The term ‘Divine Likeness’ occupies a pivotal position within the depth-psychology and contemplative corpus, functioning simultaneously as an ontological claim about human nature and a telos directing transformative practice. In the Philokalic tradition, the distinction between the divine image (eikon) and the divine likeness (homoiosis) is foundational: the image is given, while the likeness is an achievement toward which the intellect strives through virtue and illumination. Diadochos of Photiki, as transmitted across all four volumes of the Philokalia, treats the likeness as actively ‘painted’ upon the soul by grace—a process whose completion requires the illumination of the Holy Spirit and issues in perfect spiritual love. Nikitas Stithatos grounds the likeness in the possession of virtue and understanding, while Maximos the Confessor links it to bearing an ‘exact spiritual likeness of Christ.’ John of Damascus extends the concept into Trinitarian theology and iconology, arguing that man was created in an image and likeness common to Father and Son. In Gnostic material surveyed by Hans Jonas, the divine likeness functions ambiguously as both bait and lure, exposing a darker dimension of identification with divine form. Bulgakov’s sophiology reconceives likeness as the dynamic telos of creaturely Sophia striving toward its divine archetype. The tension running across all positions concerns whether likeness is received passively through grace or actively constructed through ascetic and noetic effort.
it depicts the divine likeness on the soul. Our power of perception shows us that we are being formed into the divine likeness; but the perfecting of this likeness we shall know only by the light of grace.
The passage establishes the Philokalic distinction between the soul’s perceptible progress toward divine likeness and its ultimate perfection, which remains accessible only through the illuminating grace of the Holy Spirit.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
Only when it has been made like God—insofar, of course, as this is possible—does it bear the divine likeness of love as well… when the luminosity of love is added, then it is evident that the image has been fully transformed into the beauty of the likeness.
Diadochos argues that the divine likeness is only fully realized when the intellect is perfected in spiritual love, with the image-to-likeness transformation figured through the metaphor of portraiture completed by color.
, The Philokalia, Volume 1, 1979thesis
grace is beginning to paint the divine likeness over the divine image in us… If the intellect does not receive the perfection of the divine likeness through such illumination, although it may have almost every other virtue, it will still have no share in perfect love.
Gregory Palamas, citing Diadochos, affirms that the divine likeness is actively inscribed by grace upon the pre-existing divine image, and that without this illumination perfect love remains inaccessible regardless of other virtues.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
God created us in His image and likeness (cf. Gen. 1:26). We are in His likeness if we possess virtue and understanding… We are also in the likeness of God if we possess uprightness and goodness.
Nikitas Stithatos grounds the divine likeness in the active cultivation of virtue, understanding, and moral goodness, specifying multiple divine attributes whose human approximation constitutes authentic likeness.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
After Our own image and likeness. How is He falsely called God, to Whom the true God says, After Our own image and likeness? Our is inconsistent with isolation… man is being created in the image of Father and of Son.
John of Damascus employs the Genesis formula ‘after Our own image and likeness’ as Trinitarian proof, arguing that the shared likeness between Father and Son in which humanity is created attests their co-equal divinity.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016thesis
to bear in himself by grace an exact spiritual likeness of Christ, who is by nature the truly great king… In this likeness, says St Paul, ‘there is neither male nor female’ (Gal. 3:28), that is, there is neither anger nor desire.
Maximos the Confessor presents the divine likeness as a Christ-conformity imparted by grace, which transcends passional differentiation and constitutes the soul’s participation in the divine kingdom.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
the frequent use of a divine likeness as a bait used either by the archons to lure and entrap divine substance or by the messengers of the deity to extract captured light-substance from the hold of the archons.
Jonas identifies in Gnostic mythology an ambivalent function for the divine likeness—it operates as both a trap set by hostile archons and a salvific instrument deployed by divine messengers—exposing the dangerous potential of identification with divine form.
, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 1958supporting
There is something in human beings which is directly related to the essence of God. It is no one natural quality, but our whole humanity, which is the image of God.
Bulgakov’s sophiology locates the divine likeness not in any isolated faculty but in the totality of human nature conceived as the image of God, grounding a dynamic theology of Divine-humanity aimed at eventual full actualization.
, Sophia, the Wisdom of God: An Outline of Sophiology, 1937supporting
The world is created in all its fullness… The creaturely Sophia… is at present in a state of potentiality, dynamis, while at the same time it is the principle of its actualization and finality.
Bulgakov frames the trajectory toward divine likeness as the creaturely Sophia’s long historical movement from potentiality to full actualization, in which the world gradually reflects the face of divine Sophia.
, Sophia, the Wisdom of God: An Outline of Sophiology, 1937supporting
by God’s grace we can rise from dust to image of God; from dust to likeness of God; from dust to sons and daughters of God… from dust to theosis, becoming gods by grace as Jesus is God by nature.
Coniaris articulates the patristic ascent from image to likeness as the foundational dynamic of theosis, presenting divine likeness as an intermediate station on the way to full deification by grace.
, Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality, 1998supporting
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 reads the plural of Genesis as demanding a single shared image of both Father and Son, making the divine likeness in humanity the seal of Trinitarian co-equality.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
The likeness between ego consciousness and the uroboros is the fundamental ‘family likeness’ between ego and self, which corresponds mythologically to that between father and son.
Neumann transposes the theological father-son likeness into analytical psychology, using the ego-self correspondence as the psychological equivalent of the mythological divine filiation underlying divine-likeness imagery.
, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019aside
it is from the Supreme that we derive order and distribution and harmony… virtue is one thing, the source of virtue quite another.
Plotinus distinguishes between the soul’s attainment of likeness to the Supreme through virtue and the Supreme itself, establishing a hierarchical ontology in which likeness is a participated approximation rather than identity.
, The Six Enneads, 270aside