it. By Kathryn Lindskoog (Feb. 7, 2000)
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