With respect to Inferno, Dante clearly believes that God is the ultimate designer of Hell and that the punishment for the damned is God's responsibility. As Dante and his guide Virgil are about to enter Hell, Dante reads the following inscription above the gate into Hell: "SACRED JUSTICE MOVED MY ARCHITECT./ I WAS RAISED HERE BY DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE,/ PRIMORDIAL LOVE AND ULTIMATE INTELLECT" (18). Dante presents God as the architect of Hell in his diction. His use of words like sacred, justice, divine, and love are all closely associated with God and are never associated with Satan. He blatantly tells that Hell was constructed in attempt to uphold sacred justice, and he describes this entity in such a way that it can only be God. For Dante, God is all-powerful and all-knowing yet defined by love and justice.The idea of God in Hell derives from the idea that God's gift to mankind is free will and is also an example of the contrapasso seen throughout the text. Dante, in writing Inferno, believes that the human race chooses by its own will to make well or to sin and thereby chooses its own place in Heaven or in Hell. This entire idea embodies the law of contrapasso because as these souls have chosen to sin in life, so they have chosen to be in Hell. On the shore of Acheron, first river of Hell, Dante notes, "But those unmanned and naked spirits there/ turned pale with fear... but all together they drew to that grim shore/ where all must come who lose the fear of God" (21). Even in this part of the book, the idea of contrapasso is ever-present, for as the spirits of the damned lost fear of God in life, they are pale with fear in death. Also, Dante's use of the word drew in this passage implies that the souls of the dead are eager to cross the river and receive their punishment. This idea that the souls of the damned are in fact eager to meet their fate ties in well with the idea that those souls who go to Hell have chosen to do so by free will. The souls who enter Hell have chosen to do so under God and are likely to be eager to behold that which God has in store for them.
This said, Dante seems to pity some souls in Hell, especially those in circles one and two; this pity might be misconstrued as a questioning of Gods methods, but it is, in the context of the book, merely the result of Dante's empathy for these souls. Additionally, it is possible to view Dante the narrator's pity as pity not only for the souls themselves, but also as pity for their decisions or disappointment, in a sense. This disappointment is akin to the disappointment parents might feel when children err when they should know better. Dante feels most empathetic toward these souls partly because he doesn't like to think that these souls, whose sins seem minimal, should live without hope and in torture for eternity; he is not questioning the judgement by God. In fact, his sad pity without any hint of anger implies that Dante is absolutely submissive to the will of God.
