Commentary Par I 73

This citation of II Cor. 12:3 has not escaped many commentators.  There Paul is not certain as to whether he was in body or not in his ascent through the heavens.  For his phrase 'third heaven' as meaning, not the heaven of Venus, to which the phrase would ordinarily refer in Dante, but the highest part of God's kingdom, see St. Thomas (ST. II-II.175.3), r. to obj. 4 (cited from the online edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia [www.newadvent.org/cathen/]): 'In one way by the third heaven we may understand something corporeal, and thus the third heaven denotes the empyrean (I Tim. 2:7; cf. ST. I.12.11, ad 2), which is described as the "third," in relation to the aerial and starry heavens, or better still, in relation to the aqueous and crystalline heavens.  Moreover, Paul is said to have been rapt to the "third heaven," not as though his rapture consisted in the vision of something corporeal, but because this place is appointed for the contemplation of the blessed.  Hence the gloss on II Corinthians 12 says that the "third heaven is a spiritual heaven, where the angels and the holy souls enjoy the contemplation of God: and when Paul says that he was rapt to this heaven he means that God showed him the life wherein He is to be seen forevermore."'

On the Pauline stance of the poet here and elsewhere, see Mazzeo, 'Dante and the Pauline Modes of Vision' (Mazz.1960.1), pp. 84-110. (And see his earlier book, Mazz.1958.1, for a wider consideration of the poetics of this cantica.)  Schnapp (Schn.1988.1) relates the Pauline raptus, the 'disappearance' of Virgil, and the increased reliance upon Ovidian text as a reflection of a new 'vertical' poetic in the Paradiso.  See also the discussion of this verse by Dwyer (Dwye.1995.1).

See [Par XXVII 64-65], where St. Peter finally makes it plain that Dante is present, ascending through the heavens, in the flesh.  Bosco/Reggio (DDP Bosco.Par.I.73-75) make the point that, since Dante eventually allows us to believe that he went up in body (they cite passages that are perhaps less decisive than that in Par. XXVII, [Par XXI 11] and [Par XXI 61]), all this coy uncertainty has a main purpose: to give himself Pauline credentials, since Paul himself either cannot or will not say in what state he was during his rapture.  Gragnolati (Grag.2005.1), pp. 162-74, joins those who believe that Dante contrives to make us see that he wants to be understood as having made this final ascent in the flesh.