Although Dante seems to be saying that baptism is necessary for salvation, I
have questions about whether he's saying it's sufficient in itself. Aren't
there sinners in the Inferno who were baptized?
Surely Dante couldn't have meant that once one has satisfied the requirement
to be baptized, one can then be as wicked as one wants with no fear of divine
retribution. What exactly _is_ the Church's position on this matter? If
baptism were a sure-fire guarantee of eternal protection from the wrath of
God, what would be the point in excommunicating anyone? And what would be the
point of all those calls from Christ, in Revelation, to repent and be saved?
The question of what the requirements are for salvation runs through the
Commedia, and the annotators tend to get fixated on the baptized versus the
unbaptized, even though Dante clearly has unbaptized persons who are saved
and baptized sinners in the Inferno who are not. Although this is a very
approximate way of putting it, I think Dante might be saying that salvation
requires baptism, probably repentence of sins, but above all we're supposed
to remember that salvation is a gift of God. And as Dante's God is able to do
anything, he can, should he wish to do so, break his own rules by extending
this grace to even those of the unbaptized whom he finds worthy.
The annotation can be a bit crass as the annotators go shuffling through
Thomas Aquinas et al to find a humanly understandable "reason" that an
unbaptized person might have been saved. This seems to ignore a point Dante
makes in several places--that even the blessed in heaven cannot understand
the mind of God. And I don't think the omnipotence of God is such a small
"theological" point that one can afford to ignore it when reading a Christian
author. If one doesn't start with the idea of the almightiness of God, and
his mercy in extending the gift of salvation (of which no human being is
really worthy), one misses all the mystery and wonder. One becomes just
another pedantic bean-counter, making lists of who was baptised and who
wasn't.
It seems to me that Dante is deliberately trying to make people think in some
depth about these issues, and to remember that God is at the center of the
picture, or that baptism would be a meaningless gesture were this not the
case. After all, what would be left of Christianity if it had baptism but no
God?
pat sloane
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In a message dated 9/6/00 11:29:04 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [log in to unmask]
writes:
> I believe this ties to the legend that Gregory the Great posthumously
> baptized Trajan.
> Tom Izbicki
>
> On Tue, 5 Sep 2000 [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> > Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2000 20:04:18 -0400
> > From: [log in to unmask]
> > Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: Re Harrowing of Hell - was - Dante's Inferno
> >
> >
> > Is there one fairly standard version of who was saved in the Harrowing of
> > Hell and who wasn't? I'm thinking of the 14c. English "De Erkenwaldo" in
> > which the dead virtuous pagan specifically laments that Christ left him
> > behind on that occasion. ("Quen žou herghedes helle-hole and hentes hom
> > žeroute, Ži loffynge oute of limbo, žou laftes me žer.") He is virtuous
> > enough to deserve heaven, but now requires a posthumous baptism (and I
> > recall that there was a similar baptism-of-dead-virtuous-pagan story told
> > about another saint too) ... does this fit in with the usual
understanding,
>
> > or would you call it creative license in order to give Erkenwald a
miracle
> > and a plot?
> >
> > I'm familiar with the Erkenwald poem by chance, more or less; I'm
> > reasonably ignorant of other texts of the period ...
> >
> > Jonathan Gilbert
> >
>
>
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