A rational person capable of that assent, however—of believing all of this to be a paradox concealing a deeper, wholly coherent truth, rather than a gross contradiction—has probably suffered such chronic intellectual and moral malformation that he or she is no longer able to recognize certain very plain truths: such as the truth that he or she has been taught to approve of divine deeds that, were they reduced to a human scale of action, would immediately be recognizable as expressions of unalloyed spite.
