“Returning to Eden:” Dante Comes Home with Dr. Jason Baxter

For pagans like Plato—the subject of last week’s After Dinner Scholar podcast—human exile from the Real and the Good was a more or less permanent condition. But not so for the Christian. Our exile here is temporary. We have an eternal home, citizenship in the New Jerusalem, adoption into God’s family.

In Dante Alighieri Purgatorio, the second canticle of The Divine Comedy, Dante the pilgrim, cleansed from sin and disordered love, reaches the Garden of Eden atop Mount Purgatory. While there is more to his pilgrimage, his exile is at an end.

This week’s After Dinner Scholar podcast and full lecture features Dr. Jason Baxter, Associate Professor of Fine Arts and Humanities here at Wyoming Catholic College. Dr. Baxter spoke at the Wyoming School of Catholic Thought this past June, about the return from exile to sanity, to complete humanness, to purity of heart, to natural contemplation, and, with the arrival of Dante’s beloved Beatrice, to true love.