The Classics of Christian Literature

This edition of the first installment of Dante Allighieri's Divine Comedy has been artfully translated from the Italian by one of the past century's most gifted (and underrated) Christian writers, Dorothy Sayers.  In these cantos, Dante, the dreamer, travels with Virgil through the worsening rings of Hell until he finally climbs out of the morass through to the other side of the world by scaling the hairy legs of Satan frozen solid in ice.

To Protestant sensibilities, the very idea of Purgatory is enough to turn the reader away from this, the second portion of Dante's tour through the afterlife.  I'd suggest, however, that if you can get past the bad theology and look at this as an exploration of the process by which believers are sanctified, then there is a great deal of enjoy and find edifying in this book.  Again, Dorothy Sayers does the translation.

While the first two parts of the Divine Comedy were relatively easy to comprehend, the third, the journey into the presence of God in heaven, is truly dizzying.  Still, while Dante's theology might be a tad suspect, the Christian reader can gain a good deal and definitely realize that in Dante they have encountered a fellow believer.  Dorothy Sayers, having brought us this far, does not turn back but guides us home, unlike Virgil who split toward end of the Purgatorio.

Milton stands as one of the greatest of English poets and certainly among the greatest of Christian poets worldwide.  His Paradise Lost describes in great detail the course of "man's first disobedience."  He relates how the battle within heaven between the rebellious angels and those loyal to God might have gone, and then he brings us to Eden where we get to see, in considerably more detail than the Bible affords us, the Fall of Adam and Eve.  This volume, the best current edition of Milton's work available, also includes the remainder of his poetry and a selection of the prose.