The Divine Guidance

The Divine Comedy by Dante Algieri is imbued with idea that human beings exist in

relation to a Triune God and Summa Contra Gentiles by Thomas Aquinas gives a philosophical

explanation of the theme.

In the composition of the poem, Dante takes the number “three” and derivatives from it.

The idea of the magical significance of numbers existed from ancient times. From the children’s

fairy tales, there are three brothers, three ways that open for a hero. Almost every pagan

mythology has the image of a world tree whose structure was supposed to reproduce the

structure of space. The roots of the tree are the otherworldly world. Trunk is the Earth and

branches is the Sky. Triple is the measurement of time: the past, the present, and the future, or

ancestors, contemporaries, descendants. During the Middle Ages, the magical content of this

strange figure is expanding, combined with the Holy Trinity. As a symbol of all that has its

formation, development and completion, the “trio” was extremely adapted to the poet’s plan. The

Divine Comedy is divided into three parts(canticas): The Inferno, The Purgatory, The Paradiso.

Each part has thirty-three songs written with tresillo (triple rhyme), each verse consists of three

lines. Along with the introduction, the number of cantos in the poem reaches the number one

hundred symbolizing an absolute perfection which for Christians is the Holy Trinity.

The poem begins with a walking into the Hell. There, Dante for the first time in the whole

story meets the presence of God. He stands towards the Gate of Hell and, as a hymn written on

the doors, faces to the words which starts his journey: “Sacred justice moved my architect. I was

raised here by divine omnipotence…” (Inf. III 4-5) These lines speak of the Creator who is

known to be Justice, Power, Wisdom and Love. In all these aspects, God expresses himself in

particular acts of judgement upon His creation. The structure of the Inferno represents a certain
level of punishment: each circle that the author described come to the center of the Earth

represents the understanding of a human being morals which are given by God.

Unexpectedly, the poet finds something ‘good’ in the beginning of the Hell: “But since it

came to good, I will recount all that I found reveled there by God’s grace.” (Inf. I 8-9) It

represents the guidance of God does not leave Dante and inspires his mind to fight all

distractions on the way. The protagonist experiences this suggestion later on “…prepared myself

to face the double war…” (Inf. II 4) As well as in these lines, in the whole poem this battle is

reflected in the words and intellectual formulations that the poet claims.

Dante creates also an image of God’s love: “It is I, Beatrice, who send you to him. I come

from the blessed height for which I yearn. Love called me here.” (Inf. II 70-72) As these lines

makes clear, Dante se in the pure and lovely Beatrice a revelation of God in terms of truth and

beauty. In the Comedy, she plays a role of Christ-figure and an image of the ideal Church and its

light of the Holy Trinity.

The travelers come to the first circle, where vast crowds of men, women, and children

throng, people who lament only by sighing, who suffer grief without torment as they live in

desire for God but without hope. “The signature of honor they left on earth is recognized in

Heaven and wins them ease in Hell out of God’s favor.” (Inf. IV 76-78) They are not here for

any grievous, unrepented sin, nor for lack of merit, but for lack of The Baptism. The necessity of

baptism and of faith in the Christ Dante put as the first cause of being in the Hell his poem. As an

orthodox Christian, he states that believing in God could not be unjust. The Inferno essentially

represents God through what he is not and through what he does not intend His creations to be.

Dante shows what it is like to be distant from the truth, inability to experience God. The damned

are distant from the Creator and the Inferno reveals the ways in which the human mind can

separate itself from Him. Moreover, in the damned the protagonist emphasizes the extent to
which the instruments of reason and speech can also put someone on self-delusion and deceit

between reason and God and between one human being and another.

The last canto of the Paradiso throws little additional light on the theme. The opening

prayer of St. Bernard is the most perfect tribute that Catholic art has ever paid to the Mother of

God. Then, Dante brings his attention to the ultimate goal. He says it so passionate and sincerely

in the line: “And I, who neared the goal of all my nature, felt my soul, at the climax of its

yearning, suddenly, as it ought, grow calm with rapture.” (Par. XXXIII 46-48) At this moment,

he feels an exaltation; the feeling of an undisturbed connection with God in prayer automatically

elevates him closer to the Creator.

The journey described in the Comedy concludes when a human image is revealed, and

Dante finally sees God face to face: “…seemed in Itself of Its own coloration to be painted with

man’s image. I fixed my eyes on that alone in rapturous contemplation.” (Par. XXXIII 130-132)

These lines contain the simple truth around which Dante has built the entire poem: the human

being owes its existence to a Triune God and achieves happiness and dignity when it

contemplates God in the ‘court’ of Heaven.

However, it has taken Dante a hundred cantos to realize this truth. The Paradiso ends by

seeing The Holy Trinity in his human form. Dante, like a mathematician, looks for some

principle by which to ‘measure’ a circle and fails to find it: “Like a geometer wholly dedicated to

squaring the circle, but who cannot find, think as he may, the principle indicated – so did I study

the supernal face.” (Par. XXXIII 133-6). His reason still wants to comprehend the Divine but the

supernatural is unmanageable for it. In this case, Dante brings a theological context on it: on the

one hand, an approach to understand God should be rational, while on the other, the complete

understanding of the Triune God cannot be reached without faith. This pattern of development
persists throughout the Comedy. In the Paradiso the protagonist is required constantly to lead his

thoughts about God by faith because for science it is contrary.

That meeting may have made a mystic of him or, at least, some simpler kind of saint. He

was blinded by excess of the eternal light. He seems to hint at one last storm of light in which his

mind and will met God: “…but mine were not the wings for such a flight. Yet, as I wished, the

truth I wished for came cleaving my mind in a great flash of light.” (Par. XXXIII 139-141) He

will not be the same what he was before. Now, he is in the presence of God, the Holy Trinity and

exposed by the love that moves the sun and all the stars. However, through the inability of reason

Dante cannot describe or represent the image of God.

In Summa Contra Gentiles, Thomas Aquinas explains how God shows the relationship

with human beings by maintaining His promise to give knowledge to everyone with a pure heart.

“…the divine Mercy provide that it should instruct us to hold by faith even those truths that the

human reason is able to investigate.” (251) God wants the human reason to receive additional

forces that enhance its ability to contemplate. By the love of the Holy Trinity, He gives this

reinforcement and the human mind begins to contemplate the infinite Truth. God is faithful to his

promises, and therefore, everyone who is like God will know Him and will be blessed. In this

manifestation of God’s appreciation of the dignity of man. Everyone will know God and will be

blessed to the extent that God strengthens the ability of his mind to contemplate God. He will

strengthen this ability to the extent that man is likened to God. The extent to which a person is

likened to God can be determined only after her death. Indeed, even in the last moment of life, a

person can sin and ruin his own soul. Thus, the vision of God is usually given after death.

The Divine Comedy explores the relationship that Dante believed to exist between God as

Creator of the Universe and the human being as a creature of God. In common with all

Christians, Dante held that this relationship was a personal one in which God, so far from being
some indeterminate cosmic force, was known as a distinct being, loving and conceiving purposes

for each of the souls He had brought into existence. Likewise, St. Thomas Aquinas explains that

human being cannot comprehend the Creator by its reason, if only He expose His mercy what

makes existence in relation essential and necessary.