God, in this poem, is not the indescribable effulgence felt in Dante’s Paradiso; he is a Scholastic philosopher who gives long and unconvincing reasons why he, the omnipotent, allows Satan to exist, and allows him to tempt man, all the while foreseeing that man will succumb and bring all mankind to centuries of sin and misery. He argues that without freedom to sin there is no virtue, without trial there is no wisdom; he thinks it better that man should face temptation and resist it than not be tempted at all, quite unforeseeing that the Lord’s Prayer would beg God not to lead man into
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