The Divine Image occupies a charged intersection in the depth-psychology corpus, where theological anthropology, imaginal philosophy, and psychological hermeneutics converge. The term carries at least three distinct but mutually illuminating registers. In the patristic tradition represented by John of Damascus and the Philokalia, the divine image (imago Dei) designates the ontological dignity conferred upon human nature at creation — a dignity that grounds both the veneration of sacred images and the capacity of the soul for theosis. In the Sufi metaphysics of Ibn ʿArabī as interpreted by Henry Corbin, the Divine Image acquires a theophanic function: the 'Form of God' is not an external resemblance but the very face through which the Real manifests to and within each being, making the image an event of mutual disclosure between the divine and the human. Bulgakov's Sophiology introduces a third inflection: humanity as the image of God names not a single quality but the entirety of human nature insofar as it participates in the divine Sophia. James Hillman, reading against the grain of iconoclasm, insists that the image is the thing itself — that psychology can have no foundation more real than the primordial imaginal fact. Across these positions the key tension is epistemological: whether the divine image is received as revelation, constructed by active imagination, or simply is the psyche in its originating shape. The stakes are nothing less than the nature of the sacred and the capacity of finite being to bear it.
It is no one natural quality, but our whole humanity, which is the image of God. It has its own line of development, its own history, but it is already fixed and marked out in human beings, as a constant tendency at the very heart of our being.
Bulgakov argues that the divine image is not a discrete faculty but the totality of human nature itself, constitutively present as a metaphysical constant within every person.
, Sophia, the Wisdom of God: An Outline of Sophiology, 1937thesis
the 'Divine Face,' the 'Form of God' that is thus manifested — as we have seen above — is also the 'imperishable Face' of the being to whom it is manifested, his Holy Spirit.
Corbin, following Ibn ʿArabī's disciple Jīlī, identifies the manifested Divine Image as simultaneously the Form of God and the spiritual face of the very being to whom it appears — a coincidentia oppositorum at the heart of theophany.
, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969thesis
If the Godhead must be contemplated in a concrete form of mental vision, this form must present the very Image of His being. And the contemplation must be effective, that is, its effect must be to make the contemplator's being conform to this same Image of the Divine Being.
Corbin articulates the transformative logic of the divine image in Ibn ʿArabī: contemplation of the Divine Image is not passive reception but an ontological conformation of the mystic to that Image through a second birth.
, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969thesis
Man is created, taking the words in their strict sense, in Their common image. Now there can be nothing common to the true and to the false. God, the Speaker, is speaking to God; man is being created in the image of Father and of Son.
John of Damascus deploys the shared divine image of Father and Son as theological proof of their co-essential deity, while establishing the ontological dignity of humanity as created in that singular common image.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016thesis
It is psyche in its primordial originating shape. That's why archetypal psychology requires no foundation in another so-called reality and why it is not dependent upon an external philosophy, science, or metaphysics.
Hillman elevates the image to an ontological absolute for depth psychology, arguing that the primordial image — including the divine image — requires no referential grounding beyond itself.
, Mythic Figures, 2007thesis
Christ himself was an Iconographer, whose very nature necessitated putting on the flesh and taking visible shape. This implies that true Christian service must also serve the image. Images are effects of their co-relative causes, and they have effects because of these causes.
Hillman recovers the imaginist position at the Council of Nicaea to argue that the Incarnation itself is the paradigmatic instance of the archetype dwelling within the image, making iconoclasm a psychological as well as theological error.
, Healing Fiction, 1983supporting
we see images in creation which remind us faintly of God, as when, for instance, we speak of the holy and adorable Trinity, imaged by the sun, or light, or burning rays, or by a running fountain, or a full river, or by the mind, speech, or the spirit within us.
John of Damascus elaborates a graduated theology of divine imaging in creation, holding that material forms carry analogical traces of the Trinity and thus legitimate the use of sacred images in worship.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
Bodies as having form and shape and colour, may properly be represented in image. Now if nothing physical or material may be attributed to an angel, a spirit, and a devil, yet they may be depicted and circumscribed after their own nature.
John of Damascus distinguishes modes of imaging suited to different orders of being, showing that the representability of divine or spiritual reality in image depends on the nature of what is imaged.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
the divine mind falling in love with its own image in the spiritual water and producing a thought, forethought, called Barbelo.
The Gnostic Secret Book of John presents the primal divine image as a narcissistic self-reflection of the divine mind, from which the first emanation Barbelo — forethought — is generated, initiating the pleroma.
, The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus: The Definitive Collection of Mystical Gospels and Secret Books about Jesus of Nazareth, 2005supporting
the spiritual nature given to us by God is uncircumscribed and outside the material grossness of this world, and so is incorporeal, invisible, impalpable, incomprehensible, and an image of His immortal and eternal glory.
The Philokalia identifies the spiritual nature of the human person as an image of God's immortal glory, linking divine image to apophatic anthropology and the soul's capacity for incorporeal likeness to the divine.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
If it be in very deed for the glory of God and of His saints to promote goodness, to avoid evil, and save souls, we should receive and honour and worship them as images, and remembrances, likenesses, and the books of the illiterate.
John of Damascus grounds the veneration of sacred images in soteriological intentionality, arguing that images that promote virtue and recall the Incarnate God are rightly honoured as bearers of salvific memory.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
The image of the king is also called the king, and there are not two kings. Neither power is broken, nor is glory divided. ... the honour given to the image is referred to the original.
Drawing on Basil, John of Damascus articulates the classical principle of iconic referral: honour paid to the divine image passes to its archetype without splitting or diminishing the divine reality.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
There a careful distinction was formulated about the nature of images and the correct relation to them.
Hillman situates the Council of Nicaea (787) as the historical locus of a formal distinction between image and archetype that is psychologically as well as theologically consequential.
, Healing Fiction, 1983supporting
As consciousness evolved, the sacred image was like an umbilical cord connecting us to the deep ground of life.
Campbell presents the sacred image in evolutionary-consciousness terms, treating it as the primary medium through which early humanity maintained connection to divine ground — a precursor to more differentiated divine image concepts.
, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, 2013aside
As consciousness evolved, the sacred image was like an umbilical cord connecting us to the deep ground of life.
Harvey and Baring echo Campbell's formulation, framing the sacred image as the evolutionary connective tissue between consciousness and the divine feminine ground, prior to the split of nature from spirit.
, The Divine Feminine: Exploring the Feminine Face of God Throughout the World, 1996aside
how to include nature and everything pertaining to it in the realm of the Divine, how to recognize the immanence as well as the transcendence of the Divine.
Campbell identifies Christianity's failure to integrate nature into the divine image — specifically the image of Mary — as a structural theological problem with psychological consequences for the experience of divine immanence.
, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, 2013aside