God is Justice
While Dante has the audacity to describe Lucifer himself in his Inferno he never describes God directly. Rather, he describes other entities from heaven, and expressions of God’s will. Thus, an image of God doesn’t really exist in Inferno. Early in the journey though, Dante equates God and justice as he crosses the Acheron, and does not present an image of a just God, but suggests that God is justice itself. This equating of God to justice occurs when Virgil first has to invoke God’s authorization for Dante’s journey. When Virgil has to insist that they are allowed to be there later God and justice are recalled, implying that God himself is present in the punishments in Hell and that those punishments are just.
Dante suggests God is justice because justice and God are what allow passage across the Acheron. When Dante and Virgil first attempt to cross the Acheron they are stopped by Charon. Virgil tells Charon to allow them to pass because their “passage has been willed above, where One/ can do what He has willed” (III.95-96). The “He” who is willing their passage from above is clearly God. Thus, God is the one who allows anyone to cross the Acheron. Later Virgil explains to Dante that the souls waiting to cross the Acheron are not afraid to but “Celestial justice spurs them on” (III.125). The “celestial justice” which prompts the souls to cross the Acheron is also the force which allows Dante to cross. Dante was allowed to cross because God willed it, so God is also the “celestial justice” Virgil describes. When God’s will is invoked later justice is also implied, as it is when Minos also challenges Dante’s passage.
When Virgil replies to Minos’ challenge to the journey with the same words he used w...
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...eron and pass Minos. Likewise, justice prompts souls to cross the Acheron. Justice and God then are equated as they both allow passage over the Acheron. Passing Minos also requires God’s will, and therefore also requires the act to be just. The souls who pass Minos then are in Hell justly. Likewise, the reference to God’s will outside the city of Dis shows that God’s justice is in fact present even in Hell. Dante uses this synonymity of God and justice to imply that God is in fact everywhere in the Inferno as souls receive their just due. Since justice is present even in the chaos of Dante’s Hell, can there be any question of there being justice in the chaos of the world around us?
Works Cited
Alighieri, Dante, Eugenio Montale, and Peter Armour. "Inferno." The Divine Comedy. Trans. Allen
Mandelbaum. New-York: Everyman's Library, 1995. N. pag. Print.
God states that we treat each other with the love he gives to us as individuals; while us stating violent acts against love, fraud constituting a corruption and, greed becoming normal thing amongst people defines everything god had envisioned for mankind. Yet, while Inferno implies these moral arguments, it generally states very little about them. Dante discusses with each of the souls in the different circles of hell although it is not truly stated as to why they are specifically in that circle. Only because God justifies there sin belonged there. In the end, it declares that evil is evil, simply because it contradicts God’s will and justification, and since God is God, he thus does not need to be questioned about his morals. Dante’s journey of evil progressed as he winded down the depths of hell pitiless and was driven to make it to purgatory. Inferno is not the normal text that most people would read, then think about how it relates to todays morals; its intention is not to think about the evil discussed but, rather to emphasize the Christian beliefs that Dante followed through his journey.
Throughout Dante Alighieri's poem, Inferno and William Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear, the common theme of justice plays a critical role throughout both pieces of literature. Often depicting just and ironic punishments to fit the crime, both pieces focus on the eventual consequences of ones actions towards others, resulting in the death of the person or the eternal damnation in which waits. Throughout King Lear, the arrogance of King Lear to not recognize Cordelias unconditional love leads to his abrupt death. Throughout Inferno Alighieri alludes to the somewhat ironic and just forms of punishment by punishing the souls of Hell such as twisting the head of people who predicted the future so then they only see what is behind them. The eventual realization of Lear and Dante both depicts the self-realization in which both protagonists perceive. Though Dante ultimately can change the outcome of his current spiritual righteousness, the repented King Lear only can watch as the actions he demonstrated results in the ultimate destruction of his idyllic scheme.
In The Inferno of Dante, Dante creates a striking correspondence between a soul’s sin on Earth and the punishment it receives in hell for that sin. This simple idea serves to illuminate one of Dante’s recurring themes: the perfection of god’s justice. Bearing the inscription the gates of hell explicitly state that god was moved to create hell by justice. Wisdom was employed to know what punishments would be just, power to create the forms of justice, and love to show that the punishments are conditioned with compassion, however difficult it may be to recognize (and the topic of a totally separate paper). Certainly then, if the motive of hell’s creation was justice, then its purpose was (and still is) to provide justice. But what exactly is this justice that Dante refers to? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is the So hell exists to punish those who sin against god, and the suitability of Hell’s specific punishments testify to the divine perfection that all sin violates.
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