Dante's Theology of Salvation

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321 CE) is an epic of a hundred poems, begun around 1308 CE, and completed shortly before the author’s death in about 1321 CE. The work recounts an imaginative vision of a journey though the afterlife which Dante himself narrates. It is not only one of the world’s greatest works of literature, but also an important representation of the theological outlook of the Middle Ages as understood in the Western Church of the 14th century. Dante grapples with the great existential questions of the meaning of human life, the morality of human actions and their consequences, the existence of God, the problem of evil and suffering, the theology of grace, predestination, salvation, and merit. The many characters that emerge along the way are often real historic persons whose life stories form the basis of Dante’s weaving of the text. He does not shy away from the political controversies of his day, and offers some insight into how Christian theology formed a cultural matrix for Western civilization. The course will offer a close reading of a selection from all three canticles of the Divine Comedy (Inferno – Purgatory – Paradise), together with a consideration of the theological reasoning which underpins the text. It will include aspects of Dante’s reception of the theology of Augustine, as expressed by Aquinas, and an identification of some aspects of his own theological thought which seem entirely original.