In these conditions, all infidelity to the divine image that man bears in him, every breach with God, is at the same time a disruption of human unity. It cannot eliminate the natural unity of the human race—the image of God, tarnished though it may be, is indestructible—but it ruins that spiritual unity which, according to the Creator’s plan, should be so much the closer in proportion as the supernatural union of man with God is the more completely effected. Ubi peccata, ibi multitudo.1 True to Origen’s criterion, Maximus the Confessor, for example, considers original sin as a separation, a breaking up, an individualization it might be called, in the depreciatory sense of the word. Whereas God is working continually in the world to the effect that all should come together into unity, by this sin which is the work of man, “the one nature was shattered into a thousand pieces” and humanity which ought to constitute a harmonious whole, in which “mine” and “thine” would be no contradiction, is turned into a multitude of individuals, as numerous as the sands of the seashore, all of whom show violently discordant inclinations. “And now”, concludes Maximus, “we rend each other like the wild beasts.” “Satan has broken us up”, said St. Cyril of Alexandria for his part, in order to explain the first fall and the need of a redeemer.”' And in a curious passage, in which the recurrence of an ancient myth may be discerned, Augustine explains the matter similarly in a symbolical manner. After establishing a connection between the four letters of Adam’s name and the Greek names for the four points of the compass, he adds:
Adam himself is therefore now spread out over the whole face of the earth. Originally one, he has fallen, and, breaking up as it were, he has filled the whole earth with the pieces.
That was one way of considering evil in its inmost essence, and it is a pity perhaps that the theology of a later period has not turned it to greater account. Instead of trying, as we do almost entirely nowadays, to find within each individual nature what is the hidden blemish and, so to speak, of looking for the mechanical source of the trouble which is the cause of the faulty running of the engine—some exaggerating the trouble, others inclined to minimize it—these Fathers preferred to envisage the very constitution of the individuals considered as so many cores of natural opposition. This was not taken as the first or only cause of sin, of course, but at least as a secondary result, “equal to the first”, and the inner disruption went hand in hand with the social disruption. . . .
Let us abide by the outlook of the Fathers: the redemption being a work of restoration will appear to us by that very fact as the recovery of lost unity—the recovery of supernatural unity of man with God, but equally of the unity of men among themselves. “Divine Mercy gathered up the fragments from every side, forged them in the fire of love, and welded into one what had been broken. He who remade was himself the Maker, and he who refashioned was himself the Fashioner.” Thus does he raise up again man who was lost by gathering together once more his scattered members, so restoring his own image. Like the queen bee, Christ comes to muster humanity around him.2 It is in this that the great miracle of Calvary consists:
There were at that time all kinds of miracles: God on the Cross, the sun darkened. . . the veil of the temple rent. . . water and blood flowing from his side, the earth quaking, stones breaking, the dead rising. . . Who can worthily extol such wonders? But none is to be compared with the miracle of my salvation: minute drops of blood making the whole world new, working the salvation of all men, as the drops of fig-juice one by one curdle the milk, reuniting mankind, knitting them together as one.3
For a change of metaphor there is that in which Christ is likened to a needle the eye in which, pierced most painfully at his passion, now draws all after him, so repairing the tunic rent by Adam, stitching together the two peoples of Jew and Gentile, making them one for always.4
Divisa uniuntur, discordantia pacantur:5 such from the very beginning is the effect of the Incarnation. Christ from the very first moment of his existence virtually bears all men within himself 6—erat in Christo Jesu omnis homo. For the Word did not merely take a human body; his Incarnation was not a simple corporatio, but, as St. Hilary says, a concorporatio. He incorporated himself in our humanity, and incorporated it in himself. Universitatis nostrae caro est factus.7 In making a human nature, it is human nature that he united to himself, that he enclosed in himself, and it is the latter, whole and entire, that in some sort he uses as a body. Naturam in se universae carnis adsumpsit.8 Whole and entire he will bear it then to Calvary, whole and entire he will raise it from the dead, whole and entire he will save it. Christ the Redeemer does not offer salvation merely to each one; he effects it, he is himself the salvation of the whole, and for each one salvation consists in a personal ratification of his original “belonging” to Christ, so that he be not cast out, cut off from this Whole.
Not in vain does John assert that the Word came and dwelt among us, for in this way he teaches us the great mystery that we are all in Christ and that the common personality of man is brought back to life by his assuming of it. . . . The Word dwells in us, in that one temple he took through us and of us, so that we should possess all things in him and he should bring us all back to the Father in one Body.9
1 Where there is sin, there is multiplicity. Origen, In Ezech., hom. 9, n.1: “Ubi peccata sunt, ibi est multitudo, ibi schismata, ibi haereses, ibi dissensiones. Ubi autem virtus, ibi singularitas, ibi unio, ex quo omnium credentium erat cor unum et anima una. Et, ut manifestius dicam, principium malorum omnium est multitudo, principium autem bonorum coangustatio et a turbis in singularitatem redactio” (Baehrens, p. 405). [Google translate: Where there are sins, there is multitude, there schisms, there heresies, there dissensions. Where there is virtue, there is singularity, there is union, from which all believers were one heart and one soul. And, to say more plainly, the beginning of all evils is multitude, but the beginning of good things is narrowing and reduction from multitudes into singularity.]
2 Hippolytus, In Cantic. I.16.
3 Gregory Nazianzen, Orat. 45 c. 29 (PG 36, 662-64).
4 Paschasius Radbertus, In Mat., lib. 9 (PL 120, 666).
5 What was divided is united, discord becomes peace. Fulgentius, Ad Monimum, lib. 2, c. 10 (PL 65. 188).
6 Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus, assertio 15 (PG 75, 293-96).
7 He became the flesh of our universal humanity. Hilary, In Psalmum 54, n. 9 (Zingerle, p. 153).
8 He assumed in himself the nature of all flesh.
9 Cyril of Alexandria, In Joannem, lib. 1 (PG 73, 161-64).
Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: A Study of Dogma in Relation to the Corporate Destiny of Mankind (1947; tr. 1958), 33-40