The research programme has atteined and perhaps supassed the aims proposed for investigations in the field that concerns the universal values of ethics. The studies of the research programme elucidate the fundamental aspects of reward, punishment, and forgiveness in the light of cosmological, ontological, and personalistic presuppositions of human civilization. The cosmological and personalistic aspects concern first of all clarification of the relationship between guilt and punishment and the ontological reasons for forgiveness and reconciliation. The causal relationship between guilt and punishment is so integral that no one can escape the negative consequences of his or her wrongdoing. Punishment always has a positive - i.e., educative - aim. The organic nature of the interrelationship between God, humankind and the world means that the sin committed by an individual or a community affects not only the divine-human relationship but also the relationship between human beings themselves as well as between human beings and the world as a whole. Therefore atonement has theological, sociological, and cosmic significance. The distance between God as Creator and human beings as his creation is infinite and precludes the possibility that Israel or the nations could ever deserve God's generosity in the proper sense. From the fundamental personalistic principle of forgiveness and reconciliation it follows that God forgives because he is bound to the positive structure of his creation. The only aim of all God's actions towards Israel and towards the nations is his fulfilment of the original plan to create harmony in the world. The central message of the Jewish-Christian civilization is that forgiveness and reconciliation have the highest priority in the hierarchy of God's attitude to humankind, and that the attainment of reconciliation and of unity is revealed to be the true purpose of God's, as well as humankind's, activity. Divine forgiveness transcends all the limitations of humankind and persists in spite of the rebellion of human beings, including Israel. The primacy of forgiveness can only be undersood in the light of the reciprocity of all the basic Hebrew theological presuppositions. It was the ascendancy of monotheism which permitted forgiveness and reconciliation to come to be the hallmark of God's attitude to human beings. The nature of Creation and of the link between God, humankind and the covenant people exclude the possibility of any separation. God is bound to Creation and te chosen people unconditionally. Creation inaugurates the history of salvation that is teleological in orientation. The interlocking of these presuppositions provides the foundation for the distinctive Jewish-Chrisitan tenets of faith, as well as for the characteristic understanding of the relationship between guilt and reconciliation.