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The Soul's Journey: Exploring the Three Passages of the Spiritual Life with Dante as a Guide
The Soul's Journey Exploring the Three Passages of the Spiritual Life with Dante as a Guide Author:Alan W. Jones, Alan Jones Does hell exist?" someone asked Alan Jones, dean of Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco. The question disconcerted him. What, he wondered, was the inquirer's notion of the afterlife that a straightforward yes or no would confirm or negate? If the priest followed his inclination to "mumble something about Dante, metaphor, and... more » levels of meaning," the inquirer might turn away, feeling that the priest had evaded his question. All the same, Jones refused to play the answer man, giving a thin yes or no where a textured explanation is needed. This book is his response. Here he takes up the formidable task of presenting a monument of 14th-century Christian culture, Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, in a way that might make sense to contemporary Americans.
Jones presumes no allegiance to Christianity in his readers. He casts his net wide enough to engage both spiritual seekers who have no personal knowledge of Christianity and those whose experience of Christianity has been unhappy. Yet the book has enough substance to hold the interest of practicing Christians. It offers three fresh interpretive lenses through which to view Dante's vision: Jungian psychology, narrative theory and personal experience.
From the perspective of Jungian depth psychology, the Divine Comedy is an inner journey of the soul through three passages. Hell is the place where the heart and soul are stuck, irredeemably alienated from self, others and God. Still, Jones argues, we need to "go to hell" to become whole, for hell represents the shadows of our inner selves that must be faced and integrated. The passage through purgatory represents the inner work of regeneration by which the healing soul gains integrity. Heaven is the experience of free and complete love in which one enjoys right relation to self and others. Ultimately, heaven is being in right relation with the triune God, "the Holy and Undivided Trinity ... the model of a community of love that binds us together, yet respects and enjoys our differences."« less