For a spiritual and metaphysical crisis, only a remedy of the same nature is appropriate. - Henri de Lubac

Christianity, by those doctrinal aspects that we have just emphasized as well as by others, brought something absolutely new into the world. Its concept of salvation is not merely novel in comparison with that of those religions in existence at the time of its birth. It is a unique phenomenon in the religious history of mankind.<p>For what do we witness outside Christianity whenever a religious movement rises above the domain of sense and effectively transcends the limit of nationality? In every case, though appearances may differ considerably, the basis is the same—an individualist doctrine of escape. It was this that inspired ancient mysticism, whether it sought to escape the vicissitudes of the sub-lunary world or to pass over the outer circle of the cosmos and to penetrate into the realm of intelligible Essences or even beyond.

In the One there is no solitariness, but fruitfulness of life and warmth of presence.[…] In the all-sufficient Being there is no selfishness but the exchange of a perfect Gift. The created mind, though so faint a copy of him who is, is none the less a reproduction in some sort of his structure—ad imaginem fecit eum—and practiced eyes can discern the stamp of the creating Trinity. There is no solitary person: each one in his very being receives of all, of his very being must give back to all.[…] Thus it can also be said, to exalt its inner richness and to make clear its character as an end, which all others must acknowledge, that "a person is a whole world", but it must also be added at once that this "world" presupposes others with which it makes up one world only.

Henceforth the idea of human unity is born. That image of God, the image of the Word, which the incarnate Word restores and gives back to its glory, is "I myself"; it is also the other, every other. It is that aspect of me in which I coincide with every other man, it is the hallmark of our common origin and the summons to our common destiny. It is our very unity in God.<p>If, then, there took place in our past some "decisive" event that […] opened out to us the perspective of "the joy of an essentially universal union", we shall know where such an event took place.[…] Anyway, it is a fact that nowhere outside the influence of Christianity has man ever succeeded in defining its conditions; he has always wavered between the imagining of an individual survival in which beings remain separated and a theory that absorbs them in the One.