 But of course the same does not occur in the case of any who might be lost. Their rebellion is permanent, and is not overcome through any action of theirs. The antitheist may wish to argue that in this case it is evil that triumphs over good. The character of the lost is permanently corrupted: any virtue that was theirs is turned to wrongdoing, and any hope that they might even achieve peace with God, much less be of useful service to him, comes to nothing. Thus, it might be claimed, the very existence of the reprobate stands as a gratuitous and unanswered defilement of creation, in which evil is victorious. Can the theist point to anything that might reverse this verdict? One possibility is that God himself could take action specifically aimed at defeating all moral evil. This, of course is the defining theme of Christian soteriology. In that tradition, all sin is defeated through the paramount manifestation of God’s love for the world, the redemptive suffering of Christ, which could not have occurred unless there were sin, and which makes possible God’s offer of salvation to humankind. Not all sinners may accept the offer, but God is reconciled to all, in the sense that the substitutionary atonement of Christ covers all wrongfulness. For the Christian believer this is a sine qua non: nothing but the sacrifice of a being who participates fully in the divine nature is sufficient to satisfy fully the demand of divine justice, and unless that demand is satisfied friendship between God and humankind is impossible. Thus the redemptive suffering of Christ is for Christians the ultimate act of mercy and compassion on God’s part toward all sinners, and the ultimate defeat of moral evil (see Plantinga 2004).