Predestination in Dante’s Commedia in Light of Augustine

Abstract

If Virgil’s damnation motivates Dante in the heaven of Jupiter to interrogate the inner workings of divine justice, the ultimate theological point in contention is the nature of predestination. This article offers Augustine as an unconsidered textual anchor and hermeneutic lens for illuminating predestination in the Commedia: a doctrine concerning not so much humanity’s attempt at impossible comprehension of God’s salvific will, as an invitation to creative participation in it, realized in and through ongoing, historical practices of caritas conforming the self to the body of Christ.