Inferno

We are having a Convocation at the Church this weekend.  Rev. Dr. Heather Murray Elkins in coming to lead worship and several seminars.  Her seminar topic is "He Decended into Hell."  The text she is using is Undiscovered Country by Peter S. Hawkins.  In this book, Hawkins examines the concepts of hell, pugartory and heaven with Dante's The Divine Comedy as an illustrative backbone.

As Hawkins explores the idea of hell, he makes several points I thought were interesting:

• Dante's Inferno is a portrait of what our world would be if left to its own devices.
• Those in hell are given an eternity of what they loved the most on earth.  It seems counter-intuitive, but think about it for a moment.
• Sin is its own punishment; the crime becomes the punishment.

To quote the book, " ...it is a spiritual condition, a "state of complete frustration and emptiness of life without God ... the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God."

Inadequate words

I'm reading the book Undiscovered Country: Imagining the World to Come by Peter Hawkins.  It's the text for our church's upcoming Convocation. 

There are many great thoughts in the book, but one struck me for this post.  The author is focusing on Dante's Divine Comedy, and its three sections -- Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise.

In the Paradise section, Hawkins is discussing how Dante continually states his inadequacy as an author to use words to describe heaven.   "After all, can anyone truly "succeed" when describing light, love or God?"

Isn't that true?  Wouldn't we all agree that words or even our thoughts are inadequate to describe God.  Yet, as we look at the Bible, there are some of us who believe that every word is meant as literal, and that God can only be as described in the words of the book.

I believe the Bible is divinely inspired, and yet I know that it is human words.  It cannot possibly completely describe God.  We see now in a mirror dimly.