A God of Love or a God of Wrath

This is the first in a two part exploration into Dante, and the true character of God.

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God is love. All of creation stands as evidence of God’s love. Yet it is surprisingly difficult for us to believe in a Creator who is none other than love itself. Rather, we have been fed an image of a vengeful God, more eager to remind us of our failures than our goodness. But love does not behave that way. Love always encourages, forgives, and energizes the beloved.

How did we come to believe in this God of wrath? More importantly, what is God really like?

I recently journeyed to Rome and was struck by an astounding contrast between two images of Jesus, rendered by the same artist, Michelangelo. These pieces illustrate the dichotomy between the God of wrath and the God who is Love.

Across the front interior wall of the Sistine Chapel is spread the vibrantly colored, action packed painting of “The Last Judgement.” Here a muscular Jesus, flanked by his mother Mary, stands with arm upraised, separating the dead souls, half of them being carried up to heaven, and the rest cast down to hell. To the right, men (and they are all men; besides Mary there are only a handful of female figures in the painting) line up for their turn before the judge, all desirous, all fearful, and they seem not to have any idea what their impending verdict will be. Jesus and Mary wear emotionless faces as some people are spared and the rest eternally damned. The imagery in the lower half of the painting is cruel and grotesque, complete with angels punching the unwilling souls into the waiting arms of demons, and Phlegyas in his boat, bearing the lost souls across the dark river Styx.

Minutes later I entered the Basilica San Pietro and beheld the sculpture called the “Pieta,” Michelangelo’s sublimest work. Here a contemplative Mary holds the lifeless frame of Jesus, limp, weak, his body thinned by the cruel death he underwent. This Madonna, by contrast, has a face full of emotion—sorrow, complacency, love, and the pity for which the work is named. Jesus, in contrast with the painting, is a thin man, his legs and arms showing none of the girth seen in the prior Jesus. His stomach is indrawn from hunger and dehydration, his ribs exposed. This is not the body of a fallen warrior, but of one who was taken and killed by stronger men than he.

I cannot help but see sacred art as theology, and there is a huge theological contrast between the Jesus of the “Pieta” and the Jesus of “The Last Judgement.” The dead frame shows the Jesus who took on the despair of the world, loving the least of creation with his own acceptance of a lowly death. Yet the muscle-bound Justice of “The Last Judgement” is a figure of wrath, casting the lowest of creation into eternal perdition.

The theology of one artist may be interesting to analyze, but Michelangelo’s theology has had much more far reaching effects. It amazes me how much the theology depicted in the wall, and the ceiling of the Sistine chapel continues to influence our view of our Creator, and our perspective on the afterlife.

The theology is not Michelangelo’s. This image, and indeed most sacred Renaissance art reflects the theology of his fellow Florentine of two centuries before—Dante Alighieri. Seven hundred years have passed since The Divine Comedy was published, yet it still colors our concept of the Christian religion today.

In this graphic tale, Dante, using himself as narrator, journeys through all the circles of hell and purgatory with Virgil as his guide. All manor of torment is described, particularly for those who were the author’s political rivals. The pilgrims are immersed in a dark realm, accosted by demons and lost souls on every side. Dante is constantly in fear, but the steadfast Virgil comforts him with his confidence and by addressing the demons with authority. The suffering of the shades is horrendous and grotesque, the punishment not of a merciful judge, but of a masochistic ruler who employs a twisted knowledge of suffering to enact his revenge.

Is it the masochism of Satan that assigns this terror? Not in the picture drawn by Dante. Satan is simply God’s pawn. It is God’s anger that drives the sinners into Satan’s net. God’s justice is satisfied to be rid of the damned and this God feels no regret. Where is love in this scenario? Who is this lover who forsakes the beloved? “I opened to my beloved but my beloved had turned and was gone. I sought him, but did not find him; I called him but he gave no answer.”(Song of Solomon 5:6)

The Divine Comedy is one of the most celebrated books within the Catholic tradition, and much of its theology, especially from the last half, gives a beautiful image of a soul striving for the divine. But the imagery of inferno and early purgatory is gruesome and vengeful. It is this imagery that has abided over the centuries. It was obviously written as an allegory, never intended to be viewed as a literal description of hell. Yet the details are unimportant. The spirit of this work has significantly and negatively colored the Christian view of our Creator.

There are some particularly disturbing encounters made by the two travelers as they sojourn the underworld. There are the souls of good Christians who died in battle without being administered last rights. (Prg. V) For no other wrong they are condemned to eons in purgatory before being admitted to paradise. In hell they pass through “limbo” where dwell worthy souls who were not baptized, either because of infant death or because they lived before the age of Christianity. “These of sin were blameless: and if aught they merited, it profits not, since baptism was not theirs: the portal to thy faith…” (Inf. IV) Further on in hell Dante converses with Francesca, who with her lover is condemned to eternal hell because their love for one another distracted them from their love for God. (Inf. V) Even in heaven, the narrator meets the soul of a nun who was raped. She is consigned to the lowest level of heaven because her vow of chastity was broken, even though by no fault of her own. (Par. IV)

To believe that humans would be thus punished because their deaths were sudden with no opportunity for last rights or baptism depicts a God reduced to the size and restrictions of his own rules. Where is mercy in this scenario? What reason is there for such a damnation? How terrible it would be for a Creator to turn its back on its creation for a failure in a rule when there was no chance to obey. What baby chooses to die before baptism? What soldier chooses to be slain? What person chooses to succumb to a catastrophe when no priest happens to be near? Does the soul deserve to suffer for such circumstances? What woman, whether or not she has taken a vow of chastity, deserves a reduced blessing for being raped?

Virgil, the ancient Roman poet who serves as the allegorical guide, confesses that he is amongst the souls in limbo. Despite his good soul he is condemned to this place in hell. He is trusted to shepherd the character of Dante through the abyss, but he disappears as soon as they reach the gate of heaven, for he is allowed no further, and never will be.

Francesca and her lover, in their love for one another, supposedly deprioritize love for God. What is love for God but love for one another? When can love be wrong? This is a twisted view of God, and a twisted view of love.

Interestingly, Dante identifies love as the guiding theme both in the grace of heaven, and in the punishment of hell. In Virgil’s soliloquy at the central point of the work, he makes the case that it is through loving things of the world, or themselves too much, that the souls in hell are forced to suffer. Their punishments are ordered based on this corrupted love. There is a confusion here between love and lust. True love is gift. What is identified as love for self and love for sin, is actually lust.

The souls in hell are described as penitent, longing for the love God can give to spare them from their self lust. If God is love, then the Divine Comedy is a story of a God who lost the celestial war. The beloved is cast into a pit of suffering. The fallen angels, Lucifer in particular, are masters of their realm, drunk on the suffering they inflict. What type of punishment is this for the demons who turned all humanity away from God? They are tasting eternal success? Why would God allow Lucifer such satisfaction in his power? Why must Francesca suffer more pain than Lucifer? The whole picture does not make sense. Lucifer has won! This is a God who has lost the power to do good in all places. This God lacks either the power or the will to reach out a hand to rescue the beloved.

The God of Dante is a God whose need for justice outweighs love and mercy. This God no longer cares about the souls in hell. They were placed there because of specific rules and transgressed laws, and there is no looking back. For this God, rules are more important than morality and love. If one broke the rules for whatever reason, or lacks a proper conversion experience and baptism, damnation is certain. And once the soul is damned, God leaves the equation. Once Lucifer and the fallen demons are out of God’s sight, they are out of mind, free to inflict any suffering on others they may wish, even if those souls are guilty of lesser evils.

You may be thinking this is an archaic view of God and saying “I don’t view God that way.” But have any of us really left it behind? Don’t you still picture hell as some sort of fiery pit, where sinners work like slaves before the whips of grotesque demons? Logically, you don’t, but doesn’t your brain still conjure up this image?

We were made because of love, and it is our free will to reciprocate our Creator’s love that makes us the beloved of God. What would be the point of this life if the rules change in the next? No, God’s reward is our willingly reciprocated love, out of free will. Heaven is the culmination of our lifelong pursuit of beauty and love. There will be no obligation in our praise—how could we refuse it, being finally in the presence of perfect beauty and perfect love? By contrast, hell is the chosen rejection of love.

But we have been taught a God of rules and wrath instead of a God of love. Christians are far quicker to judge error than to laud goodness. Just like Dante, we pass judgement on those we consider sinners, never with any doubt that God is doing the same. Dare we consider that mercy may be greater than judgement?

We should embrace a love-theology rather than a fear-theology. The songs in heaven will be sung out of the joy of the beloved to be in the presence of the Lover. Beholding the beauty of life’s gifts, our desire to please God will come from pure gratitude, not because of fear or obligation. Fear begets obedience only until the moment of rebellion.

Grown out of the disturbing view of God, where wrath trumps love, comes a faulty notion of Jesus’ role which propagated in the middle-ages and was key in fear-theology. Jesus is seen as a mediator between us and a vengeful God. It is as if Jesus convinces God to tip his emotional balance from anger to love. John Milton described Jesus begging God to forgive humanity after the first sin. “Bend thine ear to supplication; hear his sighs… let him live before thee reconciled… and for these my death shall pay..” (Paradise Lost, XI) God gives in to Jesus’ intercession. God is not love, Jesus is love.

To a God of love, if the afterlife really were the way Dante and Milton describe it, God would not be in heaven accepting the love of an obedient creation. God would be weeping in eternal pity for the beloved’s suffering. How God would grieve to know that his repentant beloved (as the souls in hell are described in Dante’s Inferno) suffered! In Dante’s hell, the souls long for forgiveness and grieve because of their separation from God. Could the Lover listen unmoved to the beloved’s cry of regret? God would be wandering the seven circles of Dante’s hell, desperately trying to free the victims and take them to a better place. Love would have no blind eye toward suffering.

Hell, rather, is a chosen rejection of love, not a place designed for punishment. If a soul chooses selfishness over love, hell will be their fate. If a soul wishes to be with God’s love, and demonstrates it by exercising love, Divine Love will not reject that wish. Yes, hell is a place of suffering, but it is a chosen suffering, because to be embraced by love, self must be sacrificed.

God cannot reach into hell to save the damned because hell is the absence of love, and there, God cannot go. Nor can a soul in hell ever be repentant, for hell’s darkness is eternal selfishness. When in such a state, there is no desire for change. Purgatory is the journey away from self, toward love. In the end, if we are to experience purgatory or hell, we will discover that it was our own choice that put us there. I do not only mean metaphorically, but that we will be actively choosing to be there by rejecting love.

Will the Last Judgement be the Dies Irae (day of wrath), or a day of Pieta (pity)? If God is love, then ours will be a judgement where God wants to pardon us, wants us in heaven. But we must embrace the gift, at the expense of our own ego. If we are unwilling to do that, then we choose hell, the despair of lost love, and God weeps for us. The suffering of hell is that of the mind and heart which has rejected love, and we get there by closing off love. Fear this hell! Fear it with every ounce of dread Dante stirs, for such suf-fering, such coldness of a complete void of love is far worse than burning and gnashing of teeth!

Heaven is the living experience of perfected beauty and perfected love. It is the fulfillment of our insatiable longing for beauty. There, our desires will be satisfied. The lesson Jesus teaches is that we must give up our selfishness in order to gain this reward. It is not such a strange command, since we all know that true love requires sacrificing our own desires to the desires of the beloved.

The most comforting thing is that God wants us with him in heaven and will do everything we allow to make it happen. God does not want us to suffer the pains of hell, and God is willing to do something about it! God is not aloof and distant, but challenges us to accept love every moment of every day. We make the mistake of viewing God as so big and powerful that he is beyond our sight and comprehension. But God is so big and powerful that he is present in the smallest of things, not only able but willing to walk with us at every moment.

Virgil, who guides the narrator through the darkest shadows, is the closest depiction of God in all of the Divine Comedy. But God is our Virgil, the hero with us on our journey.

In Christianity we have created a series of intercessors. Jesus is the first. We picture him, as in the Miltonian conversation, swaying God’s heart toward us. God is too distant for our imag-ination. Jesus is more accessible to our hearts. Viewing God as our personal hero is an utterly foreign idea to us. We rely on figures like Virgil to be our heroes. Yet even Jesus has become too distant, so we rely on more intercessors, such as Mary, and the Saints. We ask them to intercede for us. We even invoke personalities such as guardian angels to be our protectors, taking the personal role we cannot concede to God. It is too difficult for us to imagine God, to care enough to worry about our lowly lives. Why don’t we take away the barriers? God is close enough. God is our guide. The Saints can be beseeched to pray for us, just as we would ask our brothers and sisters to pray for us. But God is also here with us every minute. We are God’s beloved. God does not send others to mediate on our journey.

God appears to us every day, sometimes in the most unexpected ways. God does not leave the job of companionship to others. If we could only open our minds and hearts to God’s true nature we would see him with us every step of the way.

How does God prove this love? By not only walking with us, but by becoming one of us. In the beginning of Dante’s inferno, the heroic Virgil seeks out the narrator to lead him through the pits of hell. God did the same thing. As God incarnate, Jesus seeks us in our lowest moments, sharing in our suffering for the chance to lead us through. Jesus is our Virgil, come to us in our need to provide the guiding hand up from inferno.

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Part Two: Jesus — Our Virgil