The will of God emerges across the depth-psychology corpus not as a simple theological datum but as a contested structural concept at the intersection of volition, obedience, moral anthropology, and soteriology. Albrecht Dihle’s philological investigations establish the foundational tension: in the Hellenic cosmos, divine will is subsumed within rational necessity, whereas the Biblical tradition posits a genuinely free divine will whose commands cannot be anticipated by unaided human intellect, thus constituting human will itself as a morally evaluable phenomenon. The Philokalic tradition, particularly as rendered by Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, transforms this Dihle-identified tension into an ascetic programme: the abandonment of self-will becomes the very pathway to participating in God’s will, culminating in theosis. John of Damascus contributes the Christological refinement — natural versus gnomic will in Christ — that grounds later Eastern Orthodox pneumatology. John Cassian reads Christ’s Gethsemane prayer as the paradigmatic reconciliation of human and divine will. Sri Aurobindo introduces a non-theistic cognate in the supramental truth-will that operates without inner contradiction. The corpus overall reveals a spectrum running from legalistic compliance, through mystical self-annihilation, to ontological identity: the will of God is variously the commandment to be obeyed, the grace into which one is surrendered, and ultimately the ground of being itself.
Man cannot come to a rational understanding of anything behind the will of God. He can give his response to God’s commandment only through an act of obedience or disobedience, that is to say by his will.
Dihle argues that the Biblical framework uniquely constitutes human will as a moral category precisely because the will of God is opaque to reason, demanding personal response rather than intellectual comprehension.
, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982thesis
speculation returned to the problem of how to give the right response to the unpredictable utterances of the will of God… the Christians regarded the same obedience, primarily as the repeated act of acceptance by which the faithful totally delivers himself to the divine grace.
Dihle traces how the unpredictability of the divine will in the Biblical tradition drives recurring speculation on obedience, culminating in the Christian emphasis on total self-surrender to grace as the only adequate response.
, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982thesis
if for God’s sake we amputate our own will, God will enable us to reach, with inexpressible joy, a perfection that we have never known… God will reign in us, since we have no will of our own, but have submitted ourselves to the holy will of God.
The Philokalic tradition presents the annihilation of self-will and submission to God’s will not as loss but as the condition of supreme joy and divine indwelling.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
‘Father, let this cup pass from me, if it is possible. Yet let it not be as I wish but as you wish.’ And yet His will was certainly not different from that of His Father.
Cassian interprets Christ’s Gethsemane prayer as the model for the human soul’s alignment with God’s will, demonstrating that apparent conflict between human petition and divine will dissolves in perfect obedience.
, Conferences, 426thesis
The person who remains within the bounds of nature is saved if he abandons his own will and fulfils that of God; but to the person who transcends these bounds God will give the crown of endurance and glory.
The Philokalia distinguishes two levels of conformity to God’s will — natural obedience within the bounds of created human nature and the supererogatory abandonment of nature itself — assigning different eschatological rewards to each.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
According to the cosmogony of Corp. Herm. 13, the θέλημα θεοῦ (will of God) is the father, the σοφία θεοῦ (wisdom of God) the mother of man.
Dihle documents the Hermetic tradition’s hypostatization of the divine will as a cosmogonic principle and father of humanity, revealing an alternative ontological reading of the will of God outside the strictly Biblical-moral framework.
, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting
the Providence of God is beyond our ken and comprehension… the works of Providence are partly according to the good-will (of God) and partly according to permission.
John of Damascus distinguishes God’s antecedent good-will from his permissive will, providing a structural framework for understanding why Providence allows suffering and injustice without God being its direct cause.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
The God of the Old Testament is present and perceptible only in his commandments and orders, in the utterances of his will. His thought is far beyond.
Dihle establishes that in Old Testament theology the divine will, not the divine intellect, is the primary mode of God’s presence and self-disclosure to humanity.
, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting
By a single infinitely powerful act of will God in His goodness will gather all together, angels and men, the good and the evil.
The Philokalic text presents the eschatological consummation as a sovereign act of divine will that is at once universal in scope and differentially participatory, depending on each creature’s moral disposition.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
The voluntaristic element in this idea of turning oneself is quite notable throughout the Biblical and post-Biblical tradition… the idea that the human intellect, operating freely and autonomously, could discover the ultimate congruity of the plans of God, the order of the universe, and the needs and purposes of men, was never conceived.
Dihle identifies the Biblical tradition’s persistent voluntarism as the consequence of denying to unaided human reason any capacity to align spontaneously with the purposes of God.
, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting
since man is by nature endowed with volition, the Lord also must be by nature endowed with volition, not only because He is God, but also because He became man.
John of Damascus grounds the two wills of Christ in the natural constitution of both divinity and humanity, making the alignment of Christ’s human will with the divine will the theological prototype for the Christian vocation.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
he comes to believe that the Orthodox faith is truly glorious, and he begins to long to do God’s will. He no longer has any doubts about God’s help, but ‘casts his burden upon the Lord’.
The Philokalia presents the desire to fulfil God’s will as a developmental achievement of spiritual progress rather than a merely notional assent, emerging from practiced endurance and deepening faith.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
The belief that both divine predetermination and human responsibility have to be accepted is common ground in the writings of the apostolic period.
Dihle locates in the apostolic period a foundational antinomy — divine predetermination and human freedom — that subsequent theology was compelled to negotiate precisely because the will of God was understood as irresistibly sovereign yet addressing a genuinely free creature.
, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting
The spiritual will is the Tapas or enlightened force of the conscious being of the spirit effecting infallibly what is there within it… which we call variously in its different aspects law of Nature, Karma, Necessity and Fate.
Aurobindo reconceives the will of the divine spirit as a supramental truth-force operative without inner contradiction, offering a non-theistic analogue to the Biblical doctrine of a sovereign divine will immanent in natural law and fate.
, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948supporting
There is no need for assuming behind or apart from the entirely rational programming of reality a will of which the impulse or manifestation is unpredictable.
Dihle establishes the Greek cosmological baseline against which the Biblical concept of the will of God stands in radical contrast: Hellenic thought requires no free divine will because rational cosmic order suffices.
, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting
Through his conscience man may become aware of what God wants him to do and, accordingly, the judgement God is going to pass on his conduct.
Dihle traces the Pauline argument that conscience functions as an internalized disclosure of the divine will for those outside the Law, making awareness of God’s will available independently of revealed commandment.
, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting
so that it may be enabled acceptably to serve the Spirit that it has received, and not be seduced by evil, or led into error through ignorance, or perverted by negligence and lack of fear into doing something contrary to His will.
The Philokalia presents spiritual knowledge as granted by God precisely to equip the soul to discern and conform to the divine will, framing ignorance and negligence as the primary threats to that conformity.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995aside
its highest mystery of absolute surrender to the Divine Guide, Lord and Inhabitant of our nature, is the central secret.
Aurobindo’s Karmayoga describes total surrender to the indwelling divine as the functional equivalent of aligning with the will of God, reframing the concept within a non-dualistic metaphysics of identity.
, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948aside