In Canto 1, Dante mentions straying off of the "straight and truth" only to end up in a dark and lonely wilderness with three beasts roaming about. When I read that, I immediately thought that the passage was a metaphor for straying off of the path of God and ending up alone in the cold and dangerous wilderness. He wanders aimlessly without the hand of the Lord to guide him and encounters the three beasts (which, as Daniel suggested, can represent a man's decent into sin). It isn't until Virgil shows up to guide him through Hell and Heaven and everything in between until he is safe from the beasts which can represent teaching someone who has strayed off the path of the lord about Christianity.
I commented on Daniel's and Darby's posts.
If you are going to make these assertions, look at the narrow path and the broad way as lined out by Christ. It is only by entering the dark wood of error that he reaches Hell, however can one also argue this is also how he reaches heaven?
ReplyDeleteThis is a good observation because it points back to the relationship between us straying from the commands of God, and the saving nature of Christ. I appreciate these literary comparisons that Dante makes about the wilderness and the beasts - they accurately depict the feelings that we often experience when we stray from God.
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