heaven

Defined here not as a finished perfection but as another journey and a place that continues to generate inquiry.

The Christian name in Jiang's list of terms for the universe or transcendent memory realm.

Jiang says entering Purgatory gives a soul the opportunity to go to Heaven, but graduation is not automatic because ascent remains difficult and depends on continued conviction.

Jiang initially says there is no hierarchy in Purgatory because one terrace can be enough for Heaven, but then accepts the student correction that higher terraces correspond to less severe sins and greater nearness to Heaven.

Jiang says the church around 1300 effectively determines who gets into Purgatory and can shorten time there through indulgences, making it a purchasable back door into Heaven.

Jiang argues that Dante's genius is not merely theological but world-making: he turns Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory from abstract concepts into inhabitable structures.

Jiang contrasts Dante's action-based and merciful Purgatory with a church system that incentivizes obedience and restricts Heaven to a narrow elite.

The class explicitly grounds Dante's revised Purgatory in a cosmology where God is love, so any afterlife structure that excludes the poor would contradict the kingdom of Heaven.

Marco Lombardo's central claim, as preserved in the reading, is that blaming heaven for all human motion would abolish free will and therefore moral justice.

Jiang frames the poem's center as the decisive meeting point of heaven and hell, with Dante and Virgil conducting a final battle over the meaning of love.