Dr. Junius Johnson

So it requires the most out of you in terms of your knowledge of what they're talking about.

And you've really got to think theologically to track with it.

And even among Christian readers of the poem today, a lot of times the level of theological reflection that Dante's assuming that you would bring to it is not there.

So one of the things that I hope we'll be able to do in this episode today, my big goal, is to show you that Paradiso is not boring, but that it is the most interesting and exciting of them and that it's well worth your time.

And as Catherine said two episodes ago, if you have to leave one out, don't leave this one out.

Leave out Inferno before you leave out Paradiso because that's at the heart of what this whole project is.

So with that in mind, Jonathan, when we were doing this with Peter, he did this exercise.

This has always stuck with me.

He asked us all, he gave us this homework assignment to go home and think about an image of blessedness and bring it back.

And then he started the class going around and asking people to share their images of blessedness.

And that was a really, really cool thing.

And really, I had two.

The first one was liquid light.

And the second one was the moment of transition from the third movement to the fourth movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, when it just sort of is churning and churning and then it just builds and it opens up effortlessly like sunlight breaking through.

I don't know if you remember what your moment of blessedness was 30 some years ago.

What about you, Wesley?

Yeah, good.

One of the things that I thought was so good about that question for Peter to start us with that is it gets us thinking about what associations do we already have with heaven and what desires do we have for heaven, right?

And this is, as a theologian, I'm often involved in this question of people like, well, I don't, you know, maybe I'm afraid to think about heaven too much because what if I'm wrong?

And I'm going to say, well, what are you worried about?