Empson's "Milton's God" is often described as a sustained attack on Christianity and a defence of Milton's attempt to "justify the ways of God to man" in "Paradise Lost". Empson argues that precisely the inconsistencies and complexities adduced by critics as evidence of the poem's badness in fact function in quite the opposite manner. What the poem brings out is the difficulty faced by anyone in encountering and submitting to the will of God and, indeed, the great clash between the authority of such a deity and the determinate desires and needs of human beings: