Whether you think Paradise Lost is a true story or not will depend on your own religious belief. People who are not Christian will regard it as fiction, while Christians will generally be divided about whether the story is entirely true, partly true, or a metaphorical representation of matters that cannot be conveyed directly to the human intelligence. There will also be some Christians who believe the poem is blasphemous, either because it presents God, Christ, and Satan as literary characters, or because it mingles classical and Christian imagery.

The point about blasphemy is particularly interesting when considering Milton's attitude towards his own poem. Whether Paradise Lost is true or not, Milton seems to have thought it was, and he is known to have been Puritanical in his own Christian beliefs. It is, therefore, strange to find him composing long dialogues between God the Father and the Son, in particular, when he believes that God is not only real, but omniscient. To put words into the mouth of God shows not only a poetic confidence, which is a mark of Milton's poetry from the first, but a theological confidence that his poem is divinely inspired, and is not, in fact, blasphemous. Milton, therefore, clearly believes that the story he is telling in Paradise Lost is both true and acceptable to the God he depicts.