Inferno, Canto 4 with Dr. William Weaver
Vložit
- čas přidán 22. 08. 2024
- Join us as Dr. William Weaver of Baylor University reflects on Canto 4 of the Inferno.
100 Days of Dante is brought to you by Baylor University in collaboration with the Torrey Honors College at Biola University, University of Dallas, Templeton Honors College at Eastern University, the Gonzaga-in-Florence Program and Gonzaga University, and Whitworth University, with support from the M.J. Murdock Trust. To learn more about our project, and read with us, visit 100daysofdante...
Thank you for these wonderful reflections that encourage me to keep going in the book.
This video is fantastic I will listen to every canto thankyou.
From what I understood of the text (perhaps misunderstood), Christ Himself fetches Adam, Abel, Abraham, Rachel, David, Israel, Moses, and Noah out of Limbo and presumably removes them to Heaven
I think you understand correctly what Dante writes. I knew of the Apostles creed which says "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit; Born of the Virgin Mary; Suffered under Pontius Pilate; Was crucified, dead and buried; He descended into Hell;..." This is supposed to have happened between Crucifixion Friday and Resurrection Sunday, or on Saturday, which apparently is considered "Holy Saturday." This is my first exposure to people being removed from hell to heaven.
If you notice the study questions, one references just this: Christ’s harrowing of hell.
Really liked this talk. Well done.
When reading this Canto I always think back to "The Apology." Facing death, Socrates says, "What would one of you give to keep company with Homer? I am willing to die many times if that were true.[...] I could spend my time testing and examining people there, as I do here, as to who among them is wise, and who thinks he is, but is not. A good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death." It's nice to think that even in Dante's Inferno, Socrates is satisfied. Limbo is almost exactly what Socrates himself (through Plato) reasoned death could be. Do you think this is a form of contrapasso, ie, the soul getting what he pursued in life? Thanks for these videos -- I miss these conversations very much. (UD '07 and Baylor '09 alum)
Fascinating, I was thinking only today about the contrapassi for Inferno and wondering about Limbo and whether living without hope in itself was one. I love that idea of Socrates and his pupils ending up in Limbo and questioning the likes of Caesar, Avicenna, Averroes and so many others for eternity!
This reflection is so helpful, thank you!
Thank you for the great comment, full of precious insights. The 1st principle you gave, that Virgil sentence "they did not know sin" could be taken as an optimistic statement of Dante the Poet about humanity condition, therefore contrary to Romans 3:23, seems to me clashing with Dante the Poet ideas clearly expressed in the other cantos, especially clear in the next one. In Canto 5, we see a fantastic anaphoric triplet of terzine starting with the word Love, that tells us what Love is, but that concepts will be demonstrated false (or intentionally misused by Francesca) in the central Cantos of Purgatorio. The whole Inferno will bring forward similar examples that will make the readers able to discern falsehood from Truth and human perspective from God perspective. My impression is that the infernal inhabitants are all lier and try to convince Dante the Pilgrim of their story and this is an important aspect of the fiction. Virgil is not different from the others. Putting Virgil here, Dante the Poet is condemning in Inferno, (despite his love for those characters, despite in a zone that looks like a University Campus, which is what any pagan author would have desired), all classical culture. This seems to me very much a technique of our Poet to make us live intensely and personally his own dramatic decision of writing something completely new and intentionally charged with the presence of Christ. He is building up his own new poetry and his own conversion and the readers is invited precisely inside his soul drama. There we can see how great and meanwhile unable to reach God are Virgil and classical culture. And we can suffer together with Dante for this! Nevertheless, Virgil, as each of us, despite being BC, has the same possibilities to reach Paradise, that had Cato, Trajan, etc., therefore, what he lacks, unfortunately, is not Baptism, which also the other two here mentioned lacked, but Faith. This is the ticket for Paradiso that Dante is offering us: a Faith based on the knowledge of God, that starts from knowing ourself and the others, first through the eyes of reason/culture, then through the eyes of Jesus/theology and finally, ends in reaching that conversion, that vision of God, that allows him (and us) to come back bringing a testimony that really is capable to turn, to convert, the readers toward a different perspective: God perspective. All this is visible in each canto, precisely but not only, in that "versi strani" that seem to make no sense or collide with the Church. They are like church bells, ringing to awake the readers reason, lost in visible reality, to something beyond a reasonable explanation, which after all is the beauty of all true poetry: "transumanar". Thanks again for your commitment and touching comments. I wish we could have an hour of conversation all together with you and all the speakers of this series, to make questions and share our understanding.
Really liked the faith-based connection and how we see ourselves and others.
so Paul and scripture are in error? remember they have not known the redemption and therefore could not be baptized in spirit -- many Christian denominations do not believe that baptism is redemptive -- so I don't really think they are being punished as in tormented -- they traveled as far as reason without revelation could take them
The Divine Comedy is a work of literature and not doctrine or scripture. While the ideas presented are interesting to ponder, I don't think we are to treat them as Truth.
Roman Catholic doctrine requires the “overcoming of original sin” in order to experience the beatific vision. The normal way of doing this is through baptism. As mentioned in this lecture, there was no salvation outside the church (the Roman Catholic Church), so those who were not baptized were denied salvation. It was Thomas Aquinas who argued for the idea of “baptism by desire” (instead of only water), and for the existence of Limbo. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church published in 1992, there is a hope (but not a certainty) that there are other ways of overcoming the baptism requirement. (I note that I am and have always been a Protestant, but Dante was a Catholic, so naturally I’m going to have theological disagreements with the Comedy. Also, as Jennifer notes, this isn’t scripture. Don’t go to Dante for doctrine; go to him for illumination.)
HELP ANYONE: I'm having problems sometimes understanding what he is saying because I can't quite hear the words he is using sometimes (because--no offense--he sort of swallows them!) Is he saying "the principle of exclusion is not ETHNIC ??" The captions transcribe what he says that way, but if so I don't understand what he means by ethnic. Is he referring to Catholics as an ethnic group of believers in the principle of exclusion. I wonder if he is using another word which I can't hear correctly. He goes on to say "nor is it even epistemic," so I'm trying to think of a vocabulary word that somehow might relate to epistemic and ethnic doesn't seem to fit.
By "ethnic" he is saying that exclusion from heaven (or damnation to hell) is not based on an accident of parentage or ethnicity. Virtuous Muslims, in the Comedy, are not in Limbo because of their genealogy. By including epistemic, he is saying the criterion is not even based on what they knew about the world or did not know about God. In Dante's context, the Catholic church and its sacramental system was the only way to salvation. Being good or being born into a Christian family was not enough (though it does seem to get you a very mild level of hell).
@@davidzeiger7925 Thanks for clarifying this. Sometimes the captions are clearly off. In this case, I guess they weren't. I thought perhaps he was using a lit crit word I didn't know or don't use at least.
His claim about pagan sinlessness seems so utterly unbiblical that it makes me wonder (considering how steeped in scripture Dante was) whether it's significant that Virgil is the one explaining the innocence of Limbo's inhabitants. Maybe Virgil is just confused about the true human condition and/or how grace works. After all, he seems to be ignorant about the full significance of some other Christian themes, such as the harrowing of hell.
Isaiah 45:22
Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.
Habakkuk 2:4
Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.
John Chapter 10
27My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:
28And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
29My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.
Hebrews 10:22
Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.
Revelation 12:10
And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.
Canto 4: Given today’s “culture wars,” the concept of Limbo in this canto is difficult to appreciate in terms of the culture of the 14th century. Our current views differ in detail from the “Kulturkampf” of Bismark’s German Empire and Pius IX’s Vatican City as well those of Dante’s Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy. Dante’s Christian contemporaries believed Baptism was an absolute requirement for admittance to Heaven. Even with the “Harrowing of Shoel” most Israelites were consigned to Limbo, along with a handful of Muslims: e,g, Saladin, Avicenna, and Averroes. Fortunately, the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes no reference, today, to Limbo. God’s love, along with his mercy and justice, exists in a more comprehensive perception in the 21st century.
HELP ANYONE: O.K. He lost me at Princess Bride and the captions don't help. Who in the Princess Bride said what?
You can turn the captions off.
@@alansonneman9098 I know that, thank you! But occasionally if I can't understand what is being said, I'll turn them on. I actually had a hard time clearly hearing certain words in this particular presentation.
I did not have that issue with the other lectures.
Dr Weaver was referring to a 1989 movie with many quotable lines. One character, Vizzini, has a very high opinion of his intellect. Vizzini asks another character "Let me put it this way: have you ever heard of Plato? Aristotle? Socrates?" Then Vizzini proceeds in calling them "Morons!". Other than mentioning Palto, Socrates, and Aristotle, Princess Bride and Inferno have nothing in common. Excellent movie, by the way.
@@scottmorrison6027 Thanks. That is what I needed in a reply. I vaguely recall it being a movie, but I don't recall if I watched it. The allusion just went right by me.
@@scottmorrison6027 He mentioned Princess Bride in relation to Inferno? Inconceivable!
You really need to up your production quality in these lectures! Stop jumping around, sit down and put your hands on a desk.
Wow. You seem nice.