[Or even a nonbeliever, no? Ron Rosenbaum has an interesting NY Observer column on theodicy this week that includes this mention of Milton:]
... A God who encourages watching tortureas in the theology of Aquinas, who imagined that one of the pleasures that God would offer the souls He saved would be gazing down from Heaven upon the cruel and prolonged tortures of the damned in Hell. Recreational sadism from Heavens luxury skyboxes (Summa Theologica, Question 94).
This was one of the logical outcomes of certain orthodox Christian doctrines that used to drive William Empson crazy. Read Empsons Miltons God, his last, most lacerating book, almost totally devoted to denouncing the God of Paradise LostMiltons massive effort at overcoming the contradictions of theodicy. And arguing from a study of Miltons posthumously published and ambiguously heterodox De Doctrina Christiana that Milton had doubts, too. (Actually, its almost impossible to find a copy of Empsons Miltons God; someone should bring it back into print.) ...
<http://www.observer.com/pages/frontpage3.asp>
Carl