Much more such evidence can be cited. The statements of the most outstanding Russian theologians, Metropolitan Philaret (Drozdov) and Patriarch Sergius, fully correspond to them. "Man is created in the image of God. An important feature of this image is in his will: this is the rational freedom that distinguishes man from the lower creatures of God, who do not have the image of God. For this reason God preserves the inviolable freedom of will, preserving in it the trait of His image" [1207].

"Grace, although it acts, although it accomplishes everything, is necessarily within consciousness and freedom. This is the basic Orthodox principle, and it must not be forgotten in order to understand the teaching of the Orthodox Church about the very method of man's salvation" [1208].

Another Orthodox principle, which is no less important for understanding the truth of redemption and which should also not be forgotten, is the teaching about the mysterious unity of the human race in Adam and about the new unity in Christ in Adam the Second. From the Epistles of the Apostle Paul to the "Long Catechism" in all Orthodox interpretations of the dogma of redemption, the transition of the sin of the forefathers and the salvation of all in Christ are explained by this unity. But as long as this truth is set forth in the "legal" terms of imputing sin to sinful descendants and assimilating redemptive merit to believers, as long as the unity of the human race is presented only as a unity of physical origin, these explanations raise and will raise many perplexing questions. Without repeating what has been stated earlier (Chapter IV, 5, 8, 9), it should be noted that the Holy Fathers understood the unity of all in Adam as something more real and more mysterious than the unity of origin. Adam — "the whole Adam" — is the entire human race, and Adam's sin is the sin of all people. "Since all men were in Adam in a state of innocence, as soon as he sinned, all sinned in him and fell into a state of sin" [1209].

Therefore, the sin of Adam is the sin of man, and the Church confesses this on behalf of all the departed in the service for the departed" [1210].

The loss of this unity, the dissection of the "whole man" is a consequence of original sin, which is not sufficiently noted in dogmatic manuals. In this loss lies the destruction of human nature by the power of sin—corruption—no less than in the mortality of the individual, in the loss of innocence, and in the propensity to sin.

Therefore, the healing of this mortal illness, the restoration of the unity of mankind, is the effect of Christ's salvific economy on man.

"The main thing in the salvific economy in the flesh is to bring human nature into unity with itself and with the Saviour, and, having destroyed the evil dissection, to restore the primitive unity, just as the best physician by healing means rebinds the body, which has been torn into many parts" [1211].

This new unity of man in Christ, the New Adam, is the Church, and all believers in the Church are one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28), members of one body (1 Cor 12:12). This unity has its expression in the Eucharist.

"The Only-begotten has determined a certain exquisite, by the wisdom and counsel of the Father, so that we ourselves should come together and be mixed into unity with God and with each other, although each separated from the other by souls and bodies into a special person. Namely, in one Body, apparently His own, by blessing those who believe in Him by means of sacramental communion, He makes them co-bodily both with Himself and with each other. That is why the Church is called the Body of Christ, and we are separate members, according to Paul's understanding" [1212].

With such an understanding of the unity of man in Adam and in Christ, in the Church, there can be no question of the imputation of sin or the inheritance of sin by "non-sinning" descendants, nor of the "assimilation of redemptive merit." In Adam all men have sinned and are saved not by "merits," but by Christ Himself, who unites in Himself, in the Church, the new human race[1213].

The doctrine of the unity of the human race has never been rejected in Orthodox theology, but it has also been obscured by the borrowing of various theories and explanations from non-Orthodoxy. That is why the writings of Vladimir Solovyov and Metropolitan Anthony had such an influence in Russian theology, helping to focus attention on this truth of Orthodoxy.

But, as has already been noted, the works of both authors were not free from a number of errors and inaccurate expressions, and the doctrine of the unity of mankind had not yet received a corresponding more precise expression in Russian theology.

One should look for the correct terminology to express this truth only in church tradition, in patristic theology, and not in the abstract constructions of non-ecclesiastical philosophy and mysticism, as, for example, in the teaching of Sophia.

If man is "the image of the eternal existence of God," then the unity of mankind and the multiplicity of individual individuals can be expressed in the same terms of the unity of nature with the difference of persons as in the Prototype. Such a difference in man, personality, and nature is present both in the Holy Fathers and in Russian theology[1216].