I thought Christfags believed in the Harrowing of Hell, where Christ frees all the pre-Christian era souls from Hell in between the crucifixion and the resurrection.

>>25244466
Generally, yes. Since the early church it has been held that Jesus raised up the virtuous pagans and ancient peoples in Hell all the way through to Adam and Eve as part of his resurrection.
Anyone still in Hell by Inferno is someone Dante thought God would condemn to it, believer or not.
Also, OP, as great as the Comedy is it's entirely Dante's fanfiction. It's all filtered through his sense of justice and his own grudges. Hence why Brutus is held to the same depths of sin as Judas.

>>25244458
The poem was never meant to be a description of the afterlife Anon. One of the techniques used in the poem is to describe things as if they "really happened," and maybe this confuses things. However, I think the larger problem is that people don't read beyond the Inferno and so they don't see Cato, a pagan suicide, in Purgatory (and so presumably destined for salvation), or the later Pagans in Paradise (notably, one of Virgil's own characters, but not Virgil).

Dante, is of course, simply sticking to the popular theology of his time. Earlier, in the Patristic period, it was fairly common to argue that the virtuous Pagans were delivered by Christ with the faithful Jews. It was less so by Dante's time in the West.

But Dante isn't slavishly repeating popular opinion here. He is making a point. Limbo is described in naturalistic terms that mimic the Earthly Paradise atop Mount Purgatory. The whole point is that even this becomes a sort of Hell due to being insufficient. He is making a point about the insufficiency of human reason and art without Revelation, which is why Beatrice must show up as his guide later.

Virgil is part of this point. Virgil can get Dante as far as "Paradise on Earth." If Dante was a secular humanist or Hegel type, he might have ended things here. But this isn't enough. And Virgil's presence in this Earthly Paradise is unstable, which is why he simply vanishes there, just as his own characters oscillate between the Purgatorio of pietas and the destiny of Rome, and the Inferno of furor and unchecked passions. Virgil is a pessimist and cannot escape this cycle. His sin is despair, lack of the theological virtue of hope.

The virtuous Pagans are a symbol of this. It's the mind that is properly ordered to the Good, True, and Beautiful, but never able to attain union with its object.

>>25244466
The Harrowing is referenced several times in the Inferno, sometimes indirectly, but also explicitly when Dante questions Virgil in Limbo.

“Tell me, my Master, tell me, thou my Lord,”
Began I, with desire of being certain
Of that Faith which o’ercometh every error,
“Came any one by his own merit hence,
Or by another’s, who was blessed thereafter?”
And he, who understood my covert speech,
Replied: “I was a novice in this state,
When I saw hither come a Mighty One,
With sign of victory incoronate.
Hence he drew forth the shade of the First Parent,
And that of his son Abel, and of Noah,
Of Moses the lawgiver, and the obedient
Abraham, patriarch, and David, king, Israel with his father and his children,
And Rachel, for whose sake he did so much,
And others many, and he made them blessed;
And thou must know, that earlier than these
Never were any human spirits saved.”

From this, it seems that those whom Christ saves are primarily biblical figures who, however imperfectly, knew God and believed in Him. In contrast, figures such as Aristotle, who represent the height of reason and pagan virtue, still lack divine grace and therefore do not attain salvation, which in Dante’s framework (as showcased in the entirety of the poem, Virgil himself being the personification of reason yada yada) depends on alignment with God’s will rather than virtue alone.

>>25244530
The real question is why Judas is as far down in Hell as Brutus.

>>25244530
So pre-Christian peoples were judged according to the objective virtue of their lives, while modern people are judged by whether or not they believe in a magic resurrecting Jew? We really got the short end of the stick.

>>25244530
>Hence why Brutus is held to the same depths of sin as Judas.
Dante had a grudge against Brutus?

>>25244458
Because it's a retarded fanfiction

>>25246376
Stop that protestant bullshit, it's not just about believing