Is God Judgemental?

We’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

What is Faith?

What is faith — a figure in watercolor reaches toward golden light at the threshold between reason and the unmappable

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