Adam Johnson - "Atonement"

1:46PM Jun 25, 2020

Speakers:

Jonathan J. Armstrong

Adam Johnson

Keywords:

penal substitution

atonement

doctrine

god

johnson

reading

church

view

christ

book

life

theory

reconciliation

theologian

punishment

joy

overcome

share

form

talking

This morning we have the privilege of speaking with Dr. Adam Johnson. Dr. Johnson is a theologian who focuses on the doctrine of the atonement, exploring the many ways in which the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ affect the reconciliation of all things to God. Dr. Johnson holds an MD PhD degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and a PhD in theological studies from Trinity evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. Dr. Johnson currently serves as a tutor at the Tauri Honors Program at Biola University. Dr. Johnson has published a number of articles on the subject of the atonement and he has also published the book that we'll be discussing today, Atonement: A Guide for the Perplexed, available this year 2015 from Bloomsbury. Dr. Johnson, it's a pleasure to be speaking with you today.

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

As we begin, Dr. Johnson, let me just make a comment you open your book atonement, a guide for the perplexed with a story, a story about a conversation between you and your pastor, you inform your pastor that you were interested in researching at the graduate level, the doctrine of the atonement, and your pastor asks you, apparently with a wry smile, which theory you believed Christus Victor, the satisfaction theory or the exemplary theory, and surprisingly, you respond, all of them, you believe them all. Would you introduce us please to each model of the atonement and how you in fact believe that they fit together?

Sure, sure. The question he asked was based on the work of a Swedish theologian who all lane he wrote back in the 1920s and 30s, around there, and he was immensely influential. In his own circles. There was pretty much one v of the work of Christ. And he found that to be constraining. He really he really fought against that. And as he as he dove into the history of the doctrine, he found things to be much more diverse. So he wrote a book actually a series of lectures that he published, that became immensely influential. And so he developed this this this idea of there being three main views. So the first is Christus. Victor, that is, the idea is that it's a Latin term saying Jesus is the is the victor, he won. And the idea is that Christ was doing his work in order to overcome Satan. So anyone familiar with the fusions with Colossians is all throughout the New Testament really, and and then the the roots are in the Old Testament. The idea that was that Christ's work was designed intended to overcome the power of Satan. Satan when when when we fell back in Genesis, he obtained certain rights and privileges certain powers. over us and Christ came to overcome them anyone familiar with CS Lewis is the line the witch in the wardrobe? That right there is a narrative form like a story form of Christus Victor is put about as well as it can be put there. That was he's used it for the first thousand years that you dominated the church. Any any theologian any any Christian would have had that view if you ask them. Then in the medieval period, things changed. And in two views came and came into prominence, one was a satisfaction theory and the other was the exemplary theory of satisfaction theory is the idea that even though you know, Satan's around, sure, on that's not really that relevant, and what we needed to do was to satisfy God. In Anselm's case we needed to satisfy God's honor when we send we dishonored God we took from God's something which was his which was our rightful service. There was no way to restore all this. So Christ came in order to restore to God what was proper His to satisfy him to give him the full pleasure and dignity of receiving what was due to him. That was developed by the reformers into penal substitution, where we satisfy not God's honor as an some had thought, but were we satisfied God's justice, the demands of God's justice. So penal substitution is a form of a satisfaction theory is really important. Keep in mind that all of these theories there, it's not so much three distinct theories. There's three sets or families of theories. So there are all these different variations of the Christmas victory, all these different variations of dissatisfaction theory. And then, exemplary ism, or the moral exemplar view was developed, supposedly by Peter Appleyard. It turns out, for the last, I don't know, 500 years, we've been relying on about an eight page selection of his commentary on Romans and use that exclusively and that goes all the way back like right from the beginning people to those eight pages. or so and and used to those to summarize his view, which would be kind of like taking a clip from a high school, high school event and using that to summarize who you are, I don't know too many of us that would want that. So So scholarship in the last 30 years or so has really changed in terms of appreciation of the full view that he had, but exemplary ism states, it pray that God became man, in order to provide us with an example of a virtuous, godly life so powerful and compelling, that it would sweep away all our other inclinations toward towards sin and worldly life, and and would and would bring us to salvation that way, on the on teaching on learning on example, that then overcomes our weaknesses. And that really came into its own during the Enlightenment, which was a That's a period of the church that's a little harder to appreciate for most, including myself in certain ways. It takes some work.

But anyway, those are those are the three main views. And my pastor knew that as soon as I said, I like one of them, he had ammunition from the history of the church and from the Bible to say, Yeah, but the other two it's a little you know, if someone comes up to you and asks, you know, you know, if you're married, if they asked, you know, is your spouse more beautiful, kind or smart? You can smell a rat right away. Any any one of those you pick, you're you're saying they're not the other two are not as much. And I don't know, I don't know about you, but my wife is a lot more than beautiful, kind and smart. That though that doesn't begin to do justice to her. So he knew he was setting me up for a trap. And so I I didn't play into his game. And and so that's where that's where the that's where The story begins,

huh? No, thank you so much for that, Dr. Johnson. And yet you've,

you've opened my eyes in a way you're showing me that there's a natural way that these doctrines fit. But I've listened and perhaps participated in lots of conversations where we do argue about which is the superior theory. So this is not an obvious insight that you're bringing to us. Apparently, you approach the research project with a vision that somehow they would fit together, share that journey with us, if you wouldn't, how did you come to the conclusion that somehow these three doctrines, which look quite disparate in the history of the church, in fact do harmonize?

Right, right.

Why I had an interesting experience couple years after college where I don't know if God spoke to me or if he just helped me see that I had a significant passion and interest in the doctrine of the atonement. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to study. I was talking with a mentor, and is the realization hit me like a ton of bricks. This is what I want to do with right In my life, I want to study this doctrine. Though from there I started reading some contemporary books on the atonement, but mostly I dove into the history. So I started reading Athanasius and some Calvin, Edwards, Aquinas, Irenaeus, you name it. I started reading all across the history of the doctrine. And so ended in seminary any class I took, I would write the papers on the topic of the class and the atonement, which as it turns out, isn't that hard. I mean, if you're taking a pastoral ministry class, what do you know the atonement relevant or if it's a church history class or studying Luther, you can tie it in a way it wasn't an unnatural connection. When I got to Thomas Aquinas, I was going to write a paper on him. I expected him to have basically Anselm's view of the atonement. That was my expectation. And I was trying to figure out how I'd write a paper on that because it wouldn't be that interesting. And as I started reading, I realized that he was doing something entirely different. I hadn't either I hadn't seen this before or I hadn't appreciated it. I didn't have the eyes to see, because what he was doing was pulling together the views of a host of other figures. So the his view was really complex. There's an awful lot going on there. And a professor of mine at Princeton Professor migliore was just a gem of a man after he read that paper, and he asked me Well, why don't you do do that same approach with a theology of Carl Bart. And so which I hadn't really thought of doing i'd meant to to do my PhD on the what it means for Christ to be a substitute in, you know, delving into penal substitution. What does that mean? What is his connection to us that he can serve as our substitute? But when he when he asked that question of me are made that suggestion, Maya that a whole bunch of things, click together. came into place. So that so Thomas Aquinas is the one who helped me see this at first and then once I had iced tea, I began to appreciate the way that books emphasized the unique contribution of a theologian. Because that's, that's kind of, that's edgy. That's the new thing. That's the thing worth drawing attention to. But read these figures, you began to see that they're there. They're saying, pretty much before before the year 1000. If someone wanted to write about the atonement, they didn't think, what theory? They thought, How can I How can I pull together everything to explain it all. And let's just start going and then and then they're there. They're thrown in the kitchen sink. I mean, they're doing everything they can to explain the work of Christ. And they have these really complex, rich views. books on the subject tend to reduce those to the one unique contribution they had, making it a more polemic environment than it was huh. That's what got me started. Other other steps along the way crystallize my approach that you see in the book. But But what that's what got me started.

Dr. Johnson in the first portion of your book you review in summary form the various theories of the atonement from several notable figures in church history such as Athanasius, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Gropius, why not just turn to the Scriptures, one might ask to see which theory of the atonement is dominant there. Thank you.

That's a that's an excellent question. Um,

well, there are a bunch of reasons.

One is

you're probably pretty familiar with Spokane by now. You've lived there for four or five years. Yeah, five years. Okay, five years. It's a beautiful city. And to some extent, you probably know the city fairly well. But if we were to put a tracker on your phone and monitor where you go, there are probably certain roads that you Driving all the time in roads right next to them you never even, you've never even seen.

And I have to confess I still use a navigator sometimes.

Okay, okay. But um, so even though you know, you're getting to know Spokane well, and after you've lived there another 20 years, you know it quite well, there will be, you know, deep grooves worn into the pavement, your car, whereas the road next to it will be have been untouched. There's a danger that we do that with Scripture. You know, perhaps you read the whole Bible every year, I'm, I'm getting close to doing it this year. I'm having to catch up quite a bit, but I'm working on it. You know, but but reading is not the same thing as appreciating the full riches of what's going on. And we tend to to wear down certain passages or or delve into certain passages way more than others. And it's really hard to get jarred into the appreciation of a different form of logic that might be in a passage that we don't appreciate as much So how do you do that? How do you how do you get the right kind of glasses to see what's going on in those passages? Well, you talk to people. But if you talk to your contemporaries, they tend to share the same sort of biases. If you talk to older friends, they might have a different take on things. So in this case, I talked to a whole bunch of really old friends Athanasius and iron as being some of the oldest. So what I'm doing when I'm reading those guys, I am I'm consulting some of the best friends, theologians and theologians and pastors that I know, just as I was also consulting the best living friends, theologians and pastors that I have an attempt to really be able to read scripture better. So that's probably my basic answer on reading church history is not an alternative to reading the scriptures. Well. Reading church history is part of what it takes to read the Bible well, which is exactly what Calvin was doing and he's going back and using a gun. To fight the Church of the Catholic Church about how to properly interpret scripture, I was using a Gustin to say, hey, here are some new ways to incorporate how we think about the work of Christ. Hmm.

Dr. Johnson that's absolutely brilliant and is one who spends a lot of his time worrying about how to teach church history to college students. I'm very grateful that for that, I'll use insight that that's great.

A lot of time doing the same thing. Very good. It can come across as threatening, like I said, a student, a student in the Honors Program was sitting there reading Plato, and a girl comes up to her and asked her, why are you reading Plato and you could be reading the Bible? And this student retorts, why are you talking to me when you could be praying to God? I you know, I'm glad I'm not that witty, I would just get in trouble. There's a tendency to see hey, reading other things is a competition with our time reading the Bible. I think of it as you know, you know, lifting weights is not is not a common competition with playing a sport. It's just what it takes to be able to play the sport well to be a well rounded athlete. So that that's how I think of the church history stuff, huh?

you've you've clearly thought about these issues hard and deep, and I appreciate those reflections that's very, very fruitful. Dr. Johnson in Evan jellicle circles. There has been a controversy probably over the last decade about this, the subject of entitled penal substitutionary theory of the atonement. On page 113, you write this very important statement, you say, was Jesus, our penal substitutes? Yes, but only in as much as there were bigger forces at play. To understand that, unpack that phrase for us, please.

Yeah. And I was, excuse me, I was doing my best to help properly frame or properly situate penal substitution in that book. Not alienating anyone who affirms the doctrine. Because I affirm it, I was going out of my way to show ways that I was but to try to say it has its place and it's important to understand that place. So here's an example. If someone asked me

was your dad that disciplinarian in your home? Right?

Um, I think I would answer yes. Um, you know, I got in trouble a lot as a kid. Discipline was a regular occurrence, and most of it was was through my father. Hmm. But I would hate for someone to walk away with the impression that my dad was a disciplinarian, but that's what he was. My dad was so much more than that. He was my coach. He was my teacher. He's the one who taught me to learn how to read think and he was my friend. My dad was an awful lot to me. It took me it took me a lot It took me longer to appreciate the middle ways that my mom meant so much to me. Early on, I, I was more appreciative of my dad. Unfortunately, someone walked away with the impression the dad was a disciplinarian. And that's what he primarily was. That would be a travesty. Now, same thing is going on within penal substitution for a couple of reasons. One is the penal, the word penal to do to do with punishment, cast a very negative light on the doctrine, it suggests that the primary problem was for God, you know, you, you know, God doesn't sit there thinking this way. But if you did, God sitting there, and how do I deal with this problem? I need to I need to bust out some punishment. How am I going to do it? I don't think that's the right way to think about it. God, God's longing was to share something far greater than punishment. It included punishment. He wanted to share His justice and His righteousness with his creatures, so that all of creation would exude and manifest justice and rights. righteousness. Now, it turns out to do that with creatures who are fallen, you also need to share justice and righteousness in the form of punishment. But that's like saying, you know, Christmas is about sharing wrapping paper. No, no, no Christmas is about sharing presence and into in our culture to share a present you also wrap it, but to mistake the one for the other is really unfortunate. They cast a cast a very negative light on the doctrine which has a negative component to it. But the real thing is God wants to share His justice and His righteousness with us. That's the, the overflowing joyous reality that he wants to share. So if we could find a different word for penal substitution, not to get away from the dark parts of it, but just so we don't end up looking like Goths, you know, clad in black, you know, this doctrine is not a doctrine that ought to be clad in black and black makeup. It has shadow to it. So that's one reason. The other reason is penal substitution is one vital aspect of what God was doing through the cross. But there was also a lot more. So as long as the reader appreciate those two things, that penal substitution itself, properly speaking is a very rich, lively, nourishing doctrine. It's about much more than penalty. And the cross is about much more than penal substitution. As long as you understand those two things, then run great soil for nurturing this doctrine. Well, and that's something I really want to do.

Thank you for that reflection. Dr. Johnson. In chapter five, you cover some very interesting and surprising material. You show us that Christ's atoning work was accomplished not only on the cross on Good Friday, but also His atoning work was accomplished as he laid as Jesus lay in the tomb on Holy Saturday and as he came to life again on resurrection Sunday, how does this work?

I tell my students that if their goal in life is to get divorced,

they better get married first.

Now, of course, no one really sets out you know, well few people set out in life with a goal of getting divorced. And, but but but but they get it like you know some things have to come first in order for other things to come later.

Now, in order to rise from the dead

turns out you have to die first. In the end, I saw I think the way of the best way of putting the doctrine or what I keep on saying that and then saying something different each time. Well, you know, in order to put the doctrine Well, you have to include the resurrection. And I think it's entirely fair to say, God became man in order to rise from the dead for us. That's that there captures the fact that Well, yeah, he had to die for us. that's included in the statement rise from the dead. But the goal of this whole work was the resurrection. And that I got just from a careful reading of First Corinthians 15, over and over and over again, some shocking things in there, if Christ died for your sins, or if he died for you, and didn't rise from the dead, guess what? We're fools. We're in our sins. And then this is all ridiculous. Let's just go home. That that is I contemplated on that and I read TF torrents and NT right and a host of figures on the resurrection, I began to see ways that my thinking had been significantly distorted as I emphasized the cross and the cross alone, all saying, Jesus can die, and that's of no benefit to you. And then he says, somewhere there in chapter 15, he was raised for our justification. And we think of just justification and death going hand in hand, you know, the death paid the penalty so that we could be just before God, no. On the death was the beginning or a part of the payment which was made complete through the resurrection. You know now why would that be? Well, because God wants to share himself with us. That a might include a negative overcoming of sin, but that God is governed by joy, like his his joy, the goodness, the sharing, that's, that's the dominant thing in the life of God. He's not sitting there thinking, I wish I had more creatures to punish, I want to punish. Know, he wants to share himself with us. That was the goal in the garden. That's the goal. Now, how does he share himself with us through the resurrection through participation in the resurrected life of Christ in the Holy Spirit. So that was the thing that jarred me into the realization there's so much more going on here, then the death. Then other figures came in and helped me see other elements out there. Honduras one Baltazar that's a mouthful to say a Catholic theologian writing in the 20th century, who was immensely shaped by the thought of Carl Bart, Carl Bart himself won't mind a little bit but I tend to read Moulton lon as sort of the worst parts of Bart, forgive me anyone who really likes moving on, but if you like goldmine, you need to read more Bart. Though those figures really helped me put together the role of Holy Saturday, which is also found in Calvin and have you know, a bunch of evangelical or Protestant theologians? Basically the idea there is, yeah, Christ came in part to suffer our punishment. What was our punishment? Well, separation from the Father, or punishment wasn't just death. I mean, death isn't that bad. Socrates wasn't that afraid of it? Sure. Give me the hemlock. Oh, and I owe a chicken to say, you know, chicken needs to be sacrificed to some God in my honor. Please do that. And that's the end. He wasn't afraid of dying. The punishment wasn't death. The punishment was eternal separation from the Father. So carrying that logic opinion substitution one step further, Christ had to experience the reality of hell for us. So that's what was going on in Holy Saturday. That was part of what was going on and only Saturday. And then that enabled me to appreciate a whole bunch of contemporary and early work on the life of Christ. So that even the life of Christ is atoning in the sense that it is the reality into which we are brought, which is salvation, and he's fulfilling the role of the history of Israel.

He is

the man in whom we have full life and life abundant. He This is salvation walking around, and this is what salvation looks like. It's participation in this reality, which is our salvation. So even the life of Christ is in a sense atoning. So the first step was realizing, oh, it's about the resurrection. And then because of that, it's about the death, but it's about the resurrection. And that began, that was the first step. kind of be On the hills of my horizon, they opened up new lands for me.

Dr. Johnson, if I can ask you to think, perhaps a little bit more globally, and I just mean broadly about systematic theology as a discipline. One of the things that I find very interesting about your project here is you take a doctrine where there's historically and commonly been a lot of tension between different views and you demonstrate that actually, we can get a lot more fruit out of this doctrine by reading them in some sort of harmonious way. Talk to us about the craft of theology and how this can be done well. Many of us are leery that such an approach could often give the temptation of bending doctrines will take this and will wrongly distort it so that it might fit our ends later. We're not just trying to make peace with theologically warring parties. We're trying to find truth about God. How does one do that faithfully?

Yeah.

Well, so so I guess the first step would be to say, you know, and evangelicals are pretty good at saying this. Our God is a is a great God. Great in the sense of of large. Our God is not a small God, one that we can comprehend easily. And then the correlate of that is my view of God is is probably quite small, it's insufficient, it's inadequate to who God is. Now that's true, then I should be. As a Christian I should be someone consumed with a passion and an eagerness to see ever more truths about God to see him ever more clearly. Which means to have an ever greater, larger picture of who God is. Of course, it needs to be accurate, but um, if my view of God is probably too small And I want a bigger view of God. And that how so how do I do that? Well by talking to people who are different from me, now there's the risk there. Of course, that's kind of scary. I might be talking to heretics or you know, or people who belong in the loony bin. Fair enough. I'm going to risk that. I'm going to risk talking to heretics under the assumption that if God is bigger than I think he is, and I haven't found ways on my own to appreciate that, then I need to go somewhere else and going somewhere else will likely mean talking with people who see other parts of who God is more clearly and don't sufficiently see what I appreciate in God. Hmm. So that's gonna put me in a tough place consistently. I'm gonna be reading or talking with people with whom I don't necessarily agree on everything. And there may be substantial things I disagree about, but only pushing myself that way while I overcome sort of the laziness and the complacency See that comes with having a nice comfortable view of God. So that pushes me into historical work on that pushes me into talking with people from other branches of the church. But it's a hunger that hunger is rooted in, in a in the biblical in a biblical account of a great God to whom we cannot do justice as fallen creatures. That's one part of it. Hmm. Another part of it is ours is a ministry of reconciliation. Paul's talking about that we have a ministry of reconciliation, which which is rooted in God's ministry of reconciliation as he sought to reconcile all things to himself. So what delights God, reconciling things, pulling them together, making them one, not in a soft sort of hippie, let's all hug kind of way but a real strong, vibrant oneness. Now that's true of life and relationships, if that's true of God's view of all of creation. Well, that's certainly Better be true of doctrines within theology. My joy shouldn't be in finding truth and holding out against other other warring camps. The joy should be the ministry of reconciliation within the world of theology just is, you know, a business man's joy should be the ministry of reconciliation within his business and within other businesses to the benefit of the whole community. So I'm pretty, pretty consumed with with the joy of seeing reconciliation, and that's true if it's between between, you know, within a broken marriage, if that's true within conflict in a local church, if you know if that's between two, you know, warring factions and theology. Hmm, there's a joy in finding a way to honor both and yet bring them together. Hmm. Now that, of course, that means oftentimes, correction needs to be made. You know, oftentimes, you know, if two friends are in a bitter fight, it's not just that they need to see thing is definitely to be one, they probably need to repent and overcome some significant sin. Maybe one more than the other. It's not always the case that both parties are equally guilty.

So so you know, there's plenty of room for correction, for chastising for for standing, okay, you got a tiny bit of the picture and then you got things dreadfully wrong after that. In this book, I was very much emphasizing the constructive, pulling things together side, I really tried to not be negative and critical. So in this particular book, I was really trying to emphasize the constructive joy as part of bringing things together as much as possible. And I think I have like two critical statements in the whole flow. Elsewhere, I'm glad to be critical. In this case, I kind of felt like you know, this was a, this is a family reunion, this is a birthday party, and you you can have that fight after the party, you know, between the two of you, or you know, or you can have a special meeting for that. I didn't want this to be the time or place for that. But there there's plenty of critique to go around, whether it's some, you know, crazy liberal distortion of the gospel, or a, you know, a version of penal substitution, which is so bitter and harsh that it really has nothing of the love and charity of God. So there's room for critique to go around. In this case, I was just trying to share a constructive vision that would compel hopefully compel the reader, as much sure of it at least as Part Part A in part as much as it could compelled me. Hmm.

I'm intrigued by your methodology. It's remarkably fruitful in this project at a tournament a guide for the perplexed and I think this, this approach could be put to incredible use in other documents as well. Dr. Johnson, if I can ask you just one last question. For before we close and that is this is a question that I'm asking all of our contributors on this program when it's us. For the channel church to be united. How would we recognize this unity? And how can we work towards this unity? Yeah,

yeah, I like the question. I'm going to stick with the doctrine of the atonement to answer this one. Because the the root of the word atonement is at one, it's a funny English word. It began with one and then at one which became a tune, which became a B, which became a tournament. So there's it's a funny etymology. For a distinctively English word. Also, the root of the root of this is one or unity. So So how does the doctrine of the atonement help us understand the unity of the church? the unity of the church is going to be a unity in the midst of conflict, which where the goal is reconciliation. So So what does it mean to pursue unity in the midst of conflict?

First, I think it would mean

To begin with ourselves, the unity of the church will be a unity that happens when we embrace the ways in which we are sinful, wrong or incomplete. So let's start with ourselves. Let's not start with our neighbor. If we're not hungry to find the ways in which we are sinful, wrong or incomplete, humanity's dead in the water, sinful. Ah, you know, if we can't recognize that, then well, you know, there's there's a hole in your boat. If we can't embrace the, you know, just the discovery, I am wrong about this. Whether it's about who knows, maybe it's about the Virgin Mary and the Catholics are right after all, I don't I don't think so. I mean, you know, maybe maybe it's a better interpretation of Romans five, maybe. Who knows, if we can't embrace Oh, I'm wrong. Join that we have the premise we all will well believe this we're sinful and fallen right? Well, that means that we're wrong about some things. That means the discovery that we are wrong in some area is that's a liberation. We're being set free from fall said. So if we can embrace that, we're in deep trouble. And probably a you know, the little brother of that is if we can't embrace the awareness, the realization that our view is dreadfully incomplete, then we're really hurting too because hopefully, these other branches of the church which call themselves the church, which which claimed to worship the triune, God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit just as we do, hopefully, they're right. They're really doing that and God's being honored by their service and their worship. But they're so foreign to us that what they do is so different. And maybe one of us is wrong. You know, when when two parties disagree, one or both are wrong. But maybe maybe it's just a matter of incompleteness maybe we've in our you know in the in the crushing and but also healthy desire of evangelicalism to boil things down to the essential so we can communicate the gospel, maybe we've left out a whole areas of life of the church, the life of the mind, which would make life more complete as servants of the risen Lord. There's joy in discovering, oh, I guess I do have a home but I boiled it down to a to a kitchen and a bathroom. And there's such a thing as a living room, and I could bring neighbors and strangers into it and there would be joy. So those those three areas, I love finding a way that my thought had been incomplete before. I love the pain of discovering I was wrong because now I'm finally free from that. from the, from the from being wrong, which is a horrible slavery and very hard to Overcome, and there's a joy in discovering sin because then then when can repent, then one can begin the process of restoration. So what would the unity of the church like? I can't venture to say what heaven will be like. But earth will look very much like overcoming conflict in a marriage, overcoming conflict in a church, which means Fighting, fighting fair, not not just taking it on the chin, and in building resentment, but really sharing your beliefs, sharing your hurt working through that, that struggle being embracing being hurt, for the sake of discovering ways that we have sinned, we've been wrong, we're incomplete. And then hopefully, if we can, if we can show that spirit, then maybe our neighbor can to whether she's Catholic or whether he's Greek Orthodox, or someone who doesn't know the Lord at all.

It's been a pleasure to be speaking with Dr. Adam Johnson today, Professor as Tory honors Institute at Biola University and author The book that we've been discussing today the atonement, a guide for the next. Dr. Johnson, thank you so much for being with us today. My absolute

pleasure. Thank you so much.