gods
Within the depth-psychology corpus, 'God' functions as a multi-valent term traversing apophatic theology, Trinitarian metaphysics, Gnostic cosmology, alchemical symbolism, and Jungian psychodynamics. The patristic voices—John of Damascus, the Philokalia translators, and the apologists preserved in the Damascus collection—articulate a God who is radically incomprehensible in essence yet knowable through energies, whose Trinitarian persons are distinct yet coinherent, and whose incarnate Logos mediates between absolute transcendence and creaturely existence. The Gnostic materials introduce a quite different register: the One who transcends even the category 'God,' a pleromaic source generating emanations that devolve into a demiurgic fall. Armstrong's historical survey frames these positions genealogically, showing how the empirical turn forced the verification of God's objective reality by scientific criteria, destabilizing traditional proofs. Most consequential for depth psychology proper is the Jungian trajectory represented by Edinger and Peterson: here 'God' becomes the God-image, a psychic symbol that evolves historically, undergoes transformation—from Trinity to quaternio through the Assumption of Mary—and functions anonymously in therapeutic contexts such as the Twelve Steps. The central tension throughout the corpus is between God as metaphysical reality and God as psychic representation, a tension that animates every major school of interpretation included in the library.
The Deity, therefore, is ineffable and incomprehensible. For no one knoweth the Father, save the Son, nor the Son, save the Father. God, however, did not leave us in absolute ignorance.
John of Damascus establishes the foundational apophatic principle that God's essence is unknowable yet God's existence is implanted as knowledge in all things, balancing radical incomprehensibility with universal presence.
, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021thesis
In the case of God, however, it is impossible to explain what He is in His essence, and it befits us the rather to hold discourse about His absolute separation from all things. For He does not belong to the class of existing things: not that He has no existence, but that He is above all existing things.
This passage articulates the apophatic method's climax: God surpasses not only knowledge but existence itself, and all positive predications reveal only the qualities, never the nature, of the divine.
, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021thesis
The One is a sovereign that has nothing over it. It is God and parent, father of all, the invisible one that is over all... We should not think of it as a god or like a god. For it is greater than a god.
The Gnostic Secret Book of John posits a supreme One that radically transcends the category of 'god,' establishing a hypertheos position that contrasts sharply with both mainstream theism and demiurgic creation.
, The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus: The Definitive Collection of Mystical Gospels and Secret Books about Jesus of Nazareth, 2005thesis
The God-image has now been transformed from a Trinity into a quaternity by the addition of the feminine and corporeal aspects of existence, together with all the dark qualities that belong to flesh.
Edinger, following Jung's Answer to Job, argues that the God-image undergoes a historical psychological transformation toward completeness by incorporating previously excluded opposites—feminine, corporeal, and dark qualities.
, Transformation of the God-Image: An Elucidation of Jung's Answer to Job, 1992thesis
The word God is just a placeholder, that the particular God-concept of any individual member is not important... the fluidity of the God-image as a symbol, rather than its dogmatic fixedness, is paramount.
Peterson shows that Twelve Step practice operationalizes the Jungian God-image concept by treating 'God' as a subjectively conditioned, anonymous symbol rather than a fixed doctrinal referent.
, The Shadow of a Figure of Light, 2024thesis
The Deity, then, alone is motionless, moving the universe by immobility. So then it must be assumed that the Deity is incorporeal. But even this gives no true idea of His essence... these do not indicate what He is, but what He is not.
Employing the unmoved-mover argument, John of Damascus concludes that negative predications exhaust what can be said of God's essence, making incorporeality and immobility markers of what God is not rather than positive descriptions.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016thesis
Him therefore I call God, who constructed all things and sustaineth them, without beginning, without end, immortal, without want, above all passions, and failings, such as anger, forgetfulness, ignorance, and the like.
An apologetic speech within the Damascus collection defines God cosmologically as the self-sustaining, impassible sustainer of all things, distinguishing the divine from creaturely limitation.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
God, the Speaker, is speaking to God; man is being created in the image of Father and of Son. The Two are One in name and One in nature. It is only one image after which man is made.
The Genesis 'let us make' passage is read as a Trinitarian dialogue demonstrating consubstantiality of Father and Son, with humanity created in their common image as evidence of that unity.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
We must learn from God what we are to think of God; we have no source of knowledge but Himself... it is by God that we are initiated into the worship of God.
Damascus insists that knowledge of God is self-referentially grounded—only God can reveal God—foreclosing any autonomous philosophical or secular path to the divine nature.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
God is everlasting and unchangeable essence, creator of all that is, adored with pious consideration. God is also Father, being ever unbegotten... God is likewise Son... God is also Holy Spirit.
John of Damascus provides a compact Trinitarian definition of God as one unchangeable essence subsisting in three distinct but coequal persons, each identified with the single name 'God.'
, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021supporting
God, because He is God, is unchangeable; and the unchangeable God begat God. Their bond of union is not, like that of two flames, two wicks of one lamp, something outside Themselves.
The passage argues for the immanent Trinitarian bond by rejecting material analogies, insisting that the Father-Son relationship is internal to the divine nature rather than an extrinsic connection.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
He Who is called the Angel of God is also Lord and God. The Son of God is also, according to the prophet, the Angel of great counsel.
Through Old Testament theophanies the Son is identified as simultaneously Angel, Lord, and God, establishing the pre-incarnate divine identity of the Logos across Scriptural testimony.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
The person who loves God values knowledge of God more than anything created by God, and pursues such knowledge ardently and ceaselessly... he who values the body more than the soul and the world created by God more than the Creator Himself is simply a worshipper of idols.
The Philokalia grounds ascetic hierarchy in an epistemology of love: God as supreme good must be valued above all created goods, and failure to do so constitutes practical idolatry.
, The Philokalia, Volume 2, 1981supporting
No one who enjoys the divine radiance can participate in the essence of the Creator. For there is absolutely no creature that possesses the capacity to perceive the Creator's nature.
The Philokalia's Palamite-inflected argument distinguishes divine essence from divine energy: creatures participate in the latter but are categorically excluded from the former.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee. That word Thy declares His birth, yet does not contradict His nature; Thy God means that the Son was born from Him to share the Godhead.
Exegesis of the anointing psalm demonstrates that Sonship entails sharing the divine nature fully, so that the Father's designation 'my God' proves the Son's genuine divinity rather than subordination.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
God is in all things. Existing things are dependent on that which is, and nothing can be unless it is in that which is. God then is mingled with everything, maintaining their nature.
John of Damascus articulates a doctrine of divine omnipresence and sustaining immanence: God is the ontological ground in which all creatures subsist, though distinct from and unconfused with them.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
He that is born God of God must be all that God is... the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily in God born of God.
The passage insists that the Son's divine birth entails complete identity of nature: the fullness of Godhead, not a diminished share, inheres in the Son.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
It was certainly God Who wrestled, for Jacob prevailed against God, and Israel saw God... The Angel of the Lord appeared to Moses from the bush... The Lord called unto him from the bush.
Multiple patriarchal theophanies are marshaled to demonstrate that the pre-incarnate Son appeared as Angel yet was worshipped as God, evidencing the Son's true divinity within the Old Testament.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
All the statements made about God that imply body have some hidden meaning and teach us what is otherwise inexpressible.
Anthropomorphic divine attributes in Scripture are systematically re-read as analogical: each bodily metaphor conceals a spiritual truth about God's power, providence, or moral character.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
The old 'proofs' for God's existence were no longer entirely satisfactory, and natural scientists and philosophers... felt compelled to verify the objective reality of God in the same way as they proved other demonstrable phenomena.
Armstrong traces how the empirical revolution forced a methodological crisis in theism, requiring God's existence to be demonstrated by scientific standards and thereby transforming Western conceptions of the divine.
, A History of God, 1993supporting
See, see that I am God, and there is no God beside Me... Moses by the words, Rejoice, O ye nations, with His people indicates Him Who said, There is no God beside Me; and the Apostle refers the same words to our Lord Jesus Christ.
The exclusive divine monotheism of Deuteronomy is re-read Christologically: the one who declares 'no God beside Me' is identified through apostolic testimony as the Son, not the Father alone.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
The One is not corporeal and it is not incorporeal... For no one can understand it... the invisible spirit is the divine mind... producing a thought, forethought, called Barbelo.
The Gnostic Secret Book of John presents the supreme divine principle through strict negative theology, then traces the emanationist cosmogony by which thought, forethought, and ultimately a fallen demiurge derive from the incomprehensible One.
, The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus: The Definitive Collection of Mystical Gospels and Secret Books about Jesus of Nazareth, 2005supporting
God remained unchanged, whether He were seen in the appearance, or born in the reality, of manhood. The resemblance was perfect between Himself, after His birth, and Himself, as He had been seen in vision.
The Patriarchal appearances prefigure the Incarnation: the same divine Son appeared in human form to the Patriarchs and was ultimately born as man, continuity of identity bridging theophany and Incarnation.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
While the Law states clearly that They are Two, it casts no shadow of doubt upon the true Godhead of either.
Against Arian reduction, Damascus argues that the Law simultaneously affirms the numerical distinction of Father and Son and the full divinity of both, leaving no room for a merely nominal or subordinate Godhood of the Son.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
God the Word, though He did not cease to be God, really did become flesh: and while He thus dwelt He was still truly the Word, just as when the Word became flesh He was still truly God as well as man.
The Incarnation is described as a genuine assumption of flesh without any diminishment of divinity, insisting on the full integrity of both natures simultaneously in Christ.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
Does any one deny that Christ remained in the nature of God or believe Him separable and distinct from the only true God?
The rhetorical question frames the entire Trinitarian argument: Christ's glorification in and by the Father constitutes proof that he remains fully in the divine nature and inseparable from the one true God.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
If you allow it to be Christ, despite yourself you confess Him God; if you understand it of God the Father, you cannot deny the nature of God the Father in Christ.
A dilemmatic argument forces the interlocutor to concede Christ's divinity whichever way the glorification texts are read, demonstrating that both readings affirm the Son's participation in the divine nature.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself... And there is no God beside Thee. The Apostle promptly matches this with For there is one Jesus Christ our Lord, through Whom are all things.
Pauline texts are read as deliberate fulfillments of Old Testament prophecies about God, establishing Christ as the one Lord who matches the exclusive monotheism of the prophets.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
Since, therefore, God is spiritual light, and Christ is called in the Scriptures Sun of Righteousness and Dayspring, the East is the direction that must be assigned to His worship.
The identification of God with spiritual light and Christ with the sun provides the liturgical-cosmological rationale for eastward worship, embedding theological doctrine in bodily practice.
, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021aside
Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. Lo! the death of Christ, that is, the Cross, clothed us with the enhypostatic wisdom and power of God.
The Cross is interpreted as the mode by which God's own hypostatic wisdom and power are imparted to humanity, grounding soteriology in direct participation in the divine attributes.
, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021aside
God wrought man after an image and likeness common to Himself and to God; that the mention of an Agent forbids us to assume that He was isolated; and that the work, done after an image and likeness which was that of Both, proves that there is no difference in kind between the Godhead of the One and of the Other.
The shared image in which humanity is created demonstrates the consubstantiality of Father and Son, since a genuinely common image could not exist if the two differed in kind.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016aside