Christian Rationalism

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Christian Rationalism

• Inferno
• By Dante Alighieri

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God is Increate

• He is uncreated everything else is created
• Confusion of creature and creator is an act of
  pride (hubris)

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Imago Dei

• Good choices reflect God
• Free choice makes us an origin of our own acts
• Makes us God-like
• Most like God when we are most ourselves
• We are images, God is real
• Humility is the essence of Christianity
• Allows Gods will to be done over mans will

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Absolute Love

• Only God can be loved for His own sake
• Everything else is loved for something else
• Happiness is satisfaction with what you have
  love of God
• Lose self-sufficiency when we put our happiness
  in temporal things
• Eternal things we can love on earth
• Reason
• Virtues like prudence, temperance, fortitude,
  justice

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Misdirected Love Sin

• Loving the wrong object or loving the right
  object too much or too little
• Should love things as a means, not as a terminal
  end
• Cant stop desire through possession of goods
• Sin is self-delusion
• Senses dictate what is real, but senses change
• Everything changes GOD DOESNT CHANGE

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Intellect Highest of our Faculties

• Goes beyond senses
• At our best when intellect rules our senses and
  emotions
• Intellect and will are higher than
  passions/emotions
• Primordial fall causes senses to usurp intellect

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Homo Claudus

• Limping man
• Notion of being injured in fall
• Hard to love right things
• Man is trying to find way out of sin, but
  something gets in the way

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Definitions of Heaven and Hell

• Heaven - Natural love, desire for happiness
  infused by God Gods presence
• Hell - Elective love, futile attempts to satisfy
  need for God Division from God

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Conversion is continual

• Not a single moment
• Consistently turn away from
• Darkness
• Sin
• Absolutizing things of the world

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Inferno
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Numerology

• 33 Canti Inferno Prologue
• 33 Canti Purgatorio
• 33 Canti Paradiso
• 100 Canti
• 3 Beasts
• 3 Parts to the book
• 9 Circles of Hell

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Plot

• Dante (pilgrim) is on his way home back to God.
  
• His pilgrimage leads to ever increasing
  illumination, knowledge.
• Hell-Purgatory-Paradise
• Sin is morally falling asleep
• Living in Shadows
• Dante (pilgrim) is asleep in the woods
• Dante (pilgrim) is losing his faith

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Elements of a Quest

• Quester
• Place to go
• Stated reason to go there
• Challenges and trials en route
• Real reason to go