Evil and Sin Essay - 1624 Words

Compared to modern times, it seems the average person in the Middle Ages was much more concerned about God, particularly divine opinion of the individual in question. Perhaps this stems from the fact that, if ones life is spent worrying about marauding Vikings or the Black Plague, one places much more hope in attaining a pleasant afterlife while, if ones barcalounger is adjustable and ones TV larger than 32 inches, there seems to be little point in hoping for something better. A predictable but interesting side effect of this heavenly pondering is exploration of the paradox of sin. How can a world created by a supremely good God contain evil? What is sin and, if everything was created by God, where did it come from? Intellectuals in†¦show more content†¦Hence you can understand how love must be the seed bed where all virtuous deeds must grow, with every act that warrants punishment. ( Alighieri 185) Dante believes that all sin comes from the corruption of human love. By loving the wrong thing, or loving a good one too much or too little, humans sin. Purgatory was created to right our absent or misguided affections (Alighieri 187). Further on, Dante expounds on the concept of corrupted love. By sentencing various offenses to different punishments, he clarifies his hierarchy of sin. Those found the farthest from heaven are those whose love was directed towards something harmful - the proud, envious and wrathful (Alighieri 104, 136, 147). The slothful, those who failed to cultivate their love inhabit the next level (Alighieri 189-199), and finally the sins of avarice, gluttony, and lust, characterized by loving something good too strongly, are found near the top (Alighieri 203, 237, 266). It is clear that Dante did not yield to the simplistic view that all sin emanates from some evil power and is somehow beyond our control. Dante saw sin in our very nature – love. In canto seventeen he explains, â€Å"Not the Creator nor a single cre ature, as you know, ever existed without love, the souls love or the love that comes by nature†Show MoreRelatedThe Evil Of Evil And Commit Sin989 Words   |  4 Pagesforce people to do anything because He wants them to love Him ‘whole-heartedly’ (Matthew 22:37). This paper will explain why Lewis is right based on the possibilities to do evil and commit sin, and yet also be forgiven. This can be surprising to many other people such as non-believers. Sin is defined as an offense against God. The sin that Satan has taught human race is to be like God; to be their own masters and achieve their own happiness (Lewis 53). Humans try to find ways to achieve their own happinessRead MoreThe Lord of the Flies by William Golding776 Words   |  3 PagesThe novel Lord of the Flies presents the themes of evil and sin as an innate, inevitable and negative feature throughout the novel, similar to the play The Crucible. 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The Christian view has clear boundaries of good and bad behavior as shown in Inferno while the Greek belief is that nothing is inherently evil as seen in Medea. The Christian and Greek views differ on the punishment directly related or unrelated