To See God - Analyzing Christian Perceptions of God

Abstract

In this study, the perceptions of God that two traditionally Catholic theologians held were compared in an analytical style for the purpose of discerning whether such perceptions, as seen in their literary works, varied greatly from each other or were vastly similar. These two individuals were Dante Alighieri, author of the Divina Commedia, and St. Gregory of Nyssa, a 4th century Catholic mystic. For the purposes of academic focus, Canto XXXIII of Dante’s Paradiso and selected sections of Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses were examined.