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Yet didst permit the serpent to creep in,And drive my father forth from Paradise,Keep us from further evil: – Hail! all hail! (1.1.18-21).Although she begins by ascribing love and blessing to God, she asks to be kept fromfurther evil: the comparative acknowledges the previous occurrence of evil, andnecessarily raises the question of whether one can expect a God who has allowed onesuch occurrence not to allow others. This is not the only instance of questioning:Adam asks why God ever planted the tree of knowledge (1.1.32); Eve describesAbel’s death as an excessive punishment for her own sin (3.1.385-6); Adah declaresthat Cain’s punishment is “more than he can bear” (3.1.477). The whole familychallenge God’s decisions, but God never takes the tyrannical step of suppressingsuch questioning, and, indeed, never performs any tyrannical act. To paraphraseHeber, of God in Cain we know no evil.The Question of Evil and OmnipotenceOne question is central to the drama. In an oft-quoted passage, Cain asks, “Because/He is all-powerful, must all-good, too, follow?” (1.1.76-7). Adah later presents ananswer to this, saying to Lucifer, “Omnipotence /Must be all goodness” (1.1.390-1), atwhich point Lucifer asks whether this was true in Eden, questioning whether the Fallwere good. Later, in conversation with Lucifer, Cain pursues this further, and asks,why is evil – he being good? I ask’dThis question of my father; and he said,Because this evil only was the pathTo good. (2.2.285-8).This question is the central theological issue in the discourse of the drama: thequestion of the existence of evil in a universe ruled by a good god. The question isextremely complex, and is never answered in Cain, although many readers have feltfree to read their own answers into the drama.328