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].

But it is extremely important to note here the significance of the oros of the Council of Chalcedon, which affirms this distinction, where one and the same term – "consubstantial" – is used in relation to the Divinity and to man: "Following by the Divine Father, we all unanimously teach to confess the One and Same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, perfect in Divinity and perfect in humanity, truly God and truly Man, Who is of soul and body of one essence with the Father and is of one essence with us according to humanity."

If Christ is of the same essence with us in humanity and we are of the same essence with Him, then people are of the same essence with each other. And the relationship between persons and nature in man can be thought of as the same as in God.

There is something common and something different between the image and the Prototype: the common is in the "ineffable difference between the Person and nature", and the difference is in the perishability, the destructibility of human nature. The "decay" of human nature, the destruction of the unity of man, is a consequence of Adam's sin. Hence the lack of feeling of the general unity of individuals after the fall. For this reason, Christ accomplishes the "renewal of nature" in redemption, builds the new unity of mankind, the Church, in the same eternal image: that they may be one, even as we are one (Jn 17:22).

In the teaching of the unity of mankind, in finding the correct concepts and theological terminology for expressing this teaching, lies not only the clarification of the truth of redemption, but also the solution of other problems of modern theology.

The study of the past contributes to the clarification of the present. A careful study of the development of Russian theological science allows the author to express a firm conviction and no less firm conviction that this development is not complete and that it should be directed along the path indicated by church tradition and patristic theology.

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