(June 20, 2023 at 7:56 am)emjay Wrote:(June 20, 2023 at 2:31 am)Belacqua Wrote: Dante, following Thomas Aquinas and the general ideas of Neoplatonic philosophers, says that there is no time or space in heaven. It is not in the material world.
The experience of heaven, according to those guys, is like a single instant of extreme bliss. But there would be no chronoperception because time would not be passing.
Presumably not in The Divine Comedy? So why does he in that describe heaven, hell, and purgatory, in this other much more vividly imaginative sense... of a realm in space and time... of various levels and with distinct and imaginative 'sin-centric' punishments etc. If he really views heaven as a single everlasting moment of bliss, and presumably hell as something like the opposite (? ie something like a single moment of everlasting pain/suffering), then even if not literal how could the description in Divine Comedy be considered in any way analoguous, allegorical or symbolic (ie of a single, everlasting moment)?
The Divine Comedy is a comedy, it is intended to make people laugh, not to teach them what afterlife is like. Any more than Charlie and Chocolate Factory is intended to teach about how chocolate factories work.
