Our theme for Sunday School is Christus Victor in Tandem with Penal Substitutionary Atonement and Athanasius on the Incarnation. And we'll unpack this as we go. As Christians who are lowercase c, Catholic and Reformed, and in that order, we're interested in what the church has historically taught from early times until now. Like our forefathers who framed our confession put it, we have no itch to clog religion with new words. We don't want to be novel. We don't want to be proclaiming doctrine that has never been believed or taught or proclaimed in the entire history of the church. If we're doing that, then most likely it's heresy. Well, in this, we meet a modern challenge today that says that The view of atonement that we hold, which is substitution, is newer. It was developed by Anselm of Canterbury in the medieval times, and it's isolated to the West, Western, which would be Roman Catholicism, and now for us as Protestants, which sprang from the West. So it's just a Western invention. It's later. It doesn't trace back to the early church and the early church fathers, and it's non-existent in the East. arguments, even from heavyweight scholars today, certain ones that hold this. And I want to challenge that. So we would agree if it's a new doctrine, and if it was invented by Anselm, and it's not rooted in scripture, it hasn't been believed and confessed by the church, we would have good reason to abandon it. But I want to show otherwise from Athanasius' work, on the Incarnation. You can buy this in paperback form. A lot of you have probably already read it, maybe multiple times. And I want to start out by surveying two different themes in this book. We'll survey the theme of Christus Victor, and then the theme of Penal Substitutionary Atonement. The purpose of Athanasius' work on the Incarnation was apologetic. He's giving an apologetic about the cross of Christ to both unbelieving Jews and pagans. And he's addressing it to Christians, but his goal, he states this at the end of the book, his goal is to equip Christians to answer Jews and pagans as to, if Jesus is God incarnate, why did he die at the cross? This is what the main burden of the book is. We know that Athanasius was a bishop, an Eastern bishop during the fourth century. He died sometime around 373 AD. And he's been called the most influential single figure behind Nicene Orthodoxy. So every time we recite the Nicene Creed and every time we talk about the son being of one substance with the father in language like this, We are thankful for Athanasius' contribution in fighting Arianism and proclaiming the Orthodox truth during that time. And as he writes this book on the incarnation, the theme of Christus Victor is throughout the book. One scholar defines Christus Victor as follows. The central theme of it is the idea that the atonement is a divine conflict and victory. Christ, or Christ the victor, fights against and triumphs over the evil powers of the world, the tyrants under which mankind is in bondage and suffering, and in him, God reconciles the world to himself. So operating on this basic definition, we'll see this demonstrated throughout the whole work. When you read on the incarnation, Athanasius hammers on the fact that Jesus is victorious over death. Victorious over death. He tells us that God is good. And God created all things out of the overflow of his goodness through the logos. But mankind rebelled against their creator and thus incurred the previously threatened condemnation of sin. He cites here Genesis 2.17, the day you eat of the tree, you shall surely die. So for Athanasius, death is much more sinister than mere cessation of life. But rather it's the culmination of man's sinful descent into anti-God madness. As mankind became what he calls insatiable for sinning, The race plunged into a downward spiral of ever deeper and darker sin, committing, as he puts it, even acts against nature. And he mentions Romans 1 there. Humanity gave itself over to demonic deception to such a degree that God's work in creating man was nearly eradicated. Remember the flood and the reason that God wiped out the entire human race except for eight souls. So God's solution to man's horrible plight is in the incarnation and passion of Christ, in which the Son of God becomes man, so the Father's work of creating humanity would not be nullified by man's own self-destruction. Christ is incarnate to prevent man from sin-fueled self-annihilation. Since death manifests itself in the body, then Christ in the body must face and destroy death. Born of the Virgin, Christ comes into the human race like a mighty king coming into a city and thus securing the whole city against the enemies who would otherwise attack. By His death, Christ destroys corruption and death so we may rise with Him in His resurrection. And if Christ had not done this, Athanasius tells us that the race of human beings would have been utterly dissolved. So by His incarnation and death, Christ brings us from death to life. And this is what Athanasius calls the first cause of the resurrection. By his death and resurrection, Christ the victor is victorious over death. He's also victorious over Satan and demons. As humanity degenerates further into idolatry and magic and idol worship, They increasingly give themselves over to demonic influence. The only way for God to reverse this devilish trend is to recreate humanity in his own image by Christ incarnation and passage or passion. So on the cross, Christ died, Athanasius tells us, Christ died in the air. suspended there on the cross. He died in the air to purify the air of demonic control and open a new path to heaven through the way that was formerly Satan's domain. Since his resurrection and ascension, demons flee at Jesus' name, and this proves he's risen and alive. Demons, which are represented in pagan gods, do not drive out Christ, but rather Christ drives them out. The pagan gods at this time were dwindling, Athanasius tells us, as the worship of Christ advances throughout the whole world. And since Christ's incarnation, he tells us, quote, all magic and witchcraft are brought to naught, and the pagan oracles have ceased. And this shows Christ's superiority over demons that spoke through those oracles. So in all of this, the demons see what the impious do not believe, that Jesus Christ is God. In his incarnation, Christ destroys the power of Satan, man's adversary who formerly held the power of death, Hebrews 2. Christ the victor is victorious over Satan and demons. A third way that he's victorious is that he's victorious over sinners. This wasn't part of the definition that we read earlier of Christ as victor, but it could easily be added to it as Christ conquers sinners. As we state in our catechism in question 29, Christ executes the office of a king in subduing us to himself. We note that the way Christ conquers us is different than the way he conquers death and Satan. He conquers us not by destruction, but by redemption. If mankind has incurred the divine curse of death and enslaved himself to Satan and demonic powers, then man himself must be conquered and subdued to God. Athanasius reminds us that at his return, Christ will destroy the wicked and mete out judgment to them, eternal judgment. But until his return, Christ is conquering a host of sinners by his grace through the gospel. He notes that the vast influx of pagan converts to Christianity demonstrates that Christ is alive and powerful. Now remember, he's writing in the fourth century, and he's seeing Christianity advance throughout the world, and pagan nations hearing the gospel for the first time, and masses being converted. Throughout the inhabited earth, pagan Gentiles are turning to Christ. And this is proof of Christ's authenticity and his victory over death and demons. This unprecedented missionary momentum of Christianity is due to this, he tells us. The Son of God is living and active, works daily, and effects the salvation of all. Even barbaric savages like the pagan Goths are converted by Christ's power, from idols to Christ, from perpetual violence to peace, from clan war, which is all they ever knew, to now Christian unity in Christ. Since Christ at His resurrection conquered death, He's able to save sinners from the corruption of sin which culminates in death. And since He conquered Satan and demons, He's able to deliver sinners from the demonic bondage of pagan religion. In addition to these conversions, the ongoing radical repentance of Christians also demonstrates the resurrection, glory, and life of Christ. He tells us, The adulterer no longer commits adultery. The murderer no longer murders. The unjust no longer grasps greedily, and the impious is henceforth pious. So this conversion of multitudes of pagans and the unquestionable morality of Christians in their testimony at this time prove Christ conquering power. Those who do not convert, He will consign to eternal fiery judgment. Christ the victor is victorious over sinners. This is the basic theme of Christ as victor is all throughout the early church fathers and it's throughout this book on the incarnation by Athanasius. Some would have us believe that's all that he saw in the atonement of Christ. We had this great enemy death, this great enemy Satan, And Christ comes and defeats those enemies and sets us free from slavery to them. And that's the end of it. But that's not the full picture. All of this is true. But he goes further. And we see the clear doctrine of substitution. You could call it penal substitutionary atonement also in this book. So now we'll consider that. And what do we mean by substitution? Well, J.I. Packer defined it this way. It expresses, substitution expresses, that Jesus Christ, our Lord, moved by love that was determined to do everything necessary to save us, endured and exhausted the destructive divine judgment for which we were otherwise inescapably destined, and so won for us forgiveness, adoption, and glory. The way we state it in our catechism in question 28 is this. How does Christ execute the office of a priest? Christ executes the office of a priest in his once offering up himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God and in making continual intercession for us. So it's not enough just to say that Christ defeated death and Satan, that's all true, but there was another factor. It's like R.C. Sproul loved to say You know, the first thing God saved you from was God. The wrath of God. That has to be dealt with. God's righteous judgment against your sin. This is what this is speaking about. Now there is controversy about this. What I just said. Some people deny that Athanasius and the church fathers taught any such notion as substitutionary atonement. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church says The general patristic teaching, or the teaching of the church fathers, is that Christ is our representative, not our substitute. So they're saying that in general, you cannot find substitution. This will not be a theme that's prominent in the church fathers. Another scholar wrote an entire article arguing that, quote, this idea of Christ enduring and exhausting God's punishment is to be found nowhere in Athanasius. He juxtaposes substitution and jagged opposition against Athanasius' Christus Victor model. And sometimes he frames Athanasius' view as one of seeing sin as sickness, as opposed to the more Western, familiar Western idea of sin as transgression against the law. And strangely, there are even Reformed writers seem to suffer from gross misinterpretation of Athanasius' doctrine of the atonement, going so far as to say that Athanasius had a truncated view of the atonement. That is Robert Lethem that wrote that. So we must note in this paper that we're not arguing that Athanasius articulated substitutionary atonement in the most advanced way possible. or the most explicit form. But we're rather demonstrating that this concept of substitution is present in his writings. And far from being, as Flood put it, opposed to Athanasius Christus' victor model, this theme of substitution resonates in harmonious accord with it. It's not either substitution or Christus Victor, it's both and. And I hope to demonstrate that now. Here we survey the substitution language and concepts in Athanasius on the incarnation. And we note that this book, this work, is the first full-length patristic work dedicated to the atonement with its implications. So anybody who wants to talk about the early church fathers and their view of the atonement has to interact with this book. It's the first full-length book on the subject. We'll note, first of all, Athanasius' penal language. He considered death as a penalty. He uses this language over and over again, death as penalty. He speaks of death as a debt that must be paid by all mankind. Death is something to which all men are liable. So there are many people today who really hate the doctrine of substitution. And the way they say it is, it's not like God was You know, God was vindictive and God says, okay, you've sinned, so now I've got to punish my son and pour my wrath out on him and beat him up so I can save you. No, no, it wasn't like that. What they say is we put ourselves under death and God rescues us in Christ. Those mean old bad enemies, Satan and death, had a grasp on us. So God destroys those mean old bad enemies and rescues us. totally leaving out the idea, what about the wrath of God against our sin, and they even deny that Jesus suffered the wrath of God on the cross. But we see this clearly in Athanasius' language as liability, debt that we had incurred, And speaking of death as a penalty, death was not just, you know, the natural consequence of sin that we brought upon ourselves. It was sovereignly imposed. God is the one who promised the day you eat, you will surely die. And God carried that out. This is what he's getting at. So what does he mean by this language? We could look and beginning in chapter four, he reminds us that the law of prohibition about the tree in the garden, the day you eat of it, you shall surely die. was in place to guard the grace that God had given man. When man fell, when man partook of the forbidden fruit, he came under the power of death as the fulfillment of God's word of warning in Genesis 2.17. In forewarning death for disobedience, God was threatening them with the penalty of death. The fact that this is what Athanasius has in view is crystal clear. In chapter six of his book, he says, for as I said earlier, by the law, death thereafter prevailed against us and it was impossible to escape the law since this had been established by God on account of the transgression. Death is a sovereignly imposed penalty against man. It's not just a natural consequence of sin. He goes on. In chapter 8, he says, seeing lastly how all men are under penalty of death, he took pity on our race and had mercy on our infirmity and condescended to our corruption. He also calls death God's legislation. And all of this nullifies the scholar's assertion that Athanasius thinks of death simply as natural consequence as opposed to penalty. No, he sees it as sovereignly imposed Penalty for our sin. Second in this, we consider Athanasius' death as curse language. He sees death as a curse, a divine curse. One scholar points out that in this book, there's a opening and closing bracket that brackets the entire book. The first bracket is God's curse at the fall. The closing bracket is the fiery judgment upon the wicked at the return of Christ. The curse of death began with Adam's sin, he tells us, escalates at the second coming and continues in eternal judgment. Athanasius tells us that this is precisely the curse that Christ suffered on the cross. As he writes, for if he came himself to bear the curse which lay upon us, how else could he have become a curse? if he had not accepted the death that occasioned by the curse. And that is the cross, for thus it is written, cursed is he who hangs from the tree. So this is the penal language or concept that you'll find throughout his writings. Death as penalty, death as curse imposed by God upon mankind for his sin. You'll find also substitution language. Athanasius clearly holds that Christ's death is a substitutionary sacrifice on behalf of sinners. Over and over, he refers to Christ's death as a sacrifice. He writes, for by the sacrifice of his own body, he put an end to the law. He both put an end to the law, lying against us. So the law was lying against us. and renewed for us the source of life, giving hope of the resurrection. He calls Christ's death an offering and even says that Christ's body was an offering to the Father. His language of substitutionary atonement could not be clearer. He tells us that Christ died on our behalf, that Christ died in the stead of all. Christ died in the place of all. Christ died on behalf of all. And Christ died as a substitute for all. And we're focusing here mainly on the fact of substitution and the atonement. He's not speaking to the question of the effect or extent of the atonement. So let's not even, that's not part of what he's considering in this argument. But when he says that Christ died on our behalf, in the stead of all, in place of all, on behalf of all, as a substitute for all, that is substitutionary atonement language. That goes further than Christus Victor, and it couldn't be more clear. An example passage of this can be seen in On the Incarnation, chapters 6 through 8. The basic tenets of substitution shine forth here in radiant clarity. So let's survey this, these chapters six through eight, a summary of them. In chapter six, Athanasius declares that because of Adam's sin, the race of humans was perishing and the image of God in man was being expunged. He states that the main problem was this. By the law, he writes, by the law, death thereafter prevailed against us and it was impossible to escape the law since this had been established by God on account of the transgression. Since God's veracity, God's truthfulness demanded that he could not go back on his word of threat, there was no undoing the judicial death penalty God had imposed on mankind. So he writes as follows. It was absurd on the one hand that having spoken, God should prove to be lying. That is, after having legislated that human beings would die by death if he were to transgress the commandment. Yet after the transgression, he were not to die, but rather this sentence dissolved. For God would not be true if after saying that we would die, the human being did not die. This brings about what has been called the divine dilemma. Since God is true, he cannot go back on his word of threat, this legal punishment. On the day you eat of the tree, you shall surely die. But since God is good, neither can he allow mankind to perish wholesale since Athanasius says this was not worthy of the goodness of God. Repentance could not undo the death incurred by man's sin, he tells us in chapter 7. So what then is the answer to this dilemma? How will God both be true, and the day you eat it you shall surely die, and be good by not annihilating the human race? Well, he answers in this way. The only solution, the one solution, is a divine human substitute who must die in the place of sinful men. Athanasius writes, or who was needed for such grace and recalling except the God Word who in the beginning made the universe from non-being. Being the Word of the Father and above all, He alone consequently was both able to recreate the universe and was worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to intercede for all before the Father. In chapter 8, directly after this quote, Athanasius asserts that it was for this purpose then that the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God comes into our realm. So let's not miss the weight of what he's saying here. Athanasius is saying that the purpose of the Incarnation was that so the divine word may become man in order to suffer on behalf of men and intercede to the Father for them. If this isn't clear enough, he further says of Christ's incarnation body, he writes, and thus taking from ours, that is our human nature, that which is like, since all were liable to the corruption of death, delivering it over to death, and on behalf of all, he offered it to the Father, doing this in love for human beings, so that on the one hand, with all dying in him, the law concerning corruption in human beings might be undone, its power being fully expended in the lordly body, and no longer having any ground against similar human beings. Now let's note carefully this language. concerning his incarnation body, Christ, quote, offered it to the Father. That's substitutionary atonement. He did this so that the law may be, quote, fully expended in the lordly body and no longer having any ground against similar human beings. It couldn't be clearer that he is saying Christ absorbed the curse of the law of God that was against us. He suffered the punishment that was due to us. He did that in our place at the cross. So in other words, Christ in His death fully absorbed the penalty of the law that was due to guilty sinners, thus absolving our legal obligation to the divinely imposed death. So as we've read from Athanasius' language in general and on the Incarnation 6-8, a clear-cut articulation of the basic premise of substitution, now will demonstrate the unity of these two themes. I want to show in this that these aren't two conflicting doctrines. It's not an either-or. We need both Christus Victor and substitution, and he has both of them together. It forms a harmony It's like Christus Victor's one note and substitution is the other note. He sounds it throughout this book. In their masterful book on this subject, the book is called Pierced for Our Transgressions, they show the theme of substitution throughout church history. The authors summarize Athanasius' teaching in this book in this way, his teaching on the incarnation. They write, in taking a human body and dying, the Son, now here, listen, hear the substitution language. The Son suffered the penalty for sin promised in Genesis 2.17, thus maintaining God's truthfulness. And now hear Christus Victor in the same definition. Since the Son has power to give life, He was then able to overcome death through His resurrection. So both elements are present here together in their summary of Athanasius' teaching. Along these lines, another scholar writes, in speaking of Christ serving as a sacrifice, in the place of others and settling an account, it appears that Athanasius conceived of the atonement as more than, though certainly not less than, a cosmic victory over Satan." So what he's saying is we can't limit Athanasius' view of the atonement to just Christus' victory. That would be the cosmic victory over Satan. It's more than that. In summarizing his teaching in his other work, Against the Greeks, and here in On the Incarnation, one scholar states, okay, this is his summary of what Athanasius is teaching. Jesus' death is a redemptive sacrifice that atones for humanity's sins. That's substitution. And the manner of his violent death And three-day burial reveals both that he truly died and that his divine power is stronger than death. That's Christus Victor. We could survey passage after passage on the incarnation, which would demonstrate that for Athanasius, Christus Victor and substitution ride in tandem together with stunning imagery. And when some rhetoric, Athanasius weaves these two themes together in one unified tapestry throughout the whole work. And as one church historian put it, Athanasius blended and combined these two main concepts of redemption, sometimes in the same context together. So Athanasius presents substitution in Christus Victor as a both and not an either or. So we'll conclude this demonstration with a passage from On the Incarnation that we considered earlier. Now here's substitution language, and then we'll hear the Christus Victor language. Concerning substitution, Athanasius told us, And thus, taking from our human nature that which is like, since all were liable to the corruption of death, delivering it over to death on behalf of all, he offered it to the Father, doing this in his love for human beings, so that on the one hand, with all dying in him, the law concerning corruption in human beings might be undone, its power being fully expended in the lordly body and no longer having any ground against similar human beings. This is substitution. But he goes on, and in this is the theme of Christus Victor. He says, and on the other hand, that as human beings had turned towards corruption, he might turn them again to incorruptibility and give them life from death by making the body his own, and by the grace of the resurrection, banishing death from them as straw from a fire. So I hope that we have seen that these two themes are not only present, substitution and Christus Victor are present in his writings, but they're harmonious and he speaks of them in the same sentences, the same paragraph together. There's no contradiction between them. So in this, we could give a challenge to Eastern Orthodox antagonists against substitution. You may interact with people of this persuasion. And there is a movement within Eastern Orthodoxy today that says that the church fathers didn't teach substitution. They'll call it strong language. We'll see that in a moment. Some of them absolutely hate it. But in conversing with them, maybe this will give you some helps to be able to interact with them on this. On the Incarnation demonstrates that substitution is no medieval invention. Didn't come from Anselm. When viewed in this light, Athanasius challenges many modern Eastern Orthodox representatives who seem to vehemently despise substitution. I've singled out Eastern Orthodoxy for the following reasons. For one, it's self-consciously committed to the historic Christian faith, what they consider to be the historic Christian faith, as opposed to the ah, historical nature of most broad evangelicalism. For a lot of people in America, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who believed or didn't believe this before, or if anybody ever believed it. It's okay if I'm the first person to ever teach this doctrine. That's fine with me, because I know I'm right. So you can't even have a conversation. It wouldn't even matter to them if Athanasius taught this or not, a big deal. But with Eastern Orthodox, they claim him as an Eastern church father. He's not Western like Anselm, he's Eastern. And so there's a context to be able to reason with them. This is within the Eastern stream and you have to be confronted with this doctrine. Also, Another reason for singling them out is that today many Eastern Orthodox apologists position themselves both against Roman Catholicism and us as Protestants because we share in common the view of substitutionary atonement. And they'll try to say, well, this is a later Western concept. This is not in the East. Anyone who has listened to these apologists for very long has heard anti-substitution tirades. One example is the late Father Thomas Hopko. He was a proto-Presbyter in the Orthodox Church of America. He was a teacher at St. Vladimir's Seminary and Dean of that seminary. He caricatures and castigates substitution in the following way. This is from one of his lectures. He says, I remember once when I went to an American Academy of Religion lecture, and the group giving the lecture was so liberal, I won't even, it was so absolutely, absurdly liberal, I won't even mention the name of them here. But he says he went in and sat down and started listening to this meeting, but he totally agreed with what they said. It was a Christology meeting. This is how they were presenting substitutionary atonement. They said, this is nuts. It's as if God were a punitive father who had to beat up his kid in order to be satisfied, and he's so angry that he's got to punish him so much, or the anger doesn't go away, and he can't punish us enough, so he sends his son and beats him up on the cross, lets him get beat up on the cross, and the father is happy because he punished his son sufficiently, and if people believe in it, then they can go to heaven. He tells us, and then the woman said, this is absolute madness. And he says, I wanted to say, he said, I didn't say it, but I wanted to say, stand up and say, yeah, I agree with you. It's total madness. It's ridiculous. It's not biblical. It's not the understanding. And then he implies in this lecture that substitution was dreamt up by Anselm and relegates it to the status of a Western medieval invention that doesn't belong to the universal church. So, in holding to the Christus-Victor model, in rejection of substitution, men like this are actually rejecting, states the Atonement of Christ as, quote, a perfect satisfaction of the justice of God, which had condemned us for sin to death, and a fund of infinite merit which has obtained him the right without prejudice to justice to give pardon of our sins and the grace to have victory over sin and death. That could be out of our catechism or any reformed catechism. That's substitutionary atonement as clear as can be. We could read the same kind of language in other Eastern church fathers and theologians through the ages. We've seen Athanasius. You could read this in Gregory of Nazianzus, John of Damascus, Simeon the New Theologian, Gregory Palamas, Nicholas Cabasilis, and then up until the 1800s, Michael Pomazansky. All of these are well-known names. And we can point them to this and say, you're going to have to reckon with this in some of your own men through the years. And in doing this, if there is a reformation in Eastern Orthodoxy, like there was for us in the West, and if God graciously brings about a purification and brings people out of their dangerous errors that they hold, errors about salvation, Mary and saints, prayers to Mary and saints and all of these things. If God brings about a reformation, it may be that seeing some of these truths about the gospel in some of their own writers may be of help to liberating some people from a watered down or false gospel that they have been under. I also want to give a challenge to us as confessional Reformed Christians. We who dearly hold to substitutionary atonement. Today, Athanasius challenges us to recover a richer soteriology. I believe we would do well to emphasize more of Christus Victor. so that when we preach, pray, sing, in our liturgy, in our conversation, in our thinking and understanding, that we have a more robust understanding of Christ's incarnation and atonement. I'm going to read an accusation against us from an Eastern Orthodox apologist, and I think it is exaggerated, but I just want to show you the point that he's getting at, and I don't want it ever to be true of us. I think it can be true sometimes, and I don't want it to be. But he says, the great problem with Protestant teaching on salvation is its thoroughgoing reductionism. In the Holy Scripture, in the writings of the holy fathers, of the church fathers, salvation is a great and expansive deliverance of humanity from all its enemies. Sin, condemnation, the wrath of God, the devil and his demons, the world, and ultimately death. We agree with all that, right? But he goes on to say, in Protestant teaching and practice, salvation is essentially a deliverance from the wrath of God. Like that's all there is to it, the deliverance from the wrath of God. And if that is the only aspect of the atonement that we emphasize and talk about and sing about, then we do have a limited and truncated view and we're lacking the richness and robustness that we ought to have in seeing Christ's incarnation in cross work. So we are right to contend that if we neglect substitution, we diminish the full meaning of the gospel. But if we neglect Christus victor, we diminish the full glory of the gospel. It's like our two eyes, we need both of them. And if we can learn to use both, then we can gaze upon a much larger and more vivid picture of the person and work of the incarnate word and all he's accomplished for us men and for our salvation as we recite it in the creed. So may our victorious Christ help us and bring us into deeper and richer understanding of who he is and what he's done for us. And may we be encouraged in this by our own Reformed dogmatician, Herman Bovink, as he writes. And this is from his Reformed Dogmatics, volume three, page 383 to 84. Bovink writes, the scriptures continually view the suffering and death of Christ from a different perspective, and in each case, illumine another aspect of it. Like the person of Christ, the work of Christ is so multifaceted that it cannot be captured in a single word nor summarized in a single formula. So indeed, one can find in the New Testament different appraisals of the person and work of Christ, which, however, do not exclude but rather supplement one another and enrich our knowledge. The death of Christ is a Passover offering, a covenant offering, a praise offering, as well as a sacrifice, a ransom and an example, suffering and action, a work and a ministry, a means of justification and sanctification, atonement and consecration, redemption and glorification in a word, the cause of our whole redemption. Our time is just about up. Do we have any questions? All right, thank you. You can be dismissed.