have gone very close to casting God as the villain of the piece.8 This, among other things, is a misunderstanding of the nature of what is happening. In dramatic terms we can refer to this as a ‘wager’ and this certainly captures the suspense of the situation and the huge issues at stake. What would be illegitimate is to press this notion further and present God as a cosmic dramatist interested only in a suspenseful story and so indifferent to the lives even of his servants that he plays with them