The term ‘Divine Nature’ traverses the depth-psychology corpus along two distinct axes: the theological-ontological and the transformative-psychological. In the patristic stream — represented principally by John of Damascus, Gregory Palamas (through the Philokalia), and Sergei Bulgakov — ‘Divine Nature’ denotes the uncreated essence (ousia) of the Godhead, a reality absolutely simple, uncompound, and inaccessible in itself, yet knowable through its energies and self-disclosure. The Palamite distinction between divine essence and divine energy proves decisive: participation in the Divine Nature is real but asymptotic, mediated through uncreated energies rather than direct absorption into the essence. In the integral-yogic corpus of Sri Aurobindo, the emphasis shifts decisively: ‘Divine Nature’ becomes the terminal goal of psychological transformation, the supramental condition into which human mental, vital, and physical being is to be elevated and transfigured. Here the term functions not as a boundary-concept marking divine transcendence but as a practical telos, the active principle to be ‘put on.’ Karen Armstrong’s historical survey adds a third register: heterodox and mystical traditions — from the Brethren of the Free Spirit to Plotinian emanationism — insisted on essential identity between human and Divine Nature, a claim the mainstream theological tradition rigorously qualified. The tension between participation and identity, between energetic communion and essential union, is the generative fault-line running through the entire corpus.
it is to put on the divine being and the divine nature. And since God is Sachchidananda, it is to raise our being into the divine being, our consciousness into the divine consciousness
Aurobindo defines the integral yoga’s second great aim as literally putting on the Divine Nature — raising all planes of human existence into the consciousness, energy, and delight of Sachchidananda.
, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948thesis
those who champion the views of Akindynos say that there is only one thing that is uncreated, namely, the divine nature, and that anything that is in any way distinguished from the divine nature is created
Palamas diagnoses the Akindynist reduction — equating the uncreated solely with the divine nature-essence — as collapsing the Trinity into created status, thereby establishing that divine energy, though distinct from the nature, is equally uncreated.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
Salvation was achieved by the recognition of one’s own divine nature here on earth. A treatise by one of the Brethren, found in a hermit’s cell near the Rhine, explained: ‘The divine essence is my essence and my essence is the divine essence.’
Armstrong documents the radical mystical claim — associated with the Brethren of the Free Spirit — that salvation consists in recognising the essential identity of human and Divine Nature, a position the mainstream tradition condemned as pantheist heresy.
, A History of God, 1993thesis
the possession of the divine nature in its proper and its higher forms and no longer in the inferior forms of the mental being which are a mutilated translation and not the authentic text of the original script of divine Nature in the cosmic individual
Aurobindo frames the collective yoga of humanity as a progressive repossession of Divine Nature in its authentic supramental script, replacing the distorted mental translation that currently governs the cosmic individual.
, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948thesis
to conceive of the Spirit that dwells in God as after the likeness of our own spirit, would be to drag down the greatness of the divine nature to the lowest depths of degradation
John of Damascus insists that the Divine Nature, being simple and uncompound, cannot be modelled on human psychological analogues without catastrophic theological degradation.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016thesis
we, too, participate in the divine energy — though in a different way from the universe as a whole — but not in the essence of God. Hence the theologians say that ‘divinity’ is also an appellation of the divine energy
Palamas affirms genuine human participation in the Divine — via uncreated energy rather than divine essence — and establishes ‘divinity’ as properly an attribute of energy, not of the inaccessible nature-essence.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
God is not solitary, and yet that there are no differences within the Divine nature. For the Father is seen in the Son, and this could be the case neither if He were a lonely Being, nor yet if He were unlike the Son
John of Damascus argues that the mutual visibility of Father and Son — without introducing difference into the Divine Nature — safeguards both trinitarian distinction of persons and unity of essence.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
though he be aware that he is partaker of the Divine nature, as the holy apostle Peter says in his second Epistle, yet he must not measure the Divine nature by the limitations of his own
John of Damascus, citing 2 Peter 1:4, cautions that awareness of partaking in the Divine Nature must not license anthropomorphic projection — the Divine Nature must be gauged by its own self-revelation, not by human limitation.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
human nature in opposition to divine nature is spoken of as passible
John of Damascus employs the divine/human nature distinction to explain why Christ’s human energy is characterised as passion: passibility is definitionally the mark of human as opposed to Divine Nature.
, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021supporting
no other Christ was born both of divin
John of Damascus uses the uniqueness of Christ’s dual birth to demonstrate why Christ’s subsistence cannot be subsumed under a single nature-class, since no generic ‘nature of Christs’ exists combining divine and human natures.
, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021supporting
If Christ has one energy, it must be one and the same energy that performs both divine and human actions. But there is no existing thing which abiding in its natural state can act in opposite ways
John of Damascus grounds the dyothelite case in the principle that nature determines energy: a single energy would collapse two irreducibly distinct natures — divine and human — into one.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
This Divine Being, Sachchidananda, is at once impersonal and personal: it is an Existence and the origin and foundation of all truths, forces, powers, existences
Aurobindo characterises the Divine Being — the ground of Divine Nature — as simultaneously impersonal Existence and personal All-Presence, the transcendent-immanent reality from which cosmos and individual alike depend.
, The Life Divine, 1939supporting
things that have the same essence have also the same will and energy, while things that are different in essence are different in will and energy
John of Damascus formulates the metaphysical principle linking nature, will, and energy — a principle used to establish both the consubstantiality of the Trinity and the real duality of natures in Christ.
, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021supporting
there are two poises of our soul-existence, a lower, troubled and subjected, a higher, supreme, untroubled and sovereign, one vibrant in Mind, the other tranquil in Spirit
Aurobindo posits a structural duality between the ordinary human status and the higher divine status of soul-nature, the latter representing the condition in which soul and nature’s duality is reversed and the divine reigns.
, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948supporting
He Himself as man subjected in Himself and by Himself His human nature to God and the Father, and became obedient to the Father, thus making Himself the most excellent type and example for us
John of Damascus presents Christ’s voluntary subjection of His human nature to the divine as the paradigmatic act by which the subordination of lower to higher nature is modelled for human redemption.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
This Apeiron, as we noted, ‘surrounds’ and ‘guides all things’ (A 15); it is divine in nature. We may perhaps assume that what the Apeiron guides is the very way that opposites are forced to relate under time
Sullivan notes that Anaximander attributed divine nature to the Apeiron, situating an archaic proto-psychological cosmology in which the divine principle governs the play of opposites — a remote ancestral analogue to later depth-psychological formulations.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995aside
divine realities themselves are revealed to man through grace by the power of the Holy Spirit descending upon him
The Philokalia insists that knowledge of divine realities — while requiring natural receptive faculties — is ultimately granted only through the grace of the Holy Spirit, preserving the asymmetry between human nature and Divine Nature.
, The Philokalia, Volume 2, 1981aside
the truth, or genuineness, of a thing is a question of its nature and its powers
John of Damascus employs a functional criterion of truth-by-nature to argue that Christ’s divine powers attest His genuine participation in Divine Nature as true God.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016aside