Science confirms – 7. Collection of scientific articles. Андрей Тихомиров

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      The path to salvation and eternal life in unity with God for man lies through physical death; this path is paved by the death of the cross and the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. Salvation is possible only in the bosom of the Church, which is the «body of Christ»: it unites believers in one mystical body with the «deified», sinless human nature of Christ. Theologians compared the unity of the Church with the unity of loving spouses, merging in love into one flesh, having the same desires and will, but preserving themselves as free individuals. Christ is the head of this one, but many-faced church body, just as the husband is the head of the marriage union (hence the self-designation of the nuns: «brides of Christ»).

      Christian morality proceeds from the self-worth of the individual (the individual is the «image of God» in a person) and the indissoluble connection of goodness, truth and freedom. «…You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free,» «Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin,» Jesus said (John 8:32,34). At the same time, goodness and truth are expressed not in impersonal formal rules, but in the very person of Jesus Christ; hence the fundamental informalizability of Christian morality, which by its very essence is the morality of freedom. Expressing human freedom, the truly Christian faith rests not on fear and external duty, but on love directed to Christ and to each person as the bearer of the image of God.

      Good is done by man through the use of free will in the name of personality and love: «Whoever does not love has not known God, because God is love» (1 John 4:8). Another use of free will turns into its self-denial and spiritual degradation of a person. Thus, human freedom contains not only the possibility of good, but also the risk of evil. Evil is a false application of freedom; the truth of freedom is good. Therefore, evil has no independent essence and is reduced only to the negation of good: all supposedly independent definitions of evil turn out to be only definitions of good taken with the opposite sign.