I just polished off the third book of Dante's Divine Comedy yesterday on the airplane. I read the books for two reasons. because they prefaced all of Mclaren's chapters in "The Last Word" and because they have always intrigued me. I was fascinated by the Inferno. That is definitely the best one. There is something about these books that just feel inspired by God. Obviously these descriptions are probably not that accurate of what heaven and hell is really like but they are definitely inspired and it was apparent through the whole series. Dante like many people, loved God, but was vastly disappointed by the actions of the church and made that apparent by the people he visited in hell. I'm sure the Pope would have been surprised to have found himself in hell when he read through these which i'm sure was one of the major reasons he got booted from Florence. If you haven't read these books, i would encourage you to. I'm not sure what the best translation is but if you don't like the King James don't read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's translation. That was brutal. I switched to Mark Musa after the Inferno.
"By means of grace that wells up from a spring so deep that no man’s eye has ever plumbed the bottom of its source." Canto XX 118-120
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