Dante and Creation: Encountering God in Eden, Featuring Matthew Rothaus Moser

"[T]he first aim of Dante, in his landscape imagery [in the Earthly Paradise], is to show evidence of this perfect liberty, and of the purity and sinlessness of the new nature, converting pathless ways into happy ones."

- John Ruskin

 

For the first episode back from the summer Rachel is joined by Theology Professor Matthew Rothaus Moser to discuss Dante's Divine Comedy and its themes of nature and Creation.

Matthew Rothaus Moser is Theology Professor at Azusa Pacific University. He has a recently published title Love Itself is Understanding: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theology of the Saints and has a forthcoming title Dante and the Poetic Practice of Theology.

To mark the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, in this episode Rachel and Matthew discuss the depictions of nature in The Divine Comedy, in particular the end of Purgatorio where Dante enters Eden. We trace how Dante builds the imagery of forests, trees, rivers and more over the course of the Comedy. We discuss the various themes and theology that Dante is exploring with this imagery, from humanity’s current state of exile from the Garden of Earthly Delights, to the power of natural contemplation to turn us towards God, to the ways in which God reveals himself to us through his creation.

Hosts: Rachel Sherlock, Matthew Rothaus Moser

Follow me on social media: @seekingwatson

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @M_Rothaus_Moser

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Music: Ashton Manor by Kevin MacLeod

 

Works Mentioned:

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

La Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri

Sacred and Profane Love Podcast: Episodes 32,33,34

The Divine Ideas Tradition in Christian Mystical Theology by Mark A. McIntosh

“Narrator and Landscape in the "Commedia": An Approach to Dante's Earthly Paradise”

Kenneth A. Bleeth

After Dinner Scholar Podcast: Dante: “The Infinite Beauty of the World” with Dr. Jason Baxter

Dante: Knowing Oneself, Knowing God, by Christian Moev

“Scripture as Enigma: Biblical Allusion in Dante's Earthly Paradise” by Eleanor Cook

“All Smiles: Poetry and Theology in Dante” by Peter S. Hawkins

 Orchestra: or a Poeme of Dauncing by Sir John Davies

 

What We’re Enjoying At the Moment

Matthew

Looking East in Winter Contemporary Thought and the Eastern Christian Tradition by Rowan Williams

The California Mountains

 

Rachel

The Rat Catcher’s Olympics by Colin Cotterill