Paradiso: the Second Sphere, Mercury -- Why the Cross?

Beatrice's explanation of the double nature of the crucifixion reveals a great deal about the structure of Dante's cosmos, for it teaches us that hell and purgatory are states of being that reflect not only free will but also divine justice. The Jews cooperated with God by putting Christ to death, but they sinned against God by the malice and treachery with which they did it in not recognizing this as the fulfillment of the Scriptures. This is why Caiphas and the rest of the Sanhedrin are crucified on the floor of hell bearing the weight of the world's hypocrisy. It's why Judas is being chewed and gnawed in Satan's mouth. Instead of being cooperative with God's soteriological vision, they were being sacrilegious, and they were reenacting in spirit that which Adam had originally enacted in substance, continuing upon themselves and their descendents a rift between man and God in which humanity, through the freedom of its will, had strayed from an orientation toward the Good. In their killing of God, the Jews sealed their own damnation even as the act opened the gate for their redemption (cf. all the Jewish ancestors Christ rescued from Limbo and all the souls on earth who will ultimately be redeemed).



All this was necessary because humanity had decided at Adam's point in history that it would turn away from God, and it was entirely up to God as the stronger power to heal the breach, and for only one reason. In all relationships that exist between the force which designs the container in which souls exist (we call this hegemony) and the souls that exist powerless within that container (we call this subalternity), it is up to the powerful to bring respite to the powerless. Of course, in our relationship with God, we're not entirely powerless because God has given us tools to work with him in orienting ourselves towards his will -- these tools began with the law in the Old Covenant and continued with prayer (manifest in faith, which is an active response to divine revelation, hope, and love) in the New. It's this New Covenant that concerns this canto, for here it was that God became one of us so that he could die and show us how it is we are materially and spiritually resurrected in him. It was the realization of this truth and the reorienting of himself to his proper purpose as a child of God, that saved Justinian. Justinian consciously decided to pursue the good, which Aristotle tells us is the "activity of soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete." As human persons created in God's image, we can do no less than follow this example and the example of St. Francis of Paola, who left the contemplative life for active service to God, for we are in our essence both material and spiritual -- we have within each of us the whole cosmos.

S.