Lucy Bamboo · July 21, 2026
By Lucy Bamboo Why does Dante place some souls in Paradise and others in Hell? The answer hinges on a medieval theological puzzle: How do grace and free will coexist? This tension shapes the poem’s architecture and defines who gets saved. The Problem Dante Inherited Dante follows Thomas Aquinas, the greatest medieval theologian. Aquinas insisted … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · June 28, 2026We’ve been taught to ask whether God is loving. The ruder question — the one Dante actually stages, in granular architectural detail, for every reader who has ever cracked open the Inferno — is whether a God who designed Hell could possibly be. Not Hell as vague backdrop to a morality tale, but Hell as … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · June 28, 2026
Faith, in the version most people inherit, is the assumption you start from — the floor you stand on before any of the hard questions begin. Dante’s poem says something harder: faith is what’s left over after thinking has gone as far as it can and discovers it isn’t far enough. That’s not comfort. That’s … Read more
