Creation and God’s Providence Theme Analysis

As Dante journeys through Heaven, he questions Beatrice and other souls about God’s creation (the earth, humanity, and everything that exists), as well as creation’s diversity, its flaws, and its ultimate fate. Dante is troubled by the mysteries he perceives in creation—for instance, why do imperfections exist in nature if God is perfect? These concerns prompt Dante to question how and why God works as he does. What Dante learns is that God diffuses his power within and throughout created things—acts of God’s “providence.” Although the idea of providence doesn’t neatly answer all of Dante’s questions, it does reveal to him that creation is part of an orderly, divinely ordained trajectory toward perfection, when all of creation will enjoy God’s direct presence and praise him for eternity. Throughout Paradiso, Dante examines both direct and indirect creation—things God created firsthand, and things his creation generated through God’s power—to show how creation comes in many forms but is nonetheless imbued with God’s power. And even though creation can be imperfect, God is ultimately working to bring all creation to a state of eternal perfection.

God directs all of creation by his providence, but his direction most often occurs through indirect means (secondary causes). For Dante, nature expresses the goodness, beauty, and power of the God who created it, and angelic beings are the means by which God directs and sustains the natural world. Beatrice explains this to Dante early in their journey through the heavens: “And as your soul within the dust you are / diffuses and resolves through different limbs […] so too angelic intellect unfolds / (while turning still round its own unity) / its goodness multiplied through all the stars.” Just as the soul powers different parts of the body in order to direct the whole person, so too do the various angelic beings (envisioned as stars) direct the various activities of the world. God’s direction flows through these beings and, from there, through the various functions of the natural world.

The soul of Dante’s old friend Charles Martel explains to him the doctrine of God’s providence, which accounts for the diversity of the world: “The Good, which turns the whole domain you climb / and brings it joy, forms from its providence / the power that works in all these cosmic limbs. […] Were this not so, the spheres you journey through / would bring all their effects about in ways / that count as chaos, not as skill or art.” In other words, God works through secondary causes in nature (“cosmic limbs”) in order to keep creation going, but these powers ultimately derive from God. If that weren’t the case, creation would dissolve into chaos.

Though God’s providence is always working, even in those things that come about through indirect creation (like human beings), imperfections still occur in the world—especially when people resist God’s providence. Charles Martel further suggests that, though providence applies to the diversity of character and ability found among human beings, people run into problems when they resist the workings of providence: “And if the earthly world would set its mind / to fundamentals set by Nature’s hand, / pursuing these, you’d make a happy end. / But you will twist to some religious role / a man who’s born to buckle on the sword / and make a king of someone who should preach.” Martel suggests that people can wrongfully resist the way God’s providence works through nature, and that this accounts for much of the chaos in the world—like when people are forced into roles that don’t come naturally to them (e.g., a warrior being forced into the priesthood, or a would-be preacher being crowned as king).

Later, in the sphere of the Sun, Dante questions theologian St. Thomas Aquinas about this directly—if created things are the result of God’s perfect idea, how can they be imperfect? Aquinas replies: “Yet Nature, as created, falls far short. / It operates as any craftsman will / who knows his trade and yet has trembling hands.” Here, Aquinas elaborates on the doctrine of indirect creation. It’s part of a discussion in which he explains why King Solomon, for example, was imperfect, unlike Adam (prior to disobeying God and bringing sin into the world) and Christ. Basically, when things are created at a greater remove from God (instead of directly, like God himself creating Adam in the Garden of Eden or orchestrating Mary’s immaculate conception of Christ), nature’s “trembling hands” can produce imperfections.

Dante learns that God will someday bring all creation to a state of perfection. In other words, God’s providence is not a one-time infusion of his power throughout creation, but an ongoing process that’s leading to ever greater perfections. This becomes clearer in Dante’s discussion of re-creation. When souls are someday reunited with their bodies at the final judgment, “when the glorious and sacred flesh / is clothing us once more, our person then / will be – complete and whole [… ] For then whatever has been granted us, / by utmost good, of free and gracious light […] will increase.” In this mysterious future, creation will finally embody its full potential and will be even more glorious than it was originally, its flaws overcome. Though Dante isn’t granted the ability to know how this will happen, it’s clear that it’s something intimately connected to God’s creative power. The natural world won’t be obliterated but will become more filled with God’s light and therefore more fully itself.

At the end of Paradiso, Dante sees a vision of the complexity of all creation somehow contained within the simplicity of God’s pure light: “Within in its depths, this light, I saw, contained, / bound up and gathered in a single book, / the leaves that scatter through the universe.” This brings Dante’s understanding of providence within creation full circle, as he sees that all of creation is held together by God as part of a unified whole.