The definition of some of those dogmas Dante anticipated.
All may be summed up in the following statement:
"It is of Catholic faith that the souls of the blessed see God directly
and face to face and this vision is Supernatural; that there are degrees
of this vision, corresponding to the merits of the elect; that to see
God in His Essence, the intellect is supernaturally perfected; that the
Beatific Vision is not deferred to the Day of Judgment, but is possessed
at once after death but the Just, in whom there is no stain of sin or
who have no temporal punishment to be expiated; and, furthermore, that
all human beings at the end of the world will arise with their own
bodies."
How will the poet bring home those incomprehensible truths to his
readers? He has to treat a subject wholly transcendent and supernatural.
Though his vision be celestial, his langauge must be terrestrial. He
must visualize states of the soul which are alien to the eyes of the
body and translate into terms of the senses things which are wholly
non-sensuous. Dante is aware that no poet ever essayed that feat before:
"The sea I sail has never yet been passed." (1, 8.) He knows, also, that
shoals and rocks, seemingly impassable and a sea which may engulf his
genius, are before him.
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