The Spiritual Harm of Lying

Today on Ascend: The Great Books Podcast, Deacon Harrison Garlick explores one of the most striking features of Dante’s Inferno: why the poet places liars, flatterers, and the treacherous in the lowest circles of Hell — deeper than murderers, tyrants, suicides, and even blasphemers.

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We are reading the Odyssey over 12 weeks!

Why does Dante rank fraud and treachery as worse sins than violence? What is the spiritual harm of lying? And how is lying profoundly anti-Christ?

Deacon Garlick takes listeners on a deep but accessible journey through:

• The architecture and purpose of Dante’s Inferno
• The nature of truth and the teleology (purpose) of speech
• Why sins against the soul are worse than sins against the body
• The corruption of the intellect as the worst perversion of human nature
• The profound theology of Christ as the Logos — the divine ordering principle of all reality

This episode will challenge you to take lying far more seriously and to see how every lie moves both ourselves and others farther away from Jesus Christ, who declares “I am the Truth.”

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Ascend The Great Books Podcast

04:13 Exploring Dante's Inferno: The Spiritual Harm of Lying

06:07 Understanding the Architecture of Hell

15:05 The Nature of Truth and Speech

20:26 The Consequences of Lying vs. Murder

24:24 The Nature of Lying and Its Consequences

30:52 Understanding Logos and Its Significance

Key Topics Discussed

• Dante’s moral purpose in writing the Divine Comedy
• The structure of Hell: sins of incontinence vs. sins of malice
• Upper Hell vs. Lower Hell and the City of Dis
• Why flattery appears lower in Hell than murder
• St. Thomas Aquinas on truth: “the conformity of the mind to reality”
• The purpose (telos) of speech: to convey truth and help others conform their minds to reality
• Why lying is a perversion of speech and an attack on the intellect
• The inverted hierarchy of the soul in Hell
• Christ as the Logos (John 1) — the rational structure and ordering principle of all creation
• How lying is an anti-Christ act that divorces the mind from reality and from Jesus Himself
• The spiritual danger of breeding greater errors through falsehood

Notable Quotes / Insights

• “Sins against the soul are always going to be more severe than sins against the body.”
• “The corruption of the best is the worst.”
• “Christ does not say ‘I have come to share a truth with you.’ He says, ‘I am the Truth.’”
• “Every lie moves people farther away from Jesus Christ because you are divorcing the mind from reality.”

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